Buyer's Guide - Mid-Range, October 2004
by Jarred Walton on October 21, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Optical Drive Recommendations
Optical drives are one area where the price, performance, and features of competing products are extremely close. For most people, a decent DVD+/-RW drive will function well as a "Jack of All Trades", although some of you might want to add a second DVD-ROM drive in order to create backup images of a disc without storing data on the hard drive. CD-R and DVD-R discs can also function as a quick and easy backup medium for whatever sort of work you do on your PC. Long-term storage of the discs may not be 100% reliable, but if you back up your critical files weekly to a new disc, you should be pretty safe from data loss.
DVD+/-RW Recommendation: NEC DVD+/-RW Drive Model 3500A
Price: $73 Shipped (OEM)
While we haven't officially reviewed it yet, we are very impressed with the newest NEC 3500A drive, and with a price of just over $70, we prefer it over most of the competition. The drive is also available in beige, should that work better with your case. About the only feature missing from the drive is DVD-RAM support. For a drive that supports 16X DVD+R burn speeds as well as 4X DVD+R DL, such an omission is not a deal breaker. We should also mention that finding media capable of 16X burn speeds is still difficult. Those willing to flash the BIOS to the latest version - or perhaps even a "hacked" version - may find that burn speeds and reliability are improved. The practice is becoming relatively common for those trying to get the fastest DVD burn speeds out of their drives. Lite-On, Pioneer, Plextor, Sony, and many other brands are also acceptable.
DVD-ROM Alternative: Lite-On 16X DVD-ROM Model SOHD-167T
Price: $30 Shipped (Retail)
For those who like to have a second optical drive, we offer this selection. There isn't a whole lot of difference between the various DVD-ROM drives these days. They can all read DVDs at 16X and CDs at 48X or 52X. Seek times might vary slightly, but most uses of optical drives do not rely heavily on seek times. Just remember to match your drive with your case. While Lite-On is a popular model, it is also possible to get alternative colors for the face plate, which some people might find useful. The retail version of this drive includes Power DVD 5 and an audio cable, so for the extra $1, it seems like a nice addition.
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Avalon - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
For the s754 system, to clarify. Sorry. Wish these posts could be edited :)Avalon - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
If you wanted to cut an additional ~$50, switch out that MSI K8N Neo Platinum and throw in an Epox 8KDA3J. It's only $73 on newegg, shipped, which is within a dollar or two of the Chaintech VNF-250, but has loads more features. After all, you guys gave the 8KDA3+ an editor's choice award, so why not recommend the "value" board in a mid range rig? It's an option to ponder over.dragonballgtz - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
A $200 CPU would go better with a 9800Pro IMHO for gamers.JarredWalton - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
ksherman, that's basically what I went with, but outside of gaming there is no real need for a fast graphics card. $200 for a graphics card that many people do not want/need is difficult to justify. Rather than create more confusion with talk of gaming alternatives, we are going to look at putting together a Gaming Guide in the near future.The Mid-Range PC is such a broad segment that it is virtually impossible to cover all options without writing a 20,000 word article. This one is already long enough, and that was after I removed the gaming options. Here's the basics, though:
If you want a moderate gaming card for AGP, about the only reasonable choice right now is a 9800 Pro. The 6800/6800GT are too expensive for most people, I think. PCI Express has the 6600GT which tends to be faster than the 9800 Pro by about 10 to 20%. As games are GPU limited in most cases, AMD fans will probably either want to wait for PCI Express motherboards and get a 6600GT, or else bite the bullet and spend $360+ on a 6800GT. Ouch. :)
Beenthere - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
Nice guide. Lotta work !!!I think the biggest issue for most folks looking to build a new PC or even to upgrade within a budget, is prioritizing. As you can see from the comments above, gamers always want a top-of-the-line Video card even when this takes a big bite outta the budget. To do that you gotta cut cost some place else and that may compromise the total system performance.
Seems to me that an easy means to quantify and qualify the real options for an individual system would be by listing the hardware categories as you've done on a spreadsheet then plug in the hardware and prices accordingly. I think some folks would be surprised to see how their total system price climbs way beyond their original budget when you add $50. here and there to get the "best" of a particular component or to step up to the next level of component.
As you pointed out, sometimes like with memory, buying the lowest latency modules may cost more than moving up 200 MHz in CPU speed, so the CPU may be a better choice. Your guide and recommendations give PC builders a great head start on getting the most bang-for-their-buck.
Thanks for the effort!
ksherman - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
also, I think that a good description for a mid range system should be a system with a good amount of power (hence the processor choice) with out the price premium. I like mid-ranges because they offer the power i need with the versitility to do anything I will need to do for a while down the road.ksherman - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
It is kinda weird that you recommend such a low-end card for a mid-range system... to me (as everyone else has stated) the 6600 and 9800's should be in the midrange systems. 9600 and similar should be put into low-end systems... in regards to the x300, you state that it is good for those not into gaming so much as other "basic computing tasks", I think that something like that belongs in the low-end systems category.JarredWalton - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
I have made a few minor corrections, and I also added a $1000 AMD 754 system to the summary page, for those that might feel $1250 is too much. :)#3: Corrected, thanks. MB, GB... sometimes my fingers have a mind of their own.
#7: RAID 1 hardware controllers should not incur any noticeable performance penalty, as they simply tell both hard drives to write the same data. Better RAID 1 controllers will actually have improved read performance, as they can pull data from two sources. I have not done any extensive testing of this, however, and would guess that most integrated RAID controllers lack that feature. If anyone knows for sure, speak up.
#12: I didn't put much of an emphasis on gaming, as I hope to cover that more in an upcoming Gaming Guide. We'll see if that gets a green light - it's been a while since we covered that topic in depth, I think, although the Doom 3 craze touched on it.
#15: Stay tuned. That's all I will say for now. The Pioneer is still a good choice, though.
#16: Is that typo corrected now? If not, which page are you seeing that on, since I checked both the Display and Summary pages for the error.
Thanks!
Desslok - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
That monitor costs as much as the whole system would?NEC/Mitsubishi FE991SB-BK 19" 1274?????
deathwalker - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
Great article...I am a little surprised at the Optical Drive choice of the NEC 3500A @ $73, reason being is that you just reviewed the Pioneer 108 and called it the best drive reviewed to date and its only $78.