Weekly Buyer's Guide: Entry Level System - July 2004
by Evan Lieb on July 7, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
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Currently, we are experimenting with our Buyer's Guides to see if we can improve on meeting the needs of a wider range of users, both in terms of the components that we recommend and the prices of those components. We will continue to produce guides for an Entry Level, Mid-Range, High End, and Overclocking system, and we will be adding SFF guides as well as perhaps some type of mobile-related guide to our arsenal. Let us know what you'd like to see in terms of component picks and price points in future guides by writing to us in our comments section, located at the bottom of the page.We are still going to continue to evaluate products like we have in all our other guides over the last few months. That is, for every component that goes into a computer, we offer our recommendation for a piece of hardware as well as our alternative on that type of hardware. We've added alternative hardware picks to our guides because it allows AnandTech to recommend a wider variety of hardware (especially for those willing to spend a little more than what we budget for a particular system). To be clear, alternative picks tell you just that - your alternatives, which in some cases will be better suited for your needs, and in other cases, will not be. But at the same time, we can still be assertive enough with a first place recommendation so that new buyers aren't indecisive or confused about what to purchase. Most of the prices listed for the hardware that we recommend can be found in our very own RealTime Pricing Engine. Any prices not found in our engine can be found on pricewatch.com. We list pertinent parts of our RealTime pricing engine at the bottom of every page of our Buyer's Guides so that you can choose the lowest prices from a large variety of vendors all by yourself.
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Z80 - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
Watch the Hot Deals forum and you can probably shave another $100 off the cost of this system as long as you don't mind hassling with rebates. I agree with Cocophone on using the Shuttle AN35N-Ultra instead of the Asus MB. It's $10 cheaper, supports dual channel memory and overclocks very well. Take that $10 and upgrade from an XP 2000 to an XP 2100, a proven overclocker's CPU.Cocophone - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
For a budget system why should I pick the Asus motherboard over a Shuttle AN35N-Ultra.Neither board has firewire.
I don't think a budget system would be overclocked, so alot of bios setting would not be used. I plan on dropping a 2000XP CPU and either 256 or 512 of ram and run with that.
computerfan - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
I can't wait for the overclocking and SFF guides. I just bought an Antec Aria, but haven't been able to find an amazing microATX mobo. I am very curious what you'd suggest. Something more high end that supports 400/400 MHz fsb dual channel.I'm actually thinking that with the SFF buyers guide, you'll need to make it low/mid range and then have the alternatives be for a high end SFF PC.
Keep up the good work
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
canadianfbiYou read our minds :) We will eventually have a SFF buyer's guide, but we're waiting to build up a few more SFF reviews before introducing it.
Take care,
Anand
canadianfbi - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
I'd like to add a vote for an SFF guide. The SFF system I want to build (with TV-out and possibly TV capture, using it as kind of a video/audio server for a home theater) is too specific to be in a guide I believe, but I'm sure there are plenty of people building SFF systems in general, and a guide would probably be especially helpful here given the relative newness of that area.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
The overclocker's guide is coming, but it won't be published until the end of July. We wanted to get to it sooner but we've got a couple of big motherboard roundups that have to be published first which unfortunately pushed that buyer's guide back to the end of the month.On the bright side, since it'll be published at the end of the month the overclocker's guide will be able to be even more up to date with its recommendations as more parts should be available by then.
Take care,
Anand
lazerasa - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
I vote we need another overclocker system guide ASAP!StormGod - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
I agree that these guides (especially the entry-level) are an excellent addition to AT but there is one very obvious omission from them. Specifically, a lack of actual benchmarking. We all know that AT has these parts being recommended on hand from previous reviews. Why not take the extra time to assemble both the primary and alternative recommended machines and run at least a small battery of benchmarks? Let us see first hand what spending $546 instead of the mid-level price means to real-world performance. At the very least, try it for a month and see what kind of response you get. I suspect that AT readers will overwhelmingly prefer to see actual performance data than to make a pick basically blindly.gimper48 - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
WHERE IS OUR OVERCLOCKER GUIDESU4EA - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
I built a system based on this guide a few months ago (interestingly enough, barely anything has changed in the guide) and am very happy with it... barring the borked WD harddrive which I had to get changed for a Seagate.
I love these guides btw .. I think Anandtech is doing a terriffic job on them. My only gripe is that we keep hearing about the new guides that will be included once the schedule is finalized etc, but for the past 2 months or so, all we've seen are the high-end, mid-range and entry-level guides.