Buyer's Guide: High End System - July 2004
by Wesley Fink on June 30, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
High End System Summary
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| CPU & Cooling | AMD Athlon 64 FX53 Socket 939 Retail | $829 |
| Motherboard | MSI K8N Neo2 (nForce3 Ultra) Socket 939 | $170 |
| Memory | 1GB (2 X 512MB) OCZ PC3700 EB | $340 |
| Video Card | 256MB NVidia 6800 Ultra | $539 |
| Monitor | NEC/Mitsubishi FP2141SB 22" Diamondtron CRT | $669 |
| Computer Case | Coolermaster Praetorian (PAC-T01-E1) Silver plus 480W Antec True Power PSU |
$195 |
| Sound Card | Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 Retail | $83 |
| Speakers | Klipsch Pro Media Ultra 5.1 | $349 |
| Networking | Onboard 10/100/1000 Ethernet | $0 |
| Hard Drive | 2 x 74GB Western Digital 74GB Raptor 10,000RPM SATA RAID (148MB Total) |
$376 |
| DVD/CD-RW | NuTech DDW-081 8X DVD+/-R/RW | $65 |
| Bottom Line | $3615 | |
$3615 is the final price of our high end system this week, not including any money that you'll spend on software (Windows XP Professional or Home, Office, Photoshop, etc.) or a keyboard and mouse. While this is about $600 more than our last High End Buyer's Guide, we have significantly upgraded our monitor with a 22" NEC/Mitsubishi, video card with a 6800 Ultra, power supply to 480W, and speakers to Klipsch Pro Media. Many of you have suggested that we choose the best in these areas and we are happy to accommodate you. We have also made the transition to Socket 939 Athlon 64 and the top Socket 939 processor in the FX53.
$3600 is not pocket change, but we do believe that you will get a heck of a high end system for this $3600!! We've strained a bit to include the latest High End video from nVidia and ATI and Socket 939 instead of Socket 940, so you will likely see some price decreases in both these areas as these components become more readily available. There are also flat-panel options at near the same price as the 22" CRT for those short on space, in addition to the $1200 21.3" flat-panel. You can spend a bit more at every price point, but we really don't believe that you will gain much, if anything, in performance.
Our alternatives also allow you to customize the High End System to your needs. You can reach $4000 with a 21.3" flat-panel and Home-Studio Audio if those options excite you. You can also lower the total price by selecting our alternates and other suggested components. For example, the cost can be reduced to about $2000 with a recommended cheaper processor, a $300 6800 instead of a $539 6800 Ultra, a cheaper 21" monitor, a 200GB Hard Drive instead of the SATA RAID, and on-board Audio with cheaper speakers. That gives a pretty broad range for a High End Buyer's Guide of $2000 to $4000, but we would consider any of the systems using our recommended components in this guide to be high end. The lower end just leans more to value while the highest $4000 leans more to the best that you can buy for some specific needs.
With the next generation 6800 Ultra, the fastest FX53 Socket 939 on the outstanding MSI K8N Neo2 motherboard, and the fastest 10,000RPM Raid Array, our High End System is the fastest desktop system that you can buy today, period. You can save a lot of money by choosing slightly slower processors or components just below the High End, but if you want the best-performing desktop system that you can buy, you will be hard-pressed to do better than our recommendations in this High End Buyer's Guide. Nest month, we will have a better feel of where the new Intel system (based on LGA 775) will fit in our High End Buyer's Guides. We know that the FX53 is still the fastest processor, but we still do not have a good feel for the price/performance and value that we will really see with the new 925X systems. There are many features on the Intel platforms that could make them attractive in a High End system.
Take a close look at the High End Socket 939 FX53 system, sharpen your pencil, and build the system. Please let us know what you think in the comments section.
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kd4yum - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
Well! I guess so!regarding comment 28....
Now wait a minute. Why would RAID 0 cut the MTBF in half? Is this dice we are rolling?
Probably, the splay of i/o across mult disks would relax the work on the actuator arms.
'specially if 'elevator queueing' is active.
And don't forget about reduced fragmentation.
No, I think you'd get your 100K hours with either RAID 0 or RAID 1. It would just hirt more with RAID 0. my $0.02
kd4yum - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
Let's see. Do I still have a valid uname and passwd? uhhhthe5thgeek - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
Ok my bad, it is not on the U.S. version of the msi web site. thanks!Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
#32 -The board is definitely on MSI's web bite at http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/download/dld...It even has BIOS and drivers posted. MSI assured us the board would be available beginning last week, so it should be available very soon.
#33 - There will be an Overclocking Guide later this month. With all of the massive changes in Sockets, Chipsets, and Hardware, we decided to delay the overclocking guide until the new hardware was released and could be tested.
lazerasa - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link
what happened to the overclock system buyers guide? there hasn't been one in 3 months...?the5thgeek - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link
Why are you recomending a motherboard that does not exist? (at least for us poor mortals that must deal in the real world[that board is not even on MSI's web site, much less available retail])warath - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
I find it funny that in one article you recommend RAID-0, and in another, you say NOT EVEN Close to worth it :P :) Make up your minds Anandtech!TrogdorJW - Thursday, July 1, 2004 - link
Regarding RAID 0, it really isn't as "useless" as the other article portrays, depending on what you do with it. If you only play games and surf the web, then it certainly isn't that big of a deal. If you routinely copy files around on your hard drive (i.e. either compressing or extracting from archives), or in compiling code, there is a somewhat noticeable improvement in speed. There is also a definite improvement in performance when multitasking with a hard-drive intense operation running in the background. For example, try copying a file from one drive to another drive while surfing the web with and without RAID 0. It's something I do periodically, and I definitely notice an improvement. Video editing definitely benefits from the added hard drive performance.Maybe it's not worth the extra cost, but I really don't like dealing with three hard drive letters much. I have one drive setup as my C: drive, and then two drives striped as drive D:. So I have a 320 GB D: partition and a 120 GB C: partition. The cost of the D: partition was about $230 - only slightly more than a single 74 GB Raptor. Of course, I don't store any critical files on the RAID 0 array - it's all stuff that I would only be moderately irritated at having to reinstall.
Z80 - Thursday, July 1, 2004 - link
Regarding the MSI motherboard recommendation:"A hardware and software service company from Vermont filed a legal class-action suit against Microstar International accusing one of the leading mainboard makers in the world of intentionally using low-quality components on its mainboards. A report from Reuters claims that the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday by Electronic Connection Services Corporation claims that MSI has knowingly used capacitors, devices used to regulate the power supply to microchips, that can leak or even explode and cause mainboards to short-circuit. The suit, which seeks to cover any person or company in the United States who has made a wholesale or retail purchase of an MSI mainboard since 1999, seeks unspecified damages and restitution and other relief."
I wonder if I can get any money back for those two crappy MSI MB's I got stuck with!
qooleot - Thursday, July 1, 2004 - link
Ya..I was gonna say the same thing...In one article today you guys write:
If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.
And in another article:
Recommended: Dual Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA in RAID 0 Configuration
I guess you guys haven't gotten the hint by now...