Weekly Buyer's Guide: Entry Level System - July 2004
by Evan Lieb on July 7, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
CPU and Motherboard Recommendations
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ retail (heatsink and fan included)Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X-X (nForce2 400)
Price: CPU - $56 shipped. Motherboard - $68 shipped
The AMD Athlon XP 2000+ continues to be AnandTech's runaway favorite for Entry Level Systems month after month. We had favored the Athlon XP 1800+, but AMD decided to level off its prices on Athlon XP processors at the 2000+, so it only made sense for us to upgrade our recommendation from an 1800+ to a 2000+ with the negligible price difference. Both the Athlon XP 1800+ and the 2000+ are essentially identical to each other feature-wise, save for one important feature, their clock speed. The Athlon XP 2000+ operates at 1.67GHz while the 1800+ operates at 1.53GHz. As we mentioned countless times before, Athlon XP processors (particularly the entry level kind) offer excellent performance in today's business applications and games while being very light on the wallet. For $56, the Athlon XP 2000+ is as close to a steal as you can get, and of course, will satisfy even the cheapest of cheap systems. Any old CPU cooler should do with an Athlon XP 2000+, even if you buy the retail version that comes with cooling. But if you're looking for something quieter than retail cooling, we suggest mounting a Panaflo L1A fan to reduce noise. You should also try experimenting with your BIOS' speed fan control or even a separate Windows program to reduce noise.
Also, it doesn't hurt to read up on AnandTech's very own Budget CPU Shootout from last December for detailed information on how your Athlon XP 2000+ might perform. Keep in mind that the 2000+ isn't listed in our benchmark charts there, but you can still get a good idea of the performance of the 2000+ by approximating based on how their siblings perform. Though this shootout was published some months ago, the results are still very accurate and applicable to today's programs.
The ASUS A7N8X-X and its older derivatives have been a favorite among the editors here at AnandTech for quite some time, and continue to be a favorite to this day. We have written extensively on ASUS' nForce2 motherboards in the past, namely about their exceptional reliability, feature sets, and excellent price points. The performance that the nForce2 400 chipset brings to the ASUS A7N8X-X is an especially nice bonus considering the price tag, as this is basically the same chipset that you'll find in high end Socket A motherboards minus the dual channel DDR memory support, which is totally unnecessary for entry level user's needs. We've had lots of personal experience with this particular ASUS model, and simply put, we love this motherboard to death. Due to the type of chipset used with this motherboard, you will be able to upgrade to the best Athlon XP processors in the future, namely the 400MHz FSB kind.
All in all, we can't think of much that will go wrong with this motherboard, especially considering how mature BIOS support is at this stage in its long life. Some users who have experience with ASUS' older nForce1 motherboards will certainly adore the A7N8X-X.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on the AMD CPUs and motherboards from many different reputable vendors:
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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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.