Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - April 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 22, 2004 7:00 AM 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 better gaming sound quality is worth it to you, then we suggest going this route.
Speakers
Recommendation: Logitech Z640 5.1 speakersPrice: $60 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.
Alternative: Logitech Z-5300 THX Certified 5.1 speaker
Price: $148 shipped
The Z-5300 is, more or less, the more powerful version of Logitech's more successful brother, the Z-640. Besides obviously supporting 5.1 channels of sound, the Z-5300 is able to boast such features as a 100W subwoofer and a greater than 85 dB signal to noise ratio. The surround sound gaming and movie experience is tremendous, paired with a good Audigy 2 sound card. These speakers can get impressively loud and best of all, we didn't encounter any sort of crackling or distortion as volume was turned up to excruciating levels. For the price, these speakers are almost as unbeatable as the Z-640's, though not quite the bargain considering the $88 price delta in favor of the Z-640. Still, the Z-5300's are a good "power" upgrade, so to speak.
If, for whatever reason, you're not interested in high-end sound and will be gaming or watching movies mostly with your headphones on, obviously an expensive surround sound system will be pretty useless. If that's the case, you may just want to opt for 2.0 or 2.1 speakers, such as the ones recommended in our Entry Level Guide. However, if you have to choose between a good sound card and a good speaker system, we suggest that you go with the speaker system.
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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GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
some how I posted twice. interesting. sorry.GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
9- WTF did you just copy and paste a newegg site? You think you could have at least edited so it would not take nearly that room. And we dont need anything past the total like the shipping info and other links.GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
9- WTF did you just copy and paste a newegg site? You think you could have at least edited so it would not take nearly that room. And we dont need anything past the total like the shipping info and other links.Fr0zeN2 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
With the recent post of AOpen's nforce2 board with an agp/pci lock that works, I was pretty confident that I'd see the a64 2800+ here somewhere. Sure the half-meg cache hurts, but it can't hurt beyond the 200mhz premium that AMD has put on the upcomin Newcastle (also with half a meg), which you can compensate for by OCing anyway. Sure, the XP 2800+ is half the price, but it's also half the performance =/jensend - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
7- Motherboards these days are generally good for at most one cpu generation (if they don't get cut off in the middle of the generation because newer processors with the same core require a higher bus speed).Trying to organize the guides around tasks rather than performance/budget level would be counterproductive for two reasons:
1. Half of those tasks are undemanding enough that few noticeable differences can be seen between most machines of the past 6 years.
2. In the range of machines these guides look at there are very few ways in which task-specific performance deviates from overall system performance enough to make a noticeable difference, and most of them are obvious (eg the importance of graphics cards for gaming tasks).
wolverinski - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
Hey DIYs,
for one thousand shipped to the door. Matching colors (beige), Antec case (two fans and 350W PS), faster performance than a nForce2/Athlon system, great overclocking potential and future HT upgrade. Don't hear much about the 865P dual channel chipset. For the price hard to beat!
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ANTEC Performance Series II Mid Tower Case With 350W Power Supply, Model "SX835II" -RETAIL
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ASUS 865P Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU, Model "P4P8X SE" -RETAIL
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Logitech Z640 5.1 Speakers -RETAIL
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SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9600PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "ATLANTIS RADEON 9600PRO" -RETAIL
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lupis42 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
While I personally am a computer enthusiast, and gamer, I am also a broke student, and so I tend to try and get 18 months worth of gaming performance out of a system, and I rarely have to put out any mony for displays, kb&mouse, speakers, etc. I've so far managed to get a good track record in gaming performance by spending 1800$, once every 2 to 3 years, but my last effort was slightly mistimed, and stuff is starting to kill my current gaming rig. Ergo, I was wondering, can we get a proposed system for gamers looking to maximize their time in the sweet spot, that is, not overkill hardware when they buy it, but that remains sufficient for over a year?Also, given that I still manage email, browsing, etc with no noticable difficulty from an 800Mhz Athalon, and that the only upgrades it has recieved in its 4 year life are 256MB of RAM, and an old 4 gig HD when it's origional (40 gig) died, I wonder what might be found that could replace this system for comparable performance, but with minimal power requirements, and as little waste heat, noise, and wasted space as possible, cheaply. The need for newer and faster hardware to run MS Word on is rediculous. Why not newer more efficient hardware instead?
I seem to have made this alot longer than I intended to, so ill go ahead and throw in the gist here:
Firstly, how about giving an estimate of a guide systems usable life, and what it will be usable for across that time?
Secondly, given that the midrange system seems to be underkill for gaming even 6 months from now, and is kinda overkill for desktop work, and not designed around workstation requirements, what is it for? For that matter, the high end machine also seems to be so totally generic that it's not incredibly useful. More specialized guides might be a better handle on this issue, for example, Budget guide, Gamers guide, Overclocking guide, Multimeda guide, or something. Since I suspect that end uses have a higher impact on most Anand readers than pure performance anyway, when they go to build systems.
aerobook2002 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
I suggest you include comments in your systems’ buyer’s guides regarding the system’s upgrade-ability. I personally am interested to know if the recommended motherboards will operate the next generation of CPU’s. So 2-3 years from now when the P4 EE is ~$200 instead of ~$800(?) will my mother board run it? I.E., the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe runs the P4 Northwood and Prescott but will it run the Extreme Edition or whatever is next? Dito for the AMD products (will the AN7 board run the Athlon 64 CPU?). I realize I may have to upgrade other hardware as well, like the RAM.Additionally, it would be informative to state what the systems would be best suited for, i.e. surfing & e-mail, office application, moderate gaming, video editing (what I’m interested in), etc. Or maybe you could just orient the system for a specific task i.e. video editing, gaming, office application, e-mail, etc.
I am enjoying the ‘Systems Buyers Guides” very much, keep up the good work.
skiboysteve - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
i concur with 5Corsairpro - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
#4You obviously don't have budget constraints then. To me low end is free - $400, mid is $400-1000, performance is 1000-1500, and overkill is 1500+
There are infact computer enthusiasts who are poor.