Buyer's Guide - Entry Level, October 2004
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Optical Drives
Prices on optical drives have really bottomed out, and it is now possible to pick up a DVD burner with dual layer support for under $70. We do not feel that a budget system actually needs a DVD recorder, but the option is there should that sort of thing interest you. The only other thing worth mentioning is that you should make sure to get an optical drive that matches the front of your case. Since the two cases that we have selected are black (as you will see later in the guide), we went with black optical drives. Beige models of the same drives are also available.While you might be able to find a CD-ROM drive for less than half the cost of a CD-RW, we recommend that you "splurge" on the CD-RW for a couple reasons. First is that you never know when you might decide to start creating your own CDs, be they music, photo, or other content. Second, CD-R discs are extremely cheap and relatively fast, and they are far more reliable than floppy disks for storing data. Making periodic backups to a CD-R is relatively simply and painless, and each disc can hold a lot of data. There really is no reason not to get one.
Office CD-RW Recommendation: Lite-On SOHR-5238S 52x32x52x CD-RW
Price: $28 shipped
We have chosen to recommend a Lite-On CD-RW drive for this month's budget system. This change is not so much due to an inherent superiority of the Lite-On drive, but instead, it is meant as an alternative to previous recommendations. Nearly all current 52X CD-RW drives are within a few dollars of each other in price, and performance and reliability are all very close together as well. Aopen, ASUS, Sony, Samsung, Pioneer, Plextor, NuTech... for CD-RW drives, we have not seen any major issues that would cause us to seriously recommend one drive over another. Some users also report getting better burn rates and quality by using unofficial BIOS updates - proceed at your own risk if you decide to try out any of these mods.
Gaming CD/DVD Alternative: Lite-On SOHC-5232K CD-RW/DVD Combo
Price: $45 shipped
For gamers, we highly recommend getting a DVD/CD-RW or even a DVD+/-RW drive. There have been a few games recently that have appeared with special DVD-ROM versions, and even though the content is the same, worrying about only one DVD is more preferable to shuffling through four or five CDs, while you try to figure out which is the one that you need to have in the drive to be able to play your game. We can only hope that more future titles will begin to ship on a single DVD instead of multiple CDs, and to facilitate that, we suggest that all gamers have a system that can at least read DVDs. You also get the added benefit of being able to watch movies on your computer, of course. 8X DVD+R drives start at about $10 more, but as we mentioned earlier, we do not really feel that they are necessary, so we are cutting our costs a bit for now.
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JarredWalton - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
52 - ??? If you have such a high-end graphics card, are you actually thinking about pairing it with a budget systesm? Anyway, yes, it should work, unless it's an AGP Pro graphics card and your motherboard doesn't have a Pro slot. A 550W PSU should be sufficient, regardless. Anyway, you ought to look into getting an Opteron, Athlon 64, or Pentium 4 to go with that card. :pnurazlanshah - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
can i use 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 200 8x AGP 512MB G-DDR3 ($1500) with my NF2 8xagp motherboard even if i have 550w power supply?MasterFlash - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
Nice article. I like your choice of components. My comp is similar to your recommendations: Antec SLQ-3700, Biostar MN7CD Pro mobo, Athlon XP 2500+, 2x512Mb DDR400 Crucial RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 160Gb Seagate HDD, Toshiba DVD drive, generic 19" CRT.JarredWalton - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
#49 - Foxconn and CasEdge have been suggested in our past budget guides, so I wanted to branch out a bit. :) I'm not too keen on their look, either, but that's just me.Bulldog66209 - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
I've found that Foxconn/Supercase/CasEdge toolless cases offer good value, are easy to work with, and many are available with truly usable 400 watt power supplies. The local Micro-Center recently had a CasEdge TU-155 on sale for $31. The included power supply rated as capable of supplying 28 amps of 3.3V, 40 amps of 5V, and 17 amps at 12V at a nominal 400 watts. This compares favorably to the Antec which, although only rated at 350 watts, provides 28 , 35, and 16 amps.spartacvs - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
To #41What the hell do you put on those HD? I have a 40Gb: few games, few applications, few videos, few mp3 and some small softwares (k9, avant browser, etc). It's only 2/3 full. And when it's 3/4 full, it just mean it's time for a little cleanup. Sure you can easily overload 2 x 120 Gb but your need are certainly not what most of the peoples needs.
mino - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
#45 Nicely said.I completely agree,
It just seems to me it's very important to explicitly say what you mentioned here in your post.
It's beacause there is a HUGE amount of people who save those $20 or so, just because they have no idea what the result may be. The worst(not rare) case is, when such a person is a white-box builder...
Other than that I forgot to mention in my previous post that this guide is MUCH better then last one(not saying that was bad).
Keep good work Jarred.
And one suggestion for case to consider - since I think for value machine reliability is FAR more important than look - I recommend this YeongYang Cetus YY-5601 as an alternative with PSU I mentioned before.
We have been buying only these cases for a year now on and they ones of the best in $50-60 range.
they're available for inastance here http://store.yahoo.com/directron/yy5601.html
Ivo - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
The review is very nice and useful but several additional aspects could be addressed too:1. The Video/Audio performance for 'Home entertainment' (without gaming - for older buyers :-).
2. The Cool & Quite (Eco) features of the components and systems.
3. The micro-ATX SFF systems (not barebones) for LAN-parties, Home-PCs etc.
4. The LCD-displays.
5. The long-term price (future software compatibility) of the systems.
In that sense, possibly, only systems with Athlon64 CPUs (with good cooler) are really interesting.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
Regarding several of the case comments, that's pretty much what I had in mind. I've built quite a few PCs for friends, family, and even myself. The downsides to the cheaper cases often more than outweigh the $20 or so you might save. Heck, if it were me, I would even try to get up to the SLK-3700 or Sonata cases by Antec (although oddly enough I prefer the 3700 over the Sonata - other than the PSU, of course). They're *so* much nicer to work with than a lot of the other sub-$100 cases.Really, cases are a personal choice. What I often consider gawdy or ugly, some people think is "l33t". Conversely, what I think is simple and elegant others will say is boring and dull. Buy what makes you happy, but if you get a cheap, generic PSU and it fails after a few months, don't say we didn't warn you!
Anyway, thanks to all for the kind comments. I'll look at including some other miscellaneous recommendations in the future. I do have to say that after reading Kris' MythTV articles, I've been itching to build a TiVo-esque PC. I just keep repeating to myselft, "You do NOT need another PC... you do NOT need another PC..." Heheh.
Neurorelay - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
Whoops, I see the 6600...okay, mistook the number. :)