Buyer's Guide - Entry Level to Mid-Range, March 2005
by Jarred Walton on March 15, 2005 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Case and Power Supply
Now that we have all the internal components picked out, it's time to find them a nice home. If you're not too choosy about the appearance of your computer, you can probably just head over to the local computer shop and pick up the cheapest case that you can find. Some may be more or less durable, but the vast majority of the steel cases on the market will manage to work just fine once everything is installed. You may cut a finger or scrape a knuckle if you're not careful with some of the cheap cases, but if you don't plan on upgrading often - or ever - such considerations don't matter a whole lot. Buy what you like, whether that's a boring case or something with 60s era sci-fi theme. More important than the case, however, will be the choice of power supply.Many of the sub-$50 cases that include a power supply could potentially have stability problems, so for peace of mind, we would strongly encourage you to pick up a better PSU for your system. You can always keep the original generic PSU around as a backup in case you have problems. If you're going to get a motherboard with PCI Express support, you will probably want to look at separate power supplies with the new 24-pin power adapter. As far as quality goes, Enermax and Antec continue to be the most recognized brands. They are also priced such that getting them into a budget system may be difficult unless you purchase a case with an included power supply. That would be our recommendation, with the Antec SLK1650 continuing to offer decent looks and performance for a reasonable price. But some people like to see what else is out there, so we've searched around to come up with some new options.
Click to enlarge.
Price: $59 shipped
Rosewill is a newer brand on the market, but they've really manage to impress a lot of people looking for good values. Their cases have managed to catch our eye, and while we might question the reliability of the PSU, $61 for a case with a window as well as front USB and firewire ports is pretty impressive, and the PSU is pretty much gravy. You can find similarly priced offerings from Apex, Aspire, Codegen, In Win, Logisys and RAIDMAX, among others, but we like the overall look of the TU-155 as something different from the "boring" cases.
Click to enlarge.
Price: $65 shipped
As we've so often pointed out, once you factor in the cost of shipping and a reasonable power supply, it's difficult to beat the Antec cases, particularly the low-end SLK16xx models. They are good, cheap cases with a reasonable quality PSU along with a single 120 mm temperature controlled rear fan. The one flaw is that the PSU is a standard ATX model, so adapters would be necessary if you want the full 24-pin power supplied to the motherboard. It is not strictly required to have a 24-pin power connector, of course, and when paired up with a relatively low-power PCIe card like the 6200TC, you should be fine. Down the road, however, it may become necessary to upgrade the PSU. With shipping adding almost $20 to the cost, however, it does hurt our overall budget. If you're willing to take the risk of a cheaper power supply, you can easily find cases at a local shop for under $50.
Click to enlarge.
Price: $51 shipped
We've mentioned the quality of Enermax power supplies many times in the past. For this Guide, we felt it was important to make sure that the alternative PSU included a 24-pin power connector. [Unfortunately, we got bad information from Enermax's web site - this is not a 24-pin PSU! See note below.] While there are 20-to-24-pin adapters available, they are not guaranteed to work with upgraded video cards. 370W may seem on the low end of the scale, but remember that this is a quality 370 Watts, and it will certainly outperform most 400W to 450W competitors. The Noisetaker line is also one of the quieter power supply options out there, although it certainly isn't silent. For $50, though, you can't complain too much. As always, you can look at Antec, Fotron Source, PC Power and Cooling, Tagan, and ThermalTake as generally good quality options, if you want something other than the Enermax that we've suggested.
Updated Information: Have you ever had difficulty tracking down a reasonable choice for a component, based on a specific price range? If so, then you've probably built quite a few PCs, or perhaps written a guide such as this. Trust me, I searched for quite a while trying to find a reasonable 24-pin PSU for this Guide. I figured that if I'm going to recommend an alternate PSU, then it ought to have some longevity. Sure, $100+ Antec, Enermax, OCZ, etc. PSUs will provide you with everything you might need, as well as a 3 to 5 year warranty in many instances. However, $100 is a lot of money for a power supply, even in the mid-range sector.
The Enermax pages have images showing 24-pin compatibility on their web site for the above 370W PSU. While we still feel it's a very good PSU and it does include dual 12V rails, it does not have a 24-pin connector. The most reasonably priced PSU that we could find with a 24-pin connector is the A+ GPB/Athena Power 500W, model AP-P4ATX50F12. It costs around $60 shipped and appears to be a good quality PSU, but we're not sure about noise levels. Most other 24-pin PSUs cost substantially more, unfortunately. If you have any better suggestions for this price range, drop me a line. Thanks, and sorry for the confusion!
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
38 - I changed to the 9550 after the earlier corrections, as I had a 9600SE initially. I'll fix the text to suggest the purchase of a fanless 9550 and make the 9600 reference more appropriate. Thanks.doganti - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
The article reads:"AGP Graphics Recommendation:MSI Radeon 9550 128MB DDR 128-bit, 250/400 GPU/RAM clock (bulk/OEM)
..
There isn't a whole lot to differentiate the 9550 cards from one another, as they are all fanless.."
I have Asus A9550 GE - Radeon 9550,128MB DDR,128 Bit and it has a fan (which has turned bad=noisy in a month).
Thus, also this is not clear: ".... The Radeon 9600 (without the SE) is also a decent alternative that will only cost an extra $15, and with it, you bump the memory bus up to 128-bits."
JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
31 - If you can afford the bump to Athlon 64 3000+, the MSI RS480M2-IL would definitely be my pick for a board with IGP. Unfortunately, that adds $75 for the CPU upgrade (relative to the Sempron 2600+), but it also improves performance a decent amount. The ATI Xpress 200 is currently the best (BY FAR!) IGP on the market. It gives you S-VIDEO as well as VGA out. Too bad it doesn't have a DVI port as well. :)If that's too much... well, there are a lot of NF2 IGP boards for under $70. The NF2 is probably the better IGP between that and the K8M800 chipset, but the socket 754 CPUs are generally faster. With the price differences between platforms, I'd probably shoot for the Sempron 3000+ on socket A if you go for that platform. (The Barton core is simply the better choice, IMO.) That would compare relatively well with the socket 754 Sempron 2800+ - win some, lose some in benchmarks. I guess it really doesn't matter *too* much if you're not looking for the best performance possible. $150 gets you a decent CPU and mobo for socket A of socket 754, while on socket 939 it only gets you a CPU.
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For the other comments, the PDP isn't great for overclocking, but with a price now at $130 and 2-3-2-5 timings, I'd take the GB of RAM even at stock speeds. If it OCs decently, great. If it doesn't, you should still be fine at stock speeds.
The Hitachi drives may not have the best RMA process, but let's be honest: if you need to use the RMA on *any* hard drive, you'll be very unhappy. I don't think any of the 7200 drives would fail in most systems if they're the only HDD. Just don't put a bunch of them next to each other without proper cooling. At $60 for an 80GB drive, I would probably make backups and if the HDD failed I'd buy a new drive while I RMA'ed the old one. That's just me, though.
Finally, the motherboard area is just such a hard one to give *one* recommendation. Even a recommendation and alternative doesn't really do justice to the available parts. There are so many good boards these days that are all within close proximity in terms of price. If I were looking for socket 939 boards, I'd go as follows in terms of chipsets:
nForce 4 (preferrably not 4X, but any are good)
ATI Xpress 200 (not many available yet)
VIA K8T890
nForce 3 Ultra
VIA K8T800 Pro
ALi/ULi/SiS whatever
I'd go with the top three over the bottom three by a pretty significant margin. K8T800 Pro is now about 9 months old, IIRC. It's still okay, but I wouldn't look to save money by going that route. The nF3 is the same, but it's the better chipset for AGP, IMO. Given the price the K8T800 Pro usually wins out, however.
Messudieh - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
I have the PDP RAM that you mentioned in your review, and I can honestly say that the ability to overclock any one set is sort of a crap shoot it seems. It sounds to me like they use a couple of different types of chips (some being the TCCD chips, while others Infineon) that can all run at the stated 2-3-2-5 speeds, at 2.6 volts in my case.I think I got a set of something other than TCCDs, because I can't overclock them past about 210 with ANY timings on a DFI NF4 ultra-D with a watercooled 939 3000 and keep it stable, even at 3.1 or 3.2 volts.
Like I said...it's a crap shoot; some people get lucky, and others don't. I'm getting this RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
And selling my Patriot to my friend, who doesn't overclock.
Jep4444 - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
oops forgot that the MSI board is 939, either way the Winchester based Athlons are good overclockers anywaysBPB - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
"Semprons K8s are typically very good overclockers so i wouldn't rule out that noones is going to overclock them in a budget machine"Do they make socket 939 Semrpons?
As for me, I went with the MSI ATi based board and am very happy. Put in a 939 3000+, and a Hitachi 80GB SATA II drive. The Hitachi was only $62 at ZipZoonFly. So for a tad more got SATA II (I know, no SATA II controller on this board, but at least the drive has it). The board also has slightly better than average onboard sound, going with the Realtek ALC658C, not the 650 or 655 found in other boards.
Eventually will put a capture card and mid-level video card. I now have a pretty fast system for the price. Oh, went with the 1GB PDP Patriot memory in the article. No problems to report with anything. Very, very happy with the setup.
Jep4444 - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
"The only downside is that the MSI's uATX board doesn't have any OC capability, but who's looking for that in a budget-minded PC?"Semprons K8s are typically very good overclockers so i wouldn't rule out that noones is going to overclock them in a budget machine
razor2025 - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
Why no mention of MSI Neo4-F? It's less than the Chaintech @ $95 shipped at ZZF and it has same PCB as the Neo4 Platinum. That's much better choice over the Chaintech if you're going NF4 route. I also belive that the Xpress200 chipset should've been included as alternative. It's the perfect board for budget PC and it'll allow LOTS of options for upgrades later down the road. The only downside is that the MSI's uATX board doesn't have any OC capability, but who's looking for that in a budget-minded PC?If AMD can get a Sempron out for Socket 939 for around $100... then we can have some really nice sub $400-500 PC with lots of options for upgrade.
jxtramd - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
OK I've followed the budget guide now for about 6 months and I'm on the cusp of a decision about building an AMD IGP based system. The choices are either from the Jan 05 guide with the MSI (or other) MB with the nForce2 IGP or the Mar 05 Chaintech (or other) MB with the VIA K8M800 IGP. Both systems with an appropiate Sempron 2600 and 512 memory. Between the two which combo gives the better graphics performance? I'm not interested in gaming. Just a basic system with the ability to capture video and watch DVD's as examples. A IGP system fits my budget - any comments?Jep4444 - Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - link
A little look on newegg has shown that every 32-bit 6200TC has 16MB of onboard RAM, oddly enough their are NO 32MB 6200TCs on newegg at all(whether 32 or 64-bit)also i looked at the review you guys posted on the 6200TC and here's a little bit of info on the 16MB and 32MB parts
"With NVIDIA talking about bringing the new 32MB 64-bit TurboCache part out at $99 and the 16MB 32-bit part out at $79"