High End Buyer's Guide - September 2004
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2004 12:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Hard Drives
Recommended: Dual Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATAPrice: $356 shipped
As Anand found in his first review with the new storage benchmarking system, there is Western Digital Raptor and there is everything else. It is hard to argue with the choice of the top Raptor drives in a system geared to get the most possible from your computer.
The problem with the top Raptor drives is that they are still relatively small as hard drives go, so we are recommending two drives in a RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD, or just plain 2-drive setup. Anand has shown that there is little performance advantage to RAID 0, but striping is still useful for improving boot times. It can improve performance in multi-tasking situations, which are admittedly rare on the desktop. RAID 1, on the other hand, is useful in protecting against hard drive failure, which is always a risk when pushing a system to its limits with overclockers. Frankly, many overclockers keep a second hard drive with known good images to restore hard drives that end up in data corruption in overclocking attempts, which is another great use for the second Raptor hard drive.
The storage capacity for two 74GB WD Raptor drives is a rational 148GB of fast access storage. Compared to SCSI RAID solutions with similar performance, the 2 Raptors are a virtual bargain. The 74GB Raptors have double the storage of the legendary 36.7GB Raptors, an increase in speed, and the same 8MB buffer. We are also pleased to see a price drop in the 74GB Raptors of almost $20 for the pair this month.
The 5-year warranty for the Raptor drives makes this investment in high-speed storage a little easier to handle. All Drives will fail at some point because they have moving parts, but you have warranty reassurance for 5 years that attest to the quality of these WD Raptor hard drives. Previously, 10,000RPM speeds or a 5-year warranty were features only found on enterprise/SCSI drives, but they have now reached our high-end system desktop.
Alternative: Seagate ST3200822AS (200GB) Baracuda SATA 7200RPM (8MB cache)
Price: $129 shipped
While 7200RPM drives, including our alternative Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA, are not as fast as the Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM SATA drives, they are still plenty fast for most applications. Seagate offers the same 8MB cache as the Raptor drives and very large 200GB storage capacity for a small $130 price. While the well-known Seagate drives offer impressive specifications, the most important feature of the Seagate 200GB is not something that you can see. With some hard drive manufacturers reducing warranties to one year, the Seagate 200GB now carries a 5-year manufacturers warranty.
If 200GB seems a massive amount of storage, it will be just what the doctor ordered for users of Digital Cameras, Digital Video, and digital music storage. With this Seagate delivering hard drive capacities at about 65 cents per Gigabyte, this drive also delivers excellent value.
We have moved our alternative recommendation from IDE to SATA for the simple reason that the new Intel 925X/915 chipset only provided one IDE connector for 2 devices, but 4 SATA connectors. If you plan to use the alternative drive selection for the Athlon 64 system, you can choose the same Seagate as an IDE model for just $119 including shipping.
We see no real reason to recommend a SATA drive over IDE unless there are features like speed or RAID or NCQ or connectors that make the SATA a better choice. There is also no reason not to choose SATA if you prefer the narrow cables, but please keep in mind that SATA connectors are still very fragile and more easily broken than the admittedly bulky, but durable, IDE connector.
Optical
Recommendation: Pioneer 108D 16X Dual Layer DVD+/-RWPrice: $97 shipped
The Pioneer 108D has become the new favorite at AnandTech as you will see in our upcoming review. Sporting 16X DVD + or - burn speeds, 4X Dual-Layer burn capabilities, and 4X DVD+/-RW writing, the 108D is certainly impressive on paper. It was just as impressive in the flesh, managing to take many of the test media to new high speeds in reliable writing. At just under $100, this is a truly remarkable DVD writer and an incredible value compared to the top DVD burners of just a few months ago.
While we have not yet tested the NEC 3500A, it is an almost identical drive with similar specs based on the same technology. The NEC does support slightly faster CD burn/read times (48X/48X vs 32X/40X) and it also supports bit-setting for those looking for that feature. If the NEC performs as well in our burn tests as the Pioneer performed, it will become our recommended drive at a price that is a few dollars cheaper.
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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Wesley Fink - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#17 -Thanks for the info on Apple's updated interface. While I agree the picture on the Dell is a bit gainy with smearing on analog, I have found the 2001FP to be outstanding on DVI. With this size flat panel I assumed no one would run anything but digital input.
Hikari - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
On the Apple displays and ADC. That is no longer true, they use DVI now.There is some new 23" HP that is based on the same panel as the Apple, and I think it is a better deal. Although the Apple is prettier. ;)
danidentity - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Few mistakes I'd like to point out:Page 3, CPU and Motherboard Alternatives:
"When Socket 775 was launched a few weeks ago, it did not appear that any of the new 925X/915 motherboards would ever become a recommended Overclockers board."
***Socket 775 was launched two months ago, not several weeks ago. Looks like a copy/paste mistake.
Page 6, AGP Video:
"We ended up relaxing our rules by including the Gigabyte 6800 Ultra because several vendors are showing availability in the first 2 weeks of July."
***July??? This is August, almost September.
JonathanYoung - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
kherman,Who's complaining about advertisements? That realtime pricing engine is hardly an advertisement... it's a long list of prices and vendors in plain text and zero differentiation between vendors. Again, that's hardly an advertisement.
I'd read AT's disclaimer on the subject if I were you, particularly the following lines:
"We select vendors to appear in our Price Guides based on two requirements: solid consumer feedback and having the lowest possible pricing."
"AnandTech does not sell positions on the Price Guide."
Note the "We select" and "AnandTech does not sell positions."
Sincerely,
"#5"
Aelius - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Actually I own a brand new Apple 20" Aluminum Cinema Display. Dispite the site telling you that it can take a month to ship one to you I got mine in 4 days.The stand is increadibly solid. No way to simply knock it over. It's gota be solid metal and most of the weight of the monitor comes from the stand.
It's very light at around 7 1/2 lbs.
It's not dinky at all. You can adjust the way the monitor points up and down and it stays the way you leave it. That part is also very solid.
There are no vents anywhere because the power brick is not built-in and the entire casing is made out of aluminum which absorbs the heat so the top gets fairly warm to the touch after long use.
The whole thing is increadibly high quality.
A cool feature of the monitor is that you can adjust the backlight through a + and - touch pad on the right side and the power button is also a touch pad found on the right.
Far as I know the Apple's come with very few dead or stuck pixles but mine came with 3 dead and 2 stuck blue pixles. Honestly I can't even notice even when I look for it unless it's a black background.
It's so sharp and bright that it makes my old Viewsonic PF CRT look like an ancient wreck.
Is it expansive? Oh God yeah and it's worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.
P.S. There seems to be a quality control issue with 23" displays but mine seems fine and couldn't find any issues with it that others reported on the 23" ones.
Any questions just PM me as I won't monitor this page.
ksherman - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#17- agreed, and according to apple, have a response time of 16ms, so maybe it is worth doing a review of, even though it is several hundred dollars more... and is it just me, or does the stand on the apple display seem like it not be able to support the screen?shuttleboi - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#9: your information is outdated. Apple introduced new monitors a few months ago that have DVI. Check their website. Their new 20" LCD is selling for $1299, which is in line with the equivalent Samsung and Planar models. From what I've read, the Dell 2001fp is extremely grainy with a crosshatch pattern on the screen, so I'm avoiding that.behemoth68 - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
I Just put a BFG 6800 ultra into my system and am currently using an antec true power 480 and you seriously need the antec true power 550 especially since its only 20 more online its the smart move my system voltage was fluctuating a little at 480 but i put the 550 in and it worked great!phray - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
about the price engine thingy:i agree with kherman on this. if you want this site to stay free, get used to it.
if you don't like scrolling down all that much, try pressing the 'End' key on your keyboard.
SMOG - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Great article, I continually am impressed by the quality of the articles here, and find the buyer's guides particularly helpful.I did find one strange comment in the artical,
"We ended up relaxing our rules by including the Gigabyte 6800 Ultra because several vendors are showing availability in the first 2 weeks of July." Are these cards still hard to find? (quick search told me that both Newegg and ZipZoomFly had some in stock, but were sold out on many brands)
Thanks,
SMOG