Buyer's Guide - Entry Level to Mid-Range, March 2005
by Jarred Walton on March 15, 2005 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Hard Drives
With native SATA support provided by the chipset on all of the recommended motherboards, it only makes sense to go with a SATA hard drive. The difference in performance is generally negligible, but noise levels and storage capacities still vary. We're basically looking for a quiet drive with as much capacity as we can find without going over $75. 80GB models are the sweet spot these days, with 40GB models generally costing only a few dollars less and having higher noise levels.
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Price: $59 shipped
The Hitachi drives aren't the quietest hard drives around, particularly in terms of seek noise levels. Ball-bearing noise is not a problem, thankfully, as fluid dynamic bearings are used. With a price that's $15 lower than the competition, we're going to give the Hitachi the nod as the basic recommendation. If you want the longer warranty of a Seagate as well as a lower seek volume, the price will go up to $75 with shipping - still not bad at all, considering. Samsung 80GB drives cost about the same as the Seagate, and we would say that their seek noise levels are the quietest of the bunch. If you're using a quiet case that's located on top of your desk, you might find the noise of the drive heads seeking to be irritating on the Hitachi and even the Seagate. It is worth pointing out that various revisions of the Seagate and Hitachi drives may be more or less noisy, however. Some users still have bad memories of the "Deathstar" 75GXP IBM drives, but the latest models from Hitachi (who purchased IBM's hard drive division) have not shown any propensity for early failure, so we're okay with recommending them.
Click to enlarge.
Hard Drive Alternative: Seagate 160 GB 7200 RPM 8MB SATA
Price: $94 shipped
Jumping up to the larger storage capacities, the price differences between the various brands tend to disappear. Given the longer 5-year warranty on the Seagate, it's the natural choice. We'll leave that up to you, but the same noise rankings as above still apply in our experience, with the Samsung having the least seek noise and the Hitachi having the most. The price for SATA and IDE versions of the 160GB drives is close to identical as well, should you feel the need to go with an IDE interface.
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rivethead - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
The Leadtek GeForce 6600 is $109 at NewEgg. It's only $7 more than your 6200 PCI-E selection.rivethead - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
"what happen to 6600 non-GT?"Man, that's an excellent question. I was wondering the same thing.
rivethead - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
I think you're socket 939 mobo recommendation is incorrect.The Chaintech board that's $91 shipped (actually $89 shipped from NewEgg) is the nForce 4 board, but it's not ULTRA, meaning you don't get the firewall, the SATA2, or NVIDIA nTune software.
I THINK this is the board you're wanting to recommend.
If it really is the Chaintech ULTRA board, please let me know exactly where I can get it for $89 shipped.
BTW, if you do a pricegrabber search on the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra board, the non Ultra board will erroneously be displayed in the results for new egg.
The Chaintech VNF 4 ULTRA board is $101 at ChiefValue....that's the cheapest I can find it.
rivethead - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
bigpow - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
what happen to 6600 non-GT?Jep4444 - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
you beat me to it ChineseDemocracyGNR, the 9600SEs 64bit bus cripples the 9600 far more than the 75mhz core clock reduction on the 9550also the 64MB 6200TCs are even slower than the 32MB ones due to use of slower memory, the X300 would beat either of them anyways
you guys really didn't look enough on the budget GPU recomendations
Booster - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
Displays - 'costED a year ago' - is that correct?ChineseDemocracyGNR - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
"AGP Graphics Recommendation: Sapphire Radeon 9600 SE 128MB DDR 64-bit, 325/400 GPU/RAM clock (bulk/OEM)"This is a very, very bad recommendation. The Radeon 9550 128MB ***128-bit*** will give much better performance for the same money.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
"PCIe Graphics Recommendation: Leadtek GeForce 6200TC 64-bit, 64MB (256 shared) PCIe with 350 MHz core"
I also don't agree with the PCI-E recommendation. I don't think $71 is a good price for a 64MB 64-bit 6200 when the X300 (not SE) is only $76.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
I actually don't mind this though, but the 9600SE is so bad I hope you change the guide before more people read it.
filterxg - Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - link
Another great read. Thanks for the guide!