Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - July 2004
by Evan Lieb on July 16, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Networking
Recommendation: Onboard networkingPrice: $0
Nothing more than onboard networking is needed for a mid-range system like the one we're building today. However, a nice additional feature that the MSI K8N Neo Platinum and ASUS P4P800 Deluxe brings (in case you want to purchase our alternative), in terms of networking, is its onboard Gigabit controller, capable of 10/100/1000 transfer speeds. The K8N Neo Platinum's use of the nForce3 250Gb allows it to perform especially well in these GbE situations. GbE isn't going to change your experience on the Internet, but Gigabit is very useful for transferring large amounts of data to and from multiple networked computers in, for example, an office or within a family of computers. Some will find the addition of Gigabit very useful for this purpose, while most will just stick to utilizing just the 10/100 capability.
Storage
Recommendation: Seagate 120GB 7200RPM (8MB cache) ATAPrice: $85 shipped
Seagate's Barracuda series is renown for their quiet operation and silent seeking (that grinding sound coming from your case). We are finally recommending Seagate drives because we've seen continued requests for emphasis on silent operation from entry level, mid-range, etc. users over the last few months, and are now convinced that there is enough demand for this type of capability.
Anyway, the additional capacity that you get with a 120GB drive over the 80GB drive, which we recommended as our first choice, can be exceedingly useful if you're someone who stores endless emails in Outlook, plays lots of games, listens to lots of MP3's, or simply needs additional space for the next 12 or more months down the road. However, 120GB is mostly excessive if you're the only person using your computer. Though, this may not be the case if you have family or friends consistently storing information on this system.
Alternative: Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA
Price: $117 shipped
We're listing a WD Raptor as an alternative purely for speed purposes. Those looking for faster load times and a generally snappier experience will want to play with a powerful drive such as this one. Thankfully, the earlier speed flaws with the 36.7GB were fixed, and WD 36.7GB drives with identical performance to their older 74GB brothers have been shipping for some months now.
Optical Storage
Recommendation: Lite-On 52x32x52x16 Combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drivePrice: $42 shipped
If you want to be able to watch DVDs, you can always opt for a combo drive. Its function essentially integrates CD burning and DVD watching into a single unit. The added benefit that you're getting is a better price for this type of combo versus purchasing an additional drive. However, the price difference isn't all that huge ($20 or so) if you were to buy a separate drive, plus that second drive would allow you to watch DVDs while you burn CDs, which isn't possible with the combo drive. This drive also comes with the nice added bonus of Lite-On's "Smart-Burn", which essentially protects for buffer under run. In the end, the decision is up to you as to how you want to configure your optical storage.
Alternative: NuTech DDW-082 8X DVD+/-RW
Price: $67 shipped
For a few months there, NEC's 2500A was a pretty hot buy for those who wanted a sort of cheap stopgap between today's 8X DVD+/-RW technology and tomorrow's 16X DVD+/-RW technology. No worries, simple, cheap. But the DDW-082 has sort of taken over that spot, especially at the tender price of just $67. So, today, we choose NuTech's DDW-082 8X DVD burner. We did an extensive roundup of 8X DVD burners just a couple months ago, and concluded that the DDW-082 was the best burner of the bunch. We suggest that you read up on this roundup to learn more about modern day DVD burners. Here's an excerpt regarding the DDW-082:
Incredibly, this drive went from one of our worst performers to our best performer with simple firmware upgrades. Another great feature of this drive is the supported 8X write strategies on 4X media. The fact that this drive is also the cheapest drive in our roundup makes NuTech's DDW-082 a true underdog champion. The DDW-082 deserves our editor's choice award for this roundup.
12X DVD-RW drives are just now starting to hit the market in quantity. However, the price and availability of 12X media is underwhelming at best, and therefore certainly not worth any recognition in our Buyer's Guides just yet.
We'd also suggest reading this article for more information on all of this technology.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on storage 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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Pollock - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
Unless I'm mistaken, that's not a picture of the Antec BQE, but rather a slightly different Antec case.http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
Of course, Newegg could also have the pictures wrong, I just don't feel like looking anywhere else.
jediknight - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
#4:Chances are, if you upgrade to a dual channel (I'll assume within 2 years):
a) Your DDR memory will be obsolete - everything will be DDR2 or it's successor
b) 512MB of RAM will not be enough, even for an entry level system
Best to recommend a single 512MB stick, IMO.. gives you room to upgrade.
nullpointerus - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
Just got done building a new PC to act as a home video server + console emulator, and I have a few recommendations:NewEgg.com
-- Aspire cases ~$55 shipped, very nice for the price
-- Geil 512MB PC3200 6-3-3-2.5 for ~$82 shipped
eBay
-- Radeon 9700 Pro $132 shipped (have to be somewhat lucky)
Also, why recommend a PATA drive when SATA drives tend to create less clutter and perform a bit better? I really wouldn't recommend a raptor for a new mid-range system - games have multigigabyte installs these days, and then you need space for music, CDs, movies. IMO it's better for load times to rip your game CDs to a ~3x larger hard drive.
crimson117 - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
The Casedge TS1 is NOT $40 shipped at pcclub. It's $20 shipping to New York and $11 tax/shipping to California.ir0nw0lf - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
PrinceGaz, this is a mid-range system, 1 GB of RAM is overkill for this. 512 MB in a single stick would be ideal here.PrinceGaz - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
Generally very good recommendations I'd agree with, and the first choice of hard-drive (120GB Seagate) is an improvement over a noisy 80GB WD.However, the choice of memory is still poor. 512MB isn't enough for this sort of system so you have to go for 1GB (2x 512MB modules). Only the high-end system should be using considerably more expensive low-latency modules as they don't offer enough extra performance to justify the increase in price over regular memory. I know it must be tempting after reading all the memory reviews on AT to go with the best memory available, but it offers only a very small real-world performance increase that doesn't justify the much higher price. Go with 2x 512MB sticks of regular brand-name memory (not cheap and nasty no-name memory).
Even if you do only want 512MB for some reason, you should get a single 512MB stick if you're building the AMD system as the K8N Neo Platinum (like most S754 AMD boards) only has three DIMM slots. You certainly don't want to limit your future upgrade options by filling two of them with 256MB sticks.
Apart from the memory suggestions, an excellent guide.
kherman - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I hope that 3D card you recomended can play Doom!Then again, people can always upgrade on their own.
Degrador - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I'd have to agree with the memory thing. Time and time again we're shown that the benefit of low latency memory is relatively little, especially considering the premium you pay for it. I always suggest to people buying computers that for the extra cost of low latency, you'd be better off either doubling the ram to 1GB, or upgrading the video card, or getting a faster processor - whatever, all of these will give better performance than low latency memory ever will.Also getting 2 sticks of 256MB is as mentioned relatively pointless. A mid-range user is not likely to upgrade anytime soon, meaning either they'll want DDR2 when they do, or they'll want more than 512MB memory. Perhaps if this was an overclocking system, or a high-end, then you could consider them upgrading in future, and what will benefit then. But certainly not for midrange.
StormGod - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I will continue to ask AT to assemble these systems and run some benchmarks on them.mino - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
#4 Evan,You are wrong with that assumption about memory.
If anyone wanted to upgrade, from this setup to dual, then it makes much more sense to buy another 512 module also, since anyway CPU and MB will have to be replaced.
256 module as it stands now, are just for office comps (w/256M) or when someone doesn't have left money for 512 module and plans to buy one in the near future.
For Combo I will also opt for Toshiba parts rather than LiteOn's.
Overal, except this little nonsense, pretty good guide.