Weekly Buyer's Guide: High End System - March 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 2, 2004 11:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Monitor
Recommendation: Samsung 1100DF 21" (20" viewable) DynaFlat CRTPrice: $460 shipped
Not only does Samsung make a great mid-range monitor with their 955DF series, they make a great high-end monitor with their 1100DF series too. The 1100DF is capable of refresh rates of 75Hz at 2048x1536 and 85Hz at 1280x1024 and has a dot pitch of 0.20mm. Text clarity is very impressive, glare is non-existent, and gaming performance is top-of-the-line.
Alternative: Philips 22" (20" viewable) 202P45 CRT
Price: $497 shipped
The 202P45 is only about $40 more than the 1100DF and its performance is nothing short of outstanding. The 202P45 has features like a max resolution of 2048x1536 @ 80Hz (1600x1200 @ 85Hz) and a 0.25mm dot pitch aperture grille. The aperture grille is what makes this monitor particularly special. Going by its word for word definition, the aperture grille is a series of vertical wires stretched vertically down the inside of a CRT to mask the beams from the electron guns at the back of the tube. What the 202P45's flat aperture grille essentially does is help to minimize the geometric distortion that users will see on increasingly larger screens, like this 22" monitor. With this feature, the 202P45 is basically able to display a more precise and accurate picture with sharp overall text clarity compared to monitors without flat aperture grille technology. Because of this feature, the 202P45 is truly one of the best 22" monitors on the market that doesn't force you to take out a second mortgage on the house.
Computer Case
Recommendation: Kingwin K11 Aluminum ATX casePrice: $70 shipped
Kingwin makes a great aluminum computer case, dubbed their K11 series. Even with all your components installed, the case is still relatively light, even light enough to carry to a LAN party or bring it over to your friend's or family's house. It comes with four 5.25" bays, two external 3.5" bays and five internal 3.5" bays, four USB 2.0 ports, and one Audio, Mic, FireWire port. There are two front fans, one rear fan, and one top fan included as well. As we just suggested, a 360W Enlight power supply is recommended for a system that draws as much power as this one.
For a power supply, we suggest Antec's 400W PSU (SL400) for $55 shipped. It provides stable voltages, a good warranty, fairly quiet operation, low operating temperature, and in general, is reliable and trusted among enthusiasts. Truth be told, a quality 350W or even 300W power supply may do the job just as well, but since the price difference is minimal at best and because this system draws a large amount of power anyway (3400+, 9800 Pro, etc.), you might as well not leave anything to chance.
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.
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Jeff7181 - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
I agree with #6... Raptor should definately been the primary choice, ALONG WITH the 120, or possibly a 200 or 250 GB 7200 RPM SATA drive for storage.Sheesh... what were you thinking, Evan? Seriously, what's your reasoning?
Based on this...
"If you can't live with a 36.7GB or 74GB drive, then we suggest that you simply skip this alternative and stick with the recommended 1200JB. But that's only if storage capacity is very important to you."
... comment, it sounds like the Raptor should be your primary choice.
kherman - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
For high end systems, it would be nice to see keyboard/mouse recomendations even if it's only mentioned in passing.Locutus4657 - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
After reading a bit more I'm really woundering about some of your choices... A 120GB hard drive for a high end system? I was going to go 160 the midrange system I'm planning to build. Other than that and the MB most everything else looks ok.Locutus4657 - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
I keep being dissapointed that they never seen the recommend the Chaintech ZNF3-150. It's the only A64 Motherboard I've seen with a 6 in 1 card reader and front Firewire and USB 2.0 connectors. I would (and will) spend a bit more for these features, espeacially if we're talking high end.PrinceGaz - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
CPU, mobo, memory, yeah they all sound good to me.The 9800Pro for $206 sounds good too, but the alternative of a 9800XT with its $412 price-tag coming in exactly twice as expensive as the 9800Pro for the marginal performance increase it may offer isn't money well spent by my book.
I don't know how much the current models cost so maybe they're somewhat more expensive than the two you listed, but the NEC/Mitsubishi Diamond Pro monitors are considered among the best available today. The 22" (20" visible) DiamondPro 2070SB I have is over a year old but is capable of 85hz at 2048x1536, or more usefully gives a solid picture at 100hz at 1600x1200 (could do 110hz if desired but not much point). They're trinitron (aperture-grill) type monitors just like that recommended Philips one.
A non-Creative high-end sound-card solution would be a good idea given how some people aren't only interested in games.
Nighteye2 - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
Why isn't the build-in RAID controller used? I imagine in a high-end system faster load times will be much appreciated. Also, 2 WD 1200JB disk in RAID 0 will be faster then the raptor, overall, and cheaper as well.SHO235V8 - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
I just wish you could give us more "guidance" on the launch schedules for the "exciting" new products. I am anxiously awaiting the new ATI cards and the 939 Athlons for my new high end PC. Do NDA's preclude you from talking about them. Although video game launches change, at least they give one a target date to count down... ;) With hardware the product is just simply available by the time we see its review on AT! Thanks for bringing the guides back, and I agree that you should pick a LCD monitor for each price point as well.StickyC - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
This is the 2nd or 3rd 'high-end' guide that recommends going SATA, but not RAID. Why not? I'd think that since the HD is still one of the bigger bottlenecks, going the RAID route would be a given.I was under the impression that most SATA "RAID" setups aren't very optimized at using both SATA channels at once and that two SATA channels can easily saturate the PCI bus, so a motherboard solution is the way to go?
Two 36gb Raptors should be plenty for just about any system. There are very few non-specialized situations where you'd need that fast an access to >70gb of data at once. More than that is likely archival storage (video/music playback) and can/should be handled by external large capacity drives.
Pumpkinierre - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
At the Prescott launch, the P4E was supposed to be priced the same as the P4c Northwood. But in your price guide, the 3.4E is $80 more than the 3.4c (and similarly for the 3.2). This wasnt mentioned in your text but would definitely make the Northwood the better choice as performance of this cpu is at least on a par with the prescott.I would have expected the price to be the other way round given the heat reputation of these cpus and the fact that DELL have'nt to my knowledge released systems supporting this core. Perhaps its production problems, I've heard some articles refer to the scarcity of P4Es on the market.
Evan Lieb - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
Hooligan2, there’s no noticeable difference between a PowerColor and ATI 9800 Pro in performance. I wouldn’t stress about it.cK-Gunslinger, thanks, its been fixed.
thatsright, not sure what’s prompted you to say that. Is there any product I’ve listed that you would disagree with based on your own experience and testing?
Brickster, glad you’re happy. I love that monitor myself. :D
ceefka, any reason you don’t like the Audigy 2?
srue, as we mentioned a couple times in this guide, we wanted to bring the price down a little from the previous guide, which was over $2200. Our goal was never to be between $1000 and $5000.
Swylen, a 3000+ runs 200MHz slower and has half the L2 cache.
Hooligan2, yup, I wouldn’t disagree with you there. We just didn’t want to cut down the system TOO much.
WooDaddy, agreed, but $250 is simply unreasonable for a keyboard and mouse combo.