Weekly Buyer's Guide: Entry Level Guide - April 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 17, 2004 3:05 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Sound Card
Recommendation: Onboard soundPrice: $0
There is no need to waste money purchasing a separate sound card with an entry level system, so the obvious choice is going to be the onboard sound that comes with the ASUS A7N8X-X that we recommended as the motherboard of choice today. Integrated sound onboard the A7N8X-X is courtesy of Realtek's ALC650 codec, which is a standard 6-channel solution that will fit basic Windows, gaming, and music requirements.
If you choose ABIT's NF7-S Rev.2, you should realize that because this motherboard has an MCP-T South Bridge, you can bypass its onboard DAC by using the optical out port on the I/O panel of your board, giving you much better sound quality basically for free. However, this requires speakers with the appropriate receiver, which we do not end up recommending for our speakers today, but if you feel like spending a few more bucks, it's not a bad way to upgrade to better sound.
Speakers
Recommendation: Creative Labs SBS270 2.0 SpeakersPrice: $20 shipped
Speakers are a basic requirement for any entry level system, but they aren't that important overall. However, Creative Labs makes a great pair of 2.0 speakers, dubbed the SBS270. These are excellent entry level speakers for users who also want to have at least decent sound quality for video games and music listening. It also comes with a headphone input. There's no subwoofer or anything like that, but that's totally unnecessary unless you're keenly interested in a more powerful listening experience. Overall, a very solid pair of speakers with no real alternative worth mentioning.
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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TrogdorJW - Monday, April 26, 2004 - link
Here's something that was missed, I think. When talking about the RAM, they mention the CAS 3.0 vs. CAS 2.5 or whatever. However, they're using a 133 MHz bus (PC2100 RAM).Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have PC3200 RAM with 3-3-3-8 timings, it should run perfectly well at PC2100 speed with 2-2-2-6 or possibly even 2-2-2-5 timings. Why? Well, 3200 is 52.4% more than 2100, and 3 is only 50% more than 2. Right?
Anyway, back in the good old SDRAM days, I remember picking up some CAS3 "PC150" RAM and running it at CAS2 since I had a 100 MHz bus speed at the time. Funny thing was that PC150 was cheaper than PC100 with CAS2. Seems like that's happening in the DDR market now.
newuser12 - Sunday, April 18, 2004 - link
seems like the 512 mg of ram is a pretty universal idea....And I agree with whoever is saying that celerons suck ass. "value" and "celeron"? LOL!
Etacovda - Sunday, April 18, 2004 - link
Not a bad choice - ive made similar systems in the past. For a value system, why not get a 40gig WD SE drive... without filling the system up with wares, im sure that would be enough for most uses ;) i doubt they will be buying 10 new games to put on it as that comes to about the same price as the system.Great choice on the mobo, there is only 2 gripes i have with that board - the caps are very close to the socket for aftermarket cooler installs, and for some reason the one i had hated mbm5.
512 of ram is a good idea - theres a 'value' system, then there is just building the cheapest system you can build... there is a difference :p
boomerang - Sunday, April 18, 2004 - link
While I have admired the styling and pricing of the manufacturers of the cases you are recommending for some time, I would never purchase one. The reason being because of the severe air flow restrictions imposed on the rear case fans.I can't imagine how any air could even begin to go through those little tiny holes.
With quiet systems becoming very much desirable these days, I would like to see some cases that could meet those expectations in your guides.
The quietest fan becomes noisy when the air has no place to go.
ZobarStyl - Sunday, April 18, 2004 - link
If you are building a value-level rig and a customer "has to have Intel" then you have one seriously dumb customer. I mean, fanboys and the perennial fight aside, the value market has always belonged to AMD and a Celeron is a horrible processor to sell anyone when a comparable speed Athlon XP is actually cheaper. And don't say the PR ratings are off when the XP's have more L1 cache than all of the Celeron's L1 and L2 combined...read any review on any decent tech website and you will never see a Celeron in any section but the "stay away from these processors" part. Point is I could never sell a Celeron-based system to a customer I would feel like I was cheating him.Booty - Sunday, April 18, 2004 - link
#10 - Celerons are awful CPUs. I wouldn't put one in a system if *Intel* payed *me*... well, maybe then, but anyway... ;)512 MB ram should be the minimum put into ANY system these days, period. I don't agree about using a mATX nForce board, just because they haven't seemed very stable to me - maybe I just haven't found the right memory to use with one, but it's not like I used cheap memory. I think in most cases that onboard video causes more problems than it's worth - if they had dedicated video memory built onto the mobo, that'd be one thing, but I'd rather not have it using up system memory.
I'd also agree that going with one of the Antec cases (SLK1600 or 3700) or something similar would definately be worth it. You're better spending a little more and having a system that's stable and problem-free than going too cheap and running into problems. But hey, the "techs" out there building these cheap systems are keeping me in business, since I'm always having to replace cheap parts with quality ones when they die a year later.
artifex - Sunday, April 18, 2004 - link
Are SFF designs getting close enough in price for consideration in your monthly budget/mid-range system reviews?thebluesgnr - Saturday, April 17, 2004 - link
I would replace the motherboard with the MSI K7N2 Delta-L or ABIT NF7 2.0. They cost the same as the ASUS and have better quality (nForce2 Ultra 400 and better power solutions). Specially the ABIT has better quality.Dual channel doesn't make much difference but it's likely this system will be upgraded in the future with another stick of RAM so getting the nForce2 Ultra 400 for no extra money at all is a no-brainer imho.
You may also consider a SiS 748 based board. You can get the ASRock K7S8XE for only $51 shipped (newegg.com) or the Gigabyte for only $54. But the ASRock is on-pair with the "-X" series boards from ASUS as far as components quality goes.
yanon - Saturday, April 17, 2004 - link
BTW, most mini-ATX NForce2 400 IGP board do come with a AGP port. So, the user always have the option to a better graphic card.yanon - Saturday, April 17, 2004 - link
To be a true entry-level machine, it should have an integrated motherboard. Any one of those mini-ATX NForce2 400 IGP board with GF4MX video and Cmedia 6 channel sound should be fine. Granted that this type of motherboard will only have a 3 pci slots, but an entry level does not need all those expension slots because people who will buy this type of machine just want to surf the web, listen to mp3, some word processing, basic digital photo editing, and occassional gaming (mostly online java-based games). My cousin can play MOHAA on such a machine. 512 Mbytes of ram is a must and NEC 2500A 8X DVD+/-RW drive should also be part of this system since DVD burning is rising in popularity as the cost for a 50-pack Ritek 4.7G DVD-R is only $40 on Newegg now. Entry-level computer builder should consider using the $50 silver Enermax (including a 350watt powersupply) since it has that expensive aluminum look and 2 frontal USB jacks plus audio/mic jacks. Another advantage of using this case is that it has lots holes in the lower portion of the front panel. Moving the back fan to the front will provide ample cooling to all the components inside. All buyer should consider spend extra $20 to buy a retail cpu instead of an OEM cpu since retail comes with a heatsink-and-fan and 1 year warranty. Buying a cheap heatsink and fan unit for the oem CPU will cost you at least $10 more and without an 1 year warranty for the CPU.