High End Buyer's Guide - September 2004
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2004 12:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Computer Case
Recommendation: Coolermaster Praetorian (PAC-T01-E1) SilverPrice: $114 shipped
While there are cheaper Coolermaster cases with Aluminum fronts and steel bodies, the Coolermaster All-Aluminum cases are still some of the best for build-quality that you will find anywhere. The Praetorian is a classic Coolermaster Aluminum mid-tower case with 10 drive bays - 4 hidden and 6 front accessible. Coolermaster still includes four additional fans for heat dissipation - 2 front fans, a top fan, and a rear exhaust fan. Due to the popularity of the case, we have also seen a decent $16 price drop in the past month.
There is also a sliding panel on the front protecting a great selection of essential front ports - 2 USB, firewire, headphone and mic. You will also find a handy removable motherboard tray for easier mounting and the case is a tool-less design for easy assembly. The build quality of the Coolermaster is superb, and the reinforced chassis makes the Praetorian stronger than most aluminum cases.
Power Supply
Recommendation: Antec True Power 480WPrice: $89 shipped
The new high-end video cards have even higher power requirements, so we have "upped" our recommendation a bit to Antec's True Power 480W PSU for $85 shipped. The Antec True Power series provides very consistent power to the rails and has performed very well in AnandTech power supply roundups. It provides extremely stable voltages, a good warranty, quiet operation, low operating temperature, and is a tried and true Power supply. The True Power series, in particular, is one of the most trusted power supplies among enthusiasts. While a good quality 350W or 400W power supply might do the job for processors and video cards just below the high-end, you will have the comfort of some reserve for the ever more power hungry processors and video cards. You will also enjoy rock solid stability with the top FX53 Athlon 64 combined with the power-hungry nVidia 6800 Ultra.
Alternative: Antec 480 watt 120mm fan ATX 12V v2.0 Model 'NeoPower'
Price: $124 shipped
The new Socket T boards include a 24-pin ATX power connector instead of the familiar 20-pin ATX on most current boards. While you can use a 20-pin connection in a pinch, the best choice for a new LGA 775 system is a power supply that complies with the ATX V 2.0 that specifies a 24-pin ATX connector. These power supplies are starting to appear in the market, but are still difficult to find. The Antec V2.0 Neopower is an ATX 2.0 480-watt power supply that provides the best of both worlds - a native 24-pin ATX connector plus a 24-to-20 pin adapter for other boards.
The Neopower 480 also provides customizable power leads to reduce case clutter and has quickly developed a reputation for quiet operation. This makes the Antec a good choice for either a top Athlon 64 system or an LGA 775 P4 system.
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
mcveigh - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
what about for a storage drive the new maxtors with 16mb cache and TCQ features?didn't Anand hint a little while ago there would be a review of them ?
of course now he has a wife to keep happy....there goes the place! ;)
Booty - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Just agreeing about the price engine thing - scrolling that far is pretty annoying. If they have to have it that way to earn money and keep the site free, so be it... but if not, I know I'd definitely appreciate it being moved.PrinceGaz - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Good article, I couldn't really fault any of the suggestions this time :) The only things that might be worth considering as this is a high end system is spending an extra $200-300 and throwing in 2GB of memory, either as 2x1GB sticks if they are just as fast, else as 4x512MB. As I do a bit video capturing and editing, and like many broadband users fill a lot of space quickly (don't ask), I'd definitely go for the Maxtor 300MB drive with 16MB cache for $260. Both of those are only minor points though and overall I agree with the suggestions.One thing I've been thinking about for a few days now are dual Opteron systems. A couple of Opteron 250's on a suitable dual S940 mobo would only cost about $1000 more than the FX53 system and mobo. Alternatively a couple of 248's will lower the differential to around $600.
The important thing is that multi-threaded apps are becoming increasingly common because of HT, and next year when dual core CPUs start appearing it'll be normal for any CPU heavy application to be multi-threaded so as to take full advantage of them. I know you could always replace the FX53 with a dual-core Toledo next year, but why wait for the extra performance when you can get it today with a couple of 250's (and the 250's could be replaced with dual-core Italy's next year giving even more power if desired).
The extra thousand dollars is a roughly 30% total price increase and is not insignificant, but you'll get considerably more than 30% performance improvement with any multi-threaded CPU heavy application, so its money well spent. In fact its hard not to recommend it as the high end choice as its still comes in under the $5000 limit.
iversonyin - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
i would rather have dual dell 2001 then 23" apple23" apple is nice but also come with a steep price.
dont we all love dual-monitor here?
but if anyone can spend $3600 on a computer, what extras $2000 to them
Wesley Fink - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#3 - Typo corrected.I agree the Apple is a nice display, but Apple uses a proprietary Digital interface called ADC instead of the standard DVI Connector. Some enterprising manufacturers have developed some conversion connectors but the converter doesn't work with most nVidia video cards. In the end this is not a solution we could recommend right now.
There is also the cost difference, since the 20.1" Dell is about $800 and the 23" Apple is about $2000. A 260% price increase to go from a great 20.1" display to an Apple 23" display and converter seemed a bit much. There is also a 30" Apple Cinema display BTW.
Fr0zeN2 - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Great guide, but...Yeah, the pricing engine's been bugging me for a while now too. Honestly, there are sites like pricewatch.com that you can go to to view prices on these, as well as many other similar products. Especially when your listings include products that have absolutely no relevance to the one mentioned (helooo gf5950 prices?).
kherman - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#5This is a free site. If you like it that way, I'd get used to those advertisements.
-----------
Aside from that, 74 gig? If I made a "dream rig" yuo'd be seeing 400 GB+ in RAID 5 (3x200)
kherman - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Of course, for this rig, get the BFG 6800 UltraJonathanYoung - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
I just want to add a comment I've been wanting to make for awhile now... would you please add a link to the next page *above* the realtime pricing engine so that people who do not wish to view the pricing engine don't have to scroll alllllllll the way down just to get to the next page? This was especially bad on the "AGP Video" section of this guide. Thank you!shuttleboi - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Why hasn't Anandtech reviewed any 6800GT videocards???