Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - March 2004
by Evan Lieb on March 24, 2004 2:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Sound Card
Recommendation: Onboard soundPrice: $0
For a mid-range system, you most likely aren't going to need a lot of audio processing power unless you're an audiophile. If you are an audiophile, then you probably already have a pretty good idea of what kind of programs you run that would require the power of, say, an Audigy 2 sound card and a Gigaworks surround sound speaker system. But if you're just looking for basic sound that is of good quality (most onboard sound solutions sound identical) that will play music, games, etc., then the onboard sound on either your ABIT AN7/NF7-S Rev.2 motherboard or your ASUS P4P800 Deluxe motherboard will more than suffice. If you're looking for something more potent, we suggest that you peruse our High End Buyer's Guide from a few weeks ago.
One other comment we'd like to make about your sound is that if you choose ABIT's AN7/NF7-S Rev.2, you should realize that this motherboard has an MCP-T South Bridge, meaning you can bypass its onboard DAC by using the optical out port on the I/O panel of your board. This gives you much better sound quality basically for free (for gaming mostly). However, this requires speakers with the appropriate receiver, which costs more. If the better gaming sound quality is worth it to you, then we suggest going this route.
Speakers
Recommendation: Creative Labs SBS270 2.0 SpeakersPrice: $20 shipped
Speakers are a basic requirement for any computer system, but they aren't that important overall if you're building an entry level or mid-range system. For these users' purposes, Creative Labs makes a great pair of 2.0 speakers, dubbed the SBS270. These are excellent entry level/mid-range speakers for users who also want to have decent sound quality at least for video games and music listening. It also comes with a headphone input. There's no subwoofer or anything like that, but that's totally unnecessary unless you're keenly interested in a more powerful, surround sound listening experience.
Alternative: Logitech Z640 5.1 speakers
Price: $63 shipped
While totally unnecessary if you're not a gamer or audiophile, the Z640s are nonetheless a very popular and low cost set of high quality speakers. Whether you talk about the 45.5W satellite output/25.7W subwoofer output or the very effective magnetic shielding that protects your speakers from interference from other devices, you can't help but love these speakers. They have a great reputation for reliability and longevity in general, and our extensive personal use of these speakers only backs up that claim. If you want surround sound on the cheap, it's hard to beat the Z640. If you're a big gamer, we suggest the Audigy 2, if you can afford to spend the money. Personally, we find the immersive gaming experience of the Z640s and an Audigy 2 to be truly great, but others may not be so impressed and will opt for the cheaper variant.
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
22 Comments
View All Comments
reep - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
i would save ~50$ by going for the 2500+ instead of the 2800+ - the difference in performance is hardly worth it. instead, that money could be brought to much better use by spending it on 2x512mb of ram.NeoGodless - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
I agree with #10... this is really the mid range buyers guide. In addition, the dual channel motherboards I've had experience with simply need at least memory slots filled to enable dual channel, and adding additional memory does not disable it.magratton - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
I think many of you are missing the point here. If you want to do the AXPM 2500 and overclock it then that is the "Overclockers" Guide. This guide is for folks who don't know much (a little more than the average joe per se) and want a good system for their needs. To that end these recommendations are pretty decent to me and will certainly make the average gamer around town looking to save a few bucks plenty happy for a while. Either way, people will be much happier with the cost and effectiveness of this system in the long run than the stuff they can pick up at their local (and online) mass-market dealer.As to the TogdorJW's comments on RAM, yes, 512MB is really the MINIMUM nowadays, and some note should be given that if you are using this for gaming spending a few more dollars to get to 1GB RAM should be looked into.
Myrandex - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
I would get the <$145 Radein 9800se 256bit 128MB from newegg and softmod it to a full blown 9800, and ditto with previous posts about the 2500+ CPUs instead of the 2800, and on the alternative choice I would put the new Athlon64 2800+ instead of that P4.Jason
mlsaxx - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
TrogdorJW - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Oh, one other thing. I know this is the mid-range, and an extra $100 on RAM is a lot of money. However, it really has to be recommended for anyone that does a lot of gaming, especially on the Athlon XP system. Since you lose dual-channel if you occupy all three memory slots, the 512 MB configurations you recommend are going to be lower performing if they are later upgraded. (I would love for you to do some benchmarks on this, incidentally!) This isn't a real problem for the P4 alternative, since you can upgrade to 4x256 for 1 GB of RAM when it suits you.Anyway, for gamers looking at spending the extra money on the Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card, they really need to be aware of how many games are starting to break the 512 MB threshhold. I have 1 GB of RAM and a Ti4200 graphics card, and Battlefield: Vietnam and UT2K4 both run perfectly fine for me at 1024x768 and moderate detail. Others running faster graphics cards (9800 Pro) with 512 MB of RAM are posting a lot of complaints in the BF:V and UT2K4 forums. It might bump the price up another $100, but spending $90 on 2x256 MB of RAM for an Athlon XP and then ditching that to go up to 2x512 in a few months would not be cool.
TrogdorJW - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Sounds like the new Athlon 64 2800+ will probably become the alternative CPU/mobo next time the mid-range system comes around. Not sure about the longevity of that solution, but then, nothing lasts forever. Highly mature and stable PCI/AGP is probably better than version 1.0 PCIe and DDR2 for the next 18 months.For the rest, this is the mid-range system *without* overclocking. In that segment, the 2800+ is a pretty good choice, although the 2600+ is also an option. Can't complain too much about the choices, although I'm certainly itching to see what sort of overclocks can be achieved with the new A64 2800+. :)
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
You could pay more for an XP3000+, or spend just $80 on an XP2500+ and overclock it a bit but thats not what I'd get.I'd spend $95 on an XP-M 2500+ (still saving over twenty dollars compared to the recommended XP2800+), set the voltage to the normal 1.65V of an XP2500+ (non-mobile), set the FSB to 200MHz and the multiplier to 11, and bingo -- you've got an XP3200+ :)
gofor55 - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Unless you have RAID 0 test results on the ITE based GigaRAID onboard controller, you need to STOP touting this feature. I own a 7N400 Pro 2 and the GigaRAID performance is terrible. It's even a crummy when used as an IDE interface. I had to disable it and add a RocketRAID controller.wassup4u2 - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Why the AXP 2800+ instead of the 2500+? The 2500 is tons cheaper ($81 retail, shipped on newegg), and is only 250MHz slower. It still offers the 333MHz FSB and 512Kb L2 cache. Plus, it's very easily overclockable to the 2.08GHz that the 2800+ offers, even with the retail cooler. Get a better cooler and, presto, you can have yourself a nice little $81 Athlon XP 3200+.