Buyer's Guide - Entry Level, October 2004
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
CPU and Motherboard: Budget Office
For many years, if you wanted to keep up with computing trends you had to be willing to upgrade. This could range from replacing a few parts to purchasing an entirely new system. While that might not be a problem for some, for others it was a difficult proposition. Back in the 80s and 90s, buying a new computer every year or two could cost as much as a used automobile (although reliability might be a concern). Thankfully - depending on whom you ask - things have started to slow down. Many businesses continue to run two or three year old PCs with no real need to upgrade. Any processor running 1 GHz or faster is more than sufficient for surfing the net, writing email, and doing miscellaneous office work. It may not set any speed records, but other than an initial delay while starting up, most office applications spend most of their time waiting on the user.
Office CPU: AMD Sempron 2400+ 256K 1.67 GHz 333 MHz bus
Price: $65 shipped (Retail)
Our recommendation for this month's budget CPU goes to the AMD Sempron 2400+. The Sempron is basically a tweaked version of the venerable Athlon XP Thoroughbred core. Do not let the names confuse you; the Sempron family is meant to compete with the Intel Celeron line of processors and it actually runs at the same speed as the Athlon XP 2000+. However, the Sempron does use a faster 333 MHz bus, which can improve performance slightly, and since the two chips are basically the same price, there is little reason not to opt for the faster bus.
Should you wish to spend a little more on a faster processor, the Athlon XP 2500+ is still a reasonable purchase at roughly $25 more than the Sempron 2400+. It increases clock speed and doubles the amount of cache. However, AMD has recently started to phase out the Athlon XP processors and shift production to the Sempron and Athlon 64 lines, so Athlon XP prices are starting to rise. If you really want to pick up a Barton core Athlon XP, we recommend that you act sooner rather than later - the 2500+ has gone from a low of $75 a few months back to $90.
The Celeron D processor from Intel is also available at relatively low prices, but the price/performance ratio is usually lower than Athlon XP/Sempron. For those who simply have to run an Intel CPU, they are a reasonable alternative. Intel motherboards also tend to cost a little more, so the net result is that $20 will buy a Celeron D 320 and i865PE motherboard which may be slightly faster than the Sempron 2400+. The same $20 would also buy an Athlon XP 2500+, which would be another bump up in speed from the Celeron D 320. We recommend that you stay away from the older Celeron processors, however, as they use a slower bus and have 128K of L2 cache, which really hurts their performance.
Choosing a motherboard in this price segment is extremely difficult. Socket A has been around for over four years now and there have been dozens of chipsets both with and without integrated graphics. If saving money is your top priority, you might want to find an Nforce2 IGP motherboard, as it remains to this day to be one of the best integrated graphics solutions. Prices for these motherboards tend to be around $70 to $80. You will also find numerous refurbished motherboards available at a discount, but we prefer to stick with new models with their longer warranties.
Office Motherboard:Shuttle AN35N-Ultra
Price: $58 shipped
Shuttle gets the nod for our budget motherboard this time, as it includes more high-end features while still providing good reliability and performance. There may be other motherboards that are 1 or 2% faster, but they tend to cost more. The Shuttle features the more advanced Nforce2 Ultra chipset, which provides support for dual-channel memory. Should you be willing to spend a little more money, there are dozens of other motherboards that will work equally well and include additional features like SATA, IEE1394 (Firewire), RAID, and higher quality audio. However, none of those features are necessary and they increase the price slightly.
Update: If you read this guide earlier, you may have seen the Asus A7N8X-X recommended. Some of our readers were good enough to remind us that this board does not support dual-channel RAM. While it might only make a 3 to 5% difference in performance, the Shuttle supports this feature and costs less, and we have no problem wiht recommending it as in place of the ASUS. Abit, Albatron, ASRock, Chaintech, MSI, and quite a few other companies provide good motherboards at very low prices. The only feature that we still insist on for any socket A motherboard is that it use an Nforce2 chipset. Not even the new KT880 is able to fully match the performance of the Nforce2, and since they remain roughly the same price, why settle?
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Neurorelay - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
When you commented on budget gaming cards, you mentiond the 6800GT in the 200 range coming out soon. I think you meant to say 6800 LE.mino - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
#38 I STRONGLY disagree, the quality of the case and PSU will in time prove to be probably one of the most important factors(especially PSU) impeding the lifespan of PC. Also I will certainly suggest buyng some cheapo nice w/o PSU case and quite high quality Fortron 300W PSUhttp://www.home2000.net/client/fspgroupusacom/prod...
Jarred: Please ,in next guide case/PSU section, mention the very important fact: in any case DO NOT BUY cases w/PSU's under $50 !!!
SAVING $20 ON PSU IS THE MOST STUPID THING ONE CAN DO !!!
ksherman - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
#40-- I agree. I have two 120GB drives and my second drive is about 90% full, and my first drive if about 70% full... I would never be able to survive on an 80 or 100GB drive.draazeejs - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
What I do not understand, why it is never recommended to get the 200GB Seagate drive instead? It seems that the recommendations stop at 160, but if you want to store movies, some games, and still want to have a comfortable free space, why not the 200 one? Is there something wrong with the Seagates 200G drive?Egglick - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
#21: I think you have a "Budget Office" machine confused with a Business Server. I don't know *anybody* that runs a RAID array in their home office machine, nor do any of the machines at my workplace. The huge mainframe server does, but that's something altogether different.RAID is more expensive, much more difficult to set up and use, and in this situation, doesn't provide any real benefit over simply backing up your data to CD, etc (which they should be doing anyway even if they DO have RAID).
Egglick - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
Excellent article Jarred. You did a great job of explaining everything in depth and covering all the bases for those that are less knowledgable, or want to know exactly what their extra money is going towards. In addition to that, I agreed with almost everything you recommended.About the only thing that I might've questioned was the Case for the Budget Office computer. 75 bucks is a bit much to be spending there. It's actually the most expensive item in the list, after the Monitor. A good portion of that price might be due to shipping charges though, so if someone were to find something like that Aspire case you mentioned for around $35-40 at a local store, I'd recommend that instead. That would put the price under the $500 mark.
For the gamer however, that case (which includes a quality powersupply) would be a great choice.
Gioron - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
Ok, that turned out longer than I expected....Gioron - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
Excellent guide. You fixed most of my issues with the last budget guide and I'm now having a difficult time finding nits to pick.IIRC, what I had a problem with last time was as follows:
Previously ignored integrated graphics: Now mentioned twice in the article. Although I'd still like to see it recommended as the default office option (with a note to make sure whatever board you get has an AGP slot if you change your mind), thats mainly just a matter of opinion instead of a fault in the review.
Previously recommended low timing RAM: Now fixed, and I like the explanation and options for the RAM this time around. I'm not sure pushing dual-DDR is really a good idea for the value segment, but you aren't pushing it hard and it can make a couple percent difference, so I can't really fault you for it.
The one thing I think I'd like to see is more recommendations on niche items. With a basic system like this, its fairly easy to add one or two components and make it suitable for various specialized tasks. The one that leaps to mind immediately is making a TIVO-like system just by swapping out the video card for an AIW card. It looks like it would be fairly easy to add a section that says, basicly: "for a mythtv system(add link to earlier article), we recommend the basic office computer, but replace the video card with XXXX and make sure you have at least XXXX RAM, XXXX processor, and don't bother buying a monitor". It might be a signifigant chunk more work, but I think it would be useful, and there are several purpose-built boxes you can make with only minor mods to the basic budget build. Somewhat like the difference between the office and gaming systems, but hopefully without needing to recommend items for every single part.
#21, I don't think there's much point to using RAID on a value system. It basicly doubles the cost of the hard drives and thats hard to justify for the return. RAID 0 won't speed things up that much for gaming if you're only going to be using software raid, so you'd probably be better off using the cash to buy a raptor instead. And even then, assuming you have enough RAM to handle it, it'll only really speed up load times, not frame rates. RAID 1 for the office might be debateable, but for the cost of it its still not worth it. Most people aren't working on things that are all that irreplaceable, and if you are you really should be making backups or have a copy on a remote system. For most people, you'd be better off doing weekly backups to your CD drive and storing them in some other room. Besides, RAID 1 can give a false sense of security. On the last computer I had die on me, the power supply blew and took everything else in the case with it, including both drives. The data loss in that case wasn't more than an annoyance, but relying on RAID 1 to protect vital data is not a good idea.
As to #24s post, I think there are enough similarities between the two systems that it makes sense to put them together. A gamer on a tight budget might pick up an office item or two, and an office customer with more money might pick up a gaming item. All the items are picked with almost the same criteria, just a slightly different audience in mind. I'd actually like to see more recommendations of different parts for niche markets, as I mentioned before, with one of these systems as a baseline.
Now, for my opinions:
CPU/motherboard: good choices. I might pick different ones, but only if the price points change. I'd probably go a bit lower on the gaming CPU, but thats just me.
Memory: Nice explanation. I completely agree.
Graphics: I'd probably go with the 9600 pro instead, but your arguments do have merit (and at least you mention the 9600 in passing). Although you won't be able to turn the details up on all your games, they're still playable and the price difference is large enough to sway me. Oh, and you might want to mention the 9600 All-In-Wonder in passing as well. Most people don't need the TV compatibility, but even some value customers might find it very useful.
Hard Drives: I'm still partial to WD, but admittedly there isn't a whole lot of difference. I agree with your size, speed and buffer recommendations, although I'd be tempted to recommend the office drive for both systems and only recommend the gaming drive as an upgrade for those who like to store lots of media on their computer. By far the most space on my hard drives is taken up by video files, and even then I'm finding it hard to fill up a 120gig drive. For games, 80 gigs is probably plenty for now.
CD drives: I agree with your recommendations, but I'd at least mention a specific DVD+-RW drive for those that want to upgrade.
Case/power: I think the 430W power supply is a bit much for a value system, but as only an alternative I can't say too much against it.
Displays: Been too long since I've been in the market for these, so I guess your recommendations are good enough. I would like to see a cheap LCD recommendation as an alternative, but I'm not sure what I'd pick myself.
Misc. components: This is the area I'd like to see more mention of other niche items you can add to the system, but thats more of a feature request instead of a bug, your keyboard and mouse recommendations (or lack thereof...) are decent. I personally like Logitech wireless mice, but I know they aren't the only valid option.
Poser - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
I know that Windows XP is pretty much the only choice for a mainstream system, but I think it's probably worth it to mention in every guide that you should get an OEM copy when you're buying parts. I knew somebody who paid a full $200 for a retail copy when they were building a system -- they knew enough to put it together, but not enough to avoid getting shafted. =/daclayman - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
#23 is right on with the Asus Terminators. Check ebay for teh refurbs; they are dirty cheap. If you're leary about that power supply (I think it's proprietary or microATX), then I like the Athenatech A301BS.Q300. The PowerQ power supply is actually a Fortron: (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?desc...