Buyer's Guide - Mid-Range, January 2005
by Jarred Walton on January 21, 2005 11:09 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Optical Drive Recommendations
With the maximum speed of dual and single layer DVDR topping out at 16X and future replacements like BluRay and HD-DVDR in the works, not much has changed with our optical drive recommendations. We strongly recommend to anyone investing this much money in a computer to not skimp on the DVD drive and go with a DVD+RW 16X model. They work well for archiving old data and backups, and the price is low enough that we would recommend every new computer now to incorporate the technology.
Click to enlarge.
DVD+RW Recommendation
NEC DVD+RW 3520APrice: $64 Shipped
Some individuals swear by Plextor drives and will pay more for them, but our pick for price/performance continues to be NEC. The ND-3500A [RTPE: ND-3500A] received our Editor's Choice award in our last DVD+RW roundup based on its overall features, speed, reliability, and media compatibility. The ND-3520A [RTPE: ND-3520A] adds support for 8X DVD+RW and 6X DVD-RW recording, along with some firmware updates. As the price difference between the older 3500A and the new 3520A is only a few dollars, we see no reason to purchase the older drive.
If you actually plan to do a lot of DVD-to-DVD copying - we'll leave the legality of any such endeavors to you - adding in a DVD-ROM drive for $20 or so might also be desirable. For most people, however, a single DVD+RW functions well as a Jack of All Trades. The only real competitor in terms of price/performance is the Pioneer DVR-108 [RTPE: Pioneer DVR-108D] drive, so if you're averse to purchasing an NEC model, go that route.
Another option that a few people have asked about is SATA DVDR. With our talk about how much easier SATA cables are to deal with than the old IDE cables, wouldn't it be great to get an SATA optical drive? When you consider that some motherboards come with a whopping eight SATA connections, what's holding us back? The problem is that you currently have very few options for SATA DVDR, and all of them are from Plextor. The SATA connection will do nothing for actual performance, as even at 16X burn speeds, the maximum data rate is only about 21 MB/s, and compatibility is a bit questionable (check Plextor's compatibility guide before purchasing). Other than those concerns and the price, if you really want an SATA connection on an optical drive, the Plextor PX-716SA and PX-712SA are your two choices.
Floppy Drive Recommendation
NEC, Sony, TEAC, Samsung, or anything elsePrice: $8 Shipped
While we're on the subject of drives, let's not forget the old floppy drive. If you absolutely cannot stand the thought of putting such old technology into your wonderful new computer, that's okay. For us, however, we like to keep it around just in case. BIOS flashes - or in some case recoveries - can make good use of a floppy drive, and sometimes you'll need one with drivers if you want to install Windows XP onto an SATA drive. A driver disk will also be required if you want to install XP onto any sort of RAID array, so keep that in mind if you're considering that option. With such old technology, we haven't noticed any difference in reliability or quality among the various brands of floppy drive, so just get whatever's cheapest.
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Rocket321 - Saturday, January 22, 2005 - link
Could someone explain what has changed between the NEC 3520A and 3500A. I checked the Anandtech Fall 16x roundup and it has the 3500A listed as DVD-R 16x.Dranzerk - Saturday, January 22, 2005 - link
Mmm, i bought my 930sb from Newegg about 6 months ago, guess they ran out fast. Oh well. :(N3cr0 - Saturday, January 22, 2005 - link
Well, I think I may go with the system described with the ASUS board but a 3000+ processor to save some cash. As it stands right now, anything is an upgrade from my Celeron 1.2 system. The XFX 6600GT is also available for dramatically less then the Leadtek (40-50$ less) 6600GT, so I'm going to be going with that also.Zebo - Saturday, January 22, 2005 - link
"The Diamond Pro 930sb Mitsubishi monitor is also a excellent CRT choice for 19inch."Too bad no one sells it:(
Zebo - Saturday, January 22, 2005 - link
KILLER CHOICES!!!'Another good mobo is epox 9NDA3J... it's $45 less than MSI..same clocks many say better with new bios. I post at 330 HTT now vs 315 before.. My mem OCs much more too..
JarredWalton - Friday, January 21, 2005 - link
20 - NEC and Mitsubishi "merged" on the monitor segment. The NEC FE991SB is almost the same monitor as the Diamond Pro 930SB. The 930SB did have a few advantages, like a 110 KHz hoizontal scan rate and a slightly higher max resolution, and perhaps a few cosmetic differences.Unfortunately, the 930SB is no longer available online as far as I can tell (and it did cost a bit more). That's why it's no longer in the Guide. If you can find one, it's still a great monitor, although I wouldn't pay much more than $285 for it.
Dranzerk - Friday, January 21, 2005 - link
The Diamond Pro 930sb Mitsubishi monitor is also a excellent CRT choice for 19inch. Very nice monitor, gets great reviews, and cheap to boot.I beleive it used to be Anandtech buyers guide..maybe another type? check it out
JarredWalton - Friday, January 21, 2005 - link
#17 - certainly something to think about, although there are so many possible causes that a lot of people don't tend to list in forums. For example, are they overclocking? What sort of PSU are they running (as a 300GB three platter hard drive inherently uses more power than an 80GB one platter drive)?Most of the posts seem to be related to having RAID issues. I won't even get into the subject of RAID, but having two of those drives running is going to further increase the power demands. What sort of GPU do they have, CPU, etc.? People looking at running two or even three $200 drives are probably putting in other high-end hardware as well, and a 480W PSU - even a quality Antec, Enermax, etc. - may not be able to handle the power demands.
Anyway, the Maxtor is merely listed as an alternative. Plenty of people are using them without any problems, but they're also not using two of them in most instances.
PrinceGaz - Friday, January 21, 2005 - link
Those are a truly excellent set of recommendations for systems in that price-range, Jarred. Compared with your first few guides which I considered to have quite a few poor choices; I read through this guide from start to finish, and without exception either agreed with your choices or would have went with something so close it made no real difference.I'm very close to building an nForce4/A64 box and regularly looking at my options (the only thing I'm waiting for now is the E0 A64 revision), and at some points what you wrote was so close to my own thoughts that I almost felt as if I was reading something I'd written myself!
The only bone I'd pick is with SLI. I'll probably get an SLI board, but not for the SLI capability but because they tend to have more PCIe sockets generally if you run in non-SLI mode and treat the second x16 as a x1. I'll never buy another legacy PCI card, so the two PCI cards I already have are all I'd ever want to put in a new PCIe system, therefore the more PCIe sockets it has the better. The MSI Neo4 SLI board fails miserably in that respect as it has no PCIe slots at all apart from the two x16 slots, so at most you can put a single PCIe x1 card in. I hope MSI gets suitably slated in the forthcoming review because of that.
mad nebraskan - Friday, January 21, 2005 - link
With all due respect, the recommendation of the Maxtor 250GB drive in combination with the MSI Neo2 MB might not be a good one. I helped a friend who had serious issues trying to get a RAID 0+1 to work using this board. We finally gave up and bought Raptors. A quick search of the net found this forum:http://forum.msi.com.tw/thread.php?threadid=63105&...
Now, the problem might be fixed with the latest BIOS, but I don't think it it.
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=368404
Just some thoughts from a guy who banged his head against this particular problem too many times.