Buyer's Guide - Entry Level, October 2004
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Hard Drives
As with most of the other options, there are tons of potentially good hard drive choices. The three main factors that influence hard drive performance are the RPM, the amount of cache, and the capacity. While many might insist on a drive with 8 MB of cache, it is not strictly required for the budget segment, and getting a 2 MB cache drive can save you about $10. Getting a 5400 RPM drive instead of a 7200 RPM drive, on the other hand, is not recommended.The question of how much capacity you need is really up to the individual. Some people would never even manage to fill a 20 or 30 GB drive, while for others, even 200 GB may not be enough. These days, the cheapest hard drives still tend to cost about $50, and anything smaller than 40 GB will not be any cheaper. In fact, 80 GB drives are only slightly more expensive than 40 GB drives, and we feel that the extra $10 is worth it to double your capacity.
With most hard drives now spinning at 7200 RPM or faster, noise has become more of a concern. Particularly with an office computer, many people will find high noise levels to be distracting. Earlier 7200 RPM drives have been known to have a high pitch whine. Most companies have now upgraded to the latest spindle technology known as fluid dynamic ball bearings, which help to all but eliminate the noise of the hard drive. Many Western Digital Caviar and Maxtor drives use the older bearings and so, unless noise does not bother you, we recommend that you search out a drive that uses the fluid dynamic bearings. This is available on Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital drives now, but take some time to make certain that it is on the model that you are purchasing.
One trend that we are happy to see is the return of longer warranties. For a while, many companies were shifting to 1-year warranties. Now, most of them have returned to 3- or even 5-year warranties on their drives. Seagate has led the way with a standard 5-year warranty on all of their models, including previously purchased drives! Others have only increased their warranty on current models. Just remember that the warranty only covers the physical hard drive, so you still need to make backups of your important files.
The final topic relating to hard drive choice is the interface. Parallel ATA - also called IDE or EIDE - has been around for a long time, so it tends to be slightly cheaper. The budget office motherboard that we recommended does not support anything else, but the gaming motherboard offers support for up to two Serial ATA connections. There is little to no difference in real world performance between the interfaces, at least in the budget segment, but SATA does use a thinner cable that is easier to work with. All things being equal, we would prefer a SATA drive over a PATA drive, and we would even be willing to pay a little more for it if necessary.
Office Hard Drive Recommendation: Seagate 80 GB 7200 RPM 8MB PATA
Price: $67 shipped
With all the considerations listed above, it is difficult to argue with the choice of a Seagate hard drive. You get the full five-year warranty (two years more than most of the competition), quiet operation, good performance, and plenty of storage. You could save a few dollars by choosing some alternative, but it just does not make a lot of sense. Should you need more storage space, models with 120 GB and 160 GB are available and have a lower cost per GB, but 80 GB should be plenty for even the most demanding office work.
Gaming Hard Drive Recommendation: Seagate 160 GB 7200 RPM 8MB SATA
Price: $107 shipped
Our recommendation for budget gamers remains with Seagate, due to their impressive set of features and reliability. The difference is that we have chosen to go with a SATA drive instead of PATA, and we have increased the recommended capacity to 160 GB. That may seem like overkill, but when you consider that Far Cry, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Doom 3 all require about 4 GB of hard drive space - and that's without any of the extra content that you can find online - it is very easy to run out of storage for your games. If you uninstall games that you are not currently playing, you can get around this potential difficulty, but that is not the most convenient of solutions. You can always downgrade to a 120 GB or 80 GB drive if you disagree. The cost per GB of an 80 GB SATA drive is 89 cents, while the cost per GB of the 160 GB drive is 71 cents. If you can afford it, you get double your storage space for about a 50% price increase.
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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...