good barebone kit?

greetings,

my desktop just suffered a fatal injury during our last storm. the power supply blew and i am unable to get a new replacement - it was time to upgrade processor anyway.

i had recently upgraded video card, hard drive and cd drive so i am interested in purchasing a barebones kit to drop these new components into but i haven't a clue what to look for. i know i am looking for something with an intel p4 3gz-ish processor, but that is about it. why are some of these $89 and some $500? i am aware that certain kits come with extras like RAM and whatnot, but even among kits with the same components, i have seen great price fluctuation. is the difference in the motherboard manufacturer/model?

can anyone give me a heads up as to what i should be looking for (or looking to avoid)?

My recommendation is a Biostar B7NCD with an AMD Barton 2600 for about $140. That plus a replacement PS if you have a decent case or get an Antec case with PS for $60.

i got a barebone with a FIC board and an intel p4 2.6 ghz(which is prolly kinda slow to you) and 256 ram.. it was abot $370 form microcenter works great!

the reason some of the barebones kits cost more is there is more to a processor than its speed, you have to look into cache as well. generally a high L2 cache will cost a pretty penny

oh and amoo3's kit seems pretty good. all you'd have to do is buy some more ram (512 maybe) and possibly a larger hdd. the difference between a 2.6ghz and a 3ghz won't be noticable for another few years anyway