If I were you I'd stick with OEM expansion cards. Not only is it cheaper but it gets to the point and you end up with a unique system, separate from the common mainstream without things you will never use; actually when OEM hardware does give you addons, it is usually very rare, cool and useful hardware that can be worth a lot later (you ever see an ESS audiodrive 5.25" bay addon in a retail package? I would doubt it.). Ironically, a lot of it comes from HP, Dell, Compaq, and other mainstream companies; you don't want to buy their mobos of course hehe. When you buy new OEM hardware, it comes in a plain box; yeah that's right, a plain box, and it's way cool because it feels like some friend who works at the factory mugged it straight from the assembly line and placed it aside for you. Oh yeah, and those guys around here that buy hardware with those fancy logos and box art will probably like you more too.

Holering wrote:

If I were you I'd stick with OEM expansion cards.

I have not even started to think about expansion cards in my present situation below.

The Gigabyte one's power circuitry is probably faulty as the CPU is not getting voltage and there is a Super IO chip missing(second blunder) on the Asus one(I actually thought the super IO chip as part of the southbridge similar to the VIA chipset). Someone must have cannibalized the working super IO chip from this non-working motherboard probably. Learning is a continuous process, but in this case I felt completely stupid. The hurry factor had a role(very negligible) in it probably.

Apart from the things to look for as mentioned in the earlier posts, this must be the most obvious(which I missed), checking the motherboard components with the actual motherboard pics from the web.

Now that these two motherboards are not going anywhere near operating conditions. I should probably close this thread or just edit the header as 'solved' once I summarize the things to look for while going to buy things from a flea market, of course only to newbies like me as a warning.

Edit: Updated the first post with summary.