Buyer's Guide - Entry Level to Mid-Range, March 2005
by Jarred Walton on March 15, 2005 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Optical Drives
We thought that DVD+RW drives had hit rock bottom, but they continue to drop a few dollars now and then. If you really have no desire to use recordable media - even as a backup device - you could save yourself $40 or so, but the potential uses of a DVDR are just too many to pass up.
Click to enlarge.
Price: $57 shipped
The latest NEC-3520A drives are now down to the prices of the old 3500A, and they have fallen about $10 since our last look. At the current rate of decline, we may actually see DVD-ROM drives disappear, with the DVD+RW models dropping to $30 or less! By then, of course, we'll be looking at the next generation of optical media storage. The only feature that the 3520A is missing is DVD-RAM support, although we've also heard conflicting reports of its Mt. Rainier (Bitsetting) support. LG Electronics offers 16X models with DVD-RAM support, if you require it. The 3520A comes in either black or beige bezels, with the black carrying a slight price premium right now. If you need an aluminum bezel, you'll have to purchase that as an aftermarket part for a few dollars more. If any of you have had serious problems with the 3520A and have a better alternative, drop us a line. As it stands, however, the price of $60 almost makes such devices a throw-away commodity.
Floppy Drive Alternative: 3.5" Floppy Drive
Price: $8 shipped
For these systems, we should finally be at the point where a floppy drive is no longer a necessity. We'd still add it for the small cost, and if you want to install XP to a RAID array, a floppy drive will still be required in most instances. BIOS updates for some boards may also require a floppy disk, although with utilities such as WinFlash, that is becoming less of a concern. We still put a floppy in most of our systems on the odd chance that we'll need it, but it's up to you to decide if you want to try dropping this ancient technology. If you do include a floppy, remember to pay attention to your case colors.
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jwf1776 - Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - link
my sources are showing Thermaltake W0013 Xaser Silent Purepower 480W at $60 as the cheapest acceptable atx 2.03 availablejwf1776 - Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - link
47 - the point is that it was "important to make sure that the alternative PSU included a 24-pin power connector" and it did notyou dig?
Jep4444 - Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - link
a 20-pin PSU will work on a 24-pin mobojwf1776 - Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - link
the alternative power supply EG375P-VE-SFMA doesn't have a 24pin rail!!http://www.enermax.com.tw/products_page.php?Tid=1&...
I ordered it at found out the hard way.
please make a correction!
Jep4444 - Thursday, March 17, 2005 - link
http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/x300hm-5.htmlooking at those X300HM, you can clearly see the higher memory HyperMemory cards fair better with AA than the higher clocked low memory ones
scrolling down the page, their isn't a direct 32MB/64MB comparison of the 6200TC but both are benched and you can see the 64MB 6200TC is faster than the 32MB only when AA is on
I guess it doesn't entirely matter though given the 32MB one can't even be found on newegg ATM(or atleast i couldn't find one)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
41 - Ah, that could very well be. In that case, I'd be curious to see the difference in performance between the 32MB and 64MB 64-bit TC cards. :|JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
42 - I had no idea Rosewill was related to Newegg. Newegg itself is just the online reseller of another company, ABS Computers or some such. At least, that was my understanding. Rosewill's RMA process seems a little questionable (i.e. restrictive), which doesn't really jive with them being Newegg. Of course, maybe it's just Newegg's way to sell certain products without needing to provide as much customer support?Zepper - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
Just in case the author didn't know, Rosewill isn't an independent company. It is the in-house packaging division of Newegg (like Mad Dog is to CompUSA, etc.). You can often find the same item for less under its actual name than in a Rosewill box..bh.
Jep4444 - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
The one benchmarked in the article under the name 64b is the 32MB/64bit one as mentioned on the first page and the 32b is 16MB/32bitI've seen a couple benches suggesting that the onboard RAM only makes a noticeable difference when AA is turned on at which point the 32MB cards seem to hit rock bottom dropping a significant amount of FPS(the ATI one does it too)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
Jep4444 - I'm still not entirely sure on whether the 6200TC-32 is a 32-bit or 64-bit interface. Looking at the performance, it appears to be a 32-bit interface as the TC-64 beats it by a large margin. Then again, the presence of more local memory might cause the performance difference. Anyway, regardless of whether the TC-32 is a 32-bit or 64-bit interface, I would definitely stick with the TC-64 or full 6200 over the TC-16/32.