Buyer's Guide: High End System - May 2004
by Wesley Fink on May 26, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Hard Drives
Recommended: Dual Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA in RAID 0 ConfigurationPrice: $428 shipped
There are genuine performance advantages to a SATA RAID array, and a RAID 0 Array with two of the fastest SATA drives that you can buy makes for a blistering high end system. The storage capacity for two 74GB WD Raptor drives is a generous, but rational, 148GB of fast access storage. Compared to SCSI RAID solutions with similar performance, the Raptor RAID is a virtual bargain. The 74GB Raptors have double the storage of the legendary 36.7GB Raptors, an increase in speed, and the same 8MB buffer.
The 5-year warranty for the Raptor drives makes this investment in high-speed storage a little easier to handle. All drives will fail at some point because they have moving parts, but you have warranty reassurance for 5 years that attest to the quality of these WD Raptor hard drives. Previously, 10,000RPM speeds or a 5-year warranty were features only found on enterprise/SCSI drives, but they have now reached our high end system desktop.
All of the high-end recommended and alternative motherboards have built-in capabilities for SATA RAID, so it is relatively easy to enjoy this level of RAID performance. Those concerned about data security more than ultimate speed can configure the drives as RAID 1, or mirroring. In RAID 1, the drive capacity will only be 74GB, but you will have the assurance of a mirrored drive in the event of drive failure.
Alternative: Seagate ST3200822A (200GB) Baracuda 7200RPM (8MB cache)
Price: $133 shipped
While IDE drives, including our alternate Seagate Barracuda 200GB, are not as fast as the Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM SATA drives, they are still plenty fast for most applications. Seagate offers the same 8MB cache as the Raptor drives and a very large 200GB storage capacity for a small $133 price. While the well-known Seagate drives offer impressive specifications, the most important feature of the Seagate 200GB is not something that you can see. With hard drive manufacturers reducing warranties to one year, the Seagate 200GB still carries a 3-year manufacturer's warranty. With Seagate delivering hard drive capacities at 66 cents per Gigabyte, this drive also delivers excellent value.
200GB seems a massive amount of storage, but it will be just what the doctor ordered for users of Digital Cameras, Digital Video, and digital music storage. Those are the reasons why you want this High End system, right? You certainly don't need this kind of power to write the great American novel or handle emails.
Optical
Recommendation: NuTech DDW-081 8X DVD+/-R/RWPrice: $80 shipped
The winner of the recent AnandTech Dual 8X roundup was the inexpensive NuTech DDW-081 DVD burner. It proved to be one of the fastest, most reliable, and most flexible DVD dual-8X burners on the market. It is also very affordable and an easy choice for our High End Buyer's Guide. The latest optical drives really can do everything optical, with both high-speed DVD and CD burning as well as excellent playback of most any optical media.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on storage from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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roostercrows - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
The article was excellent, thank you Wesley, and considering all the informed comments it received I'm not alone in looking forward to reading more of them. Not to add yet another category to what must already be a lot of work for you guys but is there somewhere I could see the entire dual processor systems that have been suggested by some advanced members, after they are built and running of course, including performance/prices and why they feel they have assembled a better "bang for the buck" high-end system?roostercrows - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
Sparkywonderchicken - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
Sorry I hit send too fast. I have heard many complaints about DVD-R burning from these units.Ma10n3 - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
I agree with #44--A high-end system and an overclocking rig should not be classified as the same.Sparkywonderchicken - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
Don't you mean NuTech DDW-082?? for the DVD??bigtoe33 - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
Overclocking is mainly about what boards and cpu's will do the high fsb's, also what is the most bang per buck as overclockers mainly buy cheap and clock up to gain the speed.I would expect Wesley will show some 300+fsb action on A64 as well as the cheap 2.4a prescott running 180fsb+....these are things you will find on an overclocking rig and not a high end ;-)
azndelite6983 - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
Thanks for the response, Wesley. I appreciate that you guys do these guides at all, considering the monumental task of trying to keep up with new hardware.What I don't quite understand is that any high-end system would be a terrific overclocking possibility, and although u supposedly have a different guide for that, it might be nice to see some suggestions on oc settings for the high-end system as well as possible mods (cooling mostly). I'm not sure I see the necessity of having an "overclocking system" when the parts remain very close to the high-end system. Also the fact that anyone willing to spend anywhere close to $5000 on a computer should really know what they are doing, but may want some advice on how to get the most out of their already quick setup.
markz - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
I agree with #40.That is all.
Ma10n3 - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
To correct what I said in #39, more games support SMP now than I had previously thought...Link for FAQ:
http://home.swbell.net/m3tech/hard/smp_games.html
Murst - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
Wesley & Evan,First of all, thanks for the guides (this is my favorite part of anandtech and its probably the reason why I've been visiting this site more than any other lately). I do have some reccomendations, however.
It seems to me that your definitions of low/mid/high are rather difficult to understand. It actually kind of reminds me of intel's new naming policy. Why use words that don't really mean anything when you can give numbers which are descriptive? Here is an exmaple of what I'm thinking (my goal is clarity).
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Old name: New name:
entry-level System for under $800
mid-range System for under $1500
high-range System for under $2500
.......... System for under $4000
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I think this would make your goals in these articles much more clear, as people would understand exactly what goes into making the decisions. Also, my numbers may not be accurate, as I don't have much experience with pricing systems.
Overall, good work on this article, and I do believe that it is much closer to what "I" believe is a high-end system as compared to the last article.
I'll be looking forward to the next system reccomendations, especially to what 939 will bring.