Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - July 2004
by Evan Lieb on July 16, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Sound Card
For a mid-range system, you most likely aren't going to need a lot of audio processing power unless you're an audiophile. If you are an audiophile, then you probably already have a pretty good idea of what kind of programs you run that would require the power of, say, an Audigy 2 sound card and a Gigaworks surround sound speaker system. But if you're just looking for basic sound that is of good quality (most onboard sound solutions sound identical) that will play music, games, etc., then the onboard sound on either your MSI K8N Neo Platinum motherboard or your ASUS P4P800 Deluxe motherboard will more than suffice. If you're looking for something more potent, we suggest that you peruse our High End Buyer's Guide from a few weeks ago.Speakers
Recommendation: Logitech Z640 5.1 speakersPrice: $55 shipped
While totally unnecessary if you're not a gamer or audiophile, the Z640s are nonetheless a very popular and low cost set of high quality speakers. Whether you talk about the 45.5W satellite output/25.7W subwoofer output or the very effective magnetic shielding that protects your speakers from interference from other devices, you can't help but love these speakers. They have a great reputation for reliability and longevity in general, and our extensive personal use of these speakers only backs up that claim. If you want surround sound on the cheap, it's hard to beat the Z640. If you're a big gamer, we suggest the Audigy 2, if you can afford to spend the money. Personally, we find the immersive gaming experience of the Z640s and an Audigy 2 to be truly great, but others may not be so impressed and will opt for the cheaper variant.
Alternative: Logitech Z-5300 THX Certified 5.1 speaker
Price: $144 shipped
The Z-5300 is, more or less, the more powerful version of Logitech's more successful brother, the Z-640. Besides obviously supporting 5.1 channels of sound, the Z-5300 is able to boast such features as a 100W subwoofer and a greater than 85 dB signal to noise ratio. The surround sound gaming and movie experience is tremendous, paired with a good Audigy 2 sound card. These speakers can get impressively loud and best of all, we didn't encounter any sort of crackling or distortion as volume was turned up to excruciating levels. For the price, these speakers are almost as unbeatable as the Z-640's, though not quite the bargain considering the $89 price delta in favor of the Z-640. Still, the Z-5300's are a good "power" upgrade, so to speak.
If, for whatever reason, you're not interested in high end sound and will be gaming or watching movies mostly with your headphones, obviously an expensive surround sound system will be pretty useless. If that's the case, you may just want to opt for 2.0 or 2.1 speakers, such as the ones recommended in last week's Entry Level Guide. But, if you have to choose between a good sound card and a good speaker system, we suggest that you go with the speaker system.
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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qquizz - Saturday, July 24, 2004 - link
Can anyone verify this statementin the article? I am considering buying one of these."We're listing a WD Raptor as an alternative purely for speed purposes. Those looking for faster load times and a generally snappier experience will want to play with a powerful drive such as this one. Thankfully, the earlier speed flaws with the 36.7GB were fixed, and WD 36.7GB drives with identical performance to their older 74GB brothers have been shipping for some months now."
smithpd - Sunday, July 18, 2004 - link
I would like to see a different spread of costs on the Buyer's Guides. You have 500 for the entry level, 1000 for the mid-range, and now 3600 for the high end. I submit that many readers would be interested in something that is in the 2000 price category, which I would call midrange. So, how about 500 entry, 1000 budget, 2000 midrange, 3000 high end, and ?? for the god box.Your previous high ends were more reasonable and sensible, IMO.
gherald - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link
Yeah benchmarking is a good idea, and it's been suggested before.I think AT is safe in going with reputable ram. Perhaps LL isn't required, but it should at least be the alternative choice. For the main recommendation, I would go with a single ~$100 stick of 512.
Dantzig - Saturday, July 17, 2004 - link
"I will continue to ask AT to assemble these systems and run some benchmarks on them."This is an excellent suggestion! It would be wonderful to have each system run the same basic benchmark suite and then graph the results together. This way, it would be easy for a user to determine if a given system will meet his/her specific needs.
Zebo - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I also agree with the other posters about 1024MB of ram, in fact you could get 1024MB of Adata Cas 2.5 for almost the same price ($147) as your LL choice.Zebo - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
Why recommend $126 LL ram Evan?When you consider the price/performance it's an extremly poor value over ram such as Cas 2.5 Adata for $77 for two stick of 256MB PC3200.
Almost double the price, but does it offer anywhere near double the performance? I don't think so. I'm not sure what the performance difference is using LL expensive Corsair... maybe 3-5%?
I guess I'm too stuck the linear P/P relationships to like this choice.
TrogdorJW - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I totally agree with the memory comments. These days, 256 MB DIMMs are a total dead-end purchase. Sure, you can run dual channel (which is really only important on the P4 platform right now), but then you would be limited to a total of 1 GB of RAM (4x256) for fastest performance and stability. 2x256 + 2x512 would likely be an iffy proposition at best.Besides, you could even recommend 1GB of decent quality OCZ for a moderate increase in price. You can get 2x512 OCZ performance RAM that runs 2-3-3-6 on Intel systems for $220, or 2-3-2-6 for $240. Or if you want to stick with Mushkin, you can get their 512 MB value DIMMs for $79 each (2.5-4-4 timings), or a 2x512 Level One pack for $239 (the same 2-3-2 timings as OCZ).
512 MB of RAM just isn't going to cut it for gaming or other high-end work, which as KnightOwl explained is the only good reason to upgrade from the budget system anyway. It's like recommending someone go out and purchase a moderate sports car... only get the 2.0L 4-cylinder engine! I mean, anyone looking for a sports car is really interested in going faster than a typical car, so they would want a bigger engine (and gas mileage be damned).
Similar to the RAM argument, there's a problem with the hard drive alternative recommendation. While the Raptor is going to please a bunch of the die-hard fanboys, don't your own tests show that a good 7200 RPM SATA drive is pretty much the same performance as the old Raptor while providing significantly more storage? If you have to have a fast hard drive (for whatever reason), then you really need to get the 74 GB Raptor, as it made quite a few improvements to the original. I suppose the Maxline III isn't yet available, but if you're looking for improved gaming or high-end performance, the Raptor I is only marginally better than 7200 RPM drives, and not even many of them in gaming: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=21...
But hey, thanks for finally adding a better alternative case recommendation and getting rid of the noisy WD JB hard drive! Silence (or at least less noise) is a wonderful thing.
BTW, just my opinion, but I think $1250 is a better target price for a "moderate" PC (and $750 for a budget PC). You're still forced to cut too many corners to meet the $1000 budget. A moderate PC really needs at least 9800 Pro graphics and 1 GB of RAM these days - even 1 GB of lower performance RAM. Like I said, though, just my opinion. :)
gherald - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
Evan,What I mean by 256mb being useless is in 2-3 years they will be like 128mb are modules today.
If and when the user upgrades to a dual channel system they can just buy a second 512mb stick. 1024mb oughta be more standard by then anyway, we all know Longhorn is going to be a resource hog, and Linux's will allways put it to good use with disk cache.
I happen to think dual channel is somewhat overrated; for an athlon XP it might be worthwhile but with the 64's integrated memory controller it's just not that big of a deal anymore. Don't AT reviews agree?
JackHawksmoor - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I've also got to disagree with the RAM thing. It makes a lot more sense to go with higher latency RAM, and either save the money or get a better GPU, or CPU, or double the RAM. Tom's showed the Athlon 64 has at most roughly a 4% performance benefit with faster RAM, and you can get a MUCH bigger boost than that for the money. IMO low lateny RAM only makes sense for a "high-end" system.Also, where's the Asus K8N-E Deluxe review dangnabit!
Just nitpicking. I love these guides :)
chuwawa - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I agree with everything that has been said about the memory.I consider myself a mid-range user and I thought the guide was very good except for the video card and memory suggestions.
Knightowl explained it perfectly. I think mid-range systems are mostly for people that game and do some sort of video editing but can't afford to dish out the money for the best hardware.
512mb for a gamer really is OK, but 1GB is preferred. However, when you buy 2 256mb modules, you somewhat screw yourself for the future because you will only be able to upgrade to 756mb (well more, but who will recommend buying a 1gb stick).
Anyway I think recommending a single 512mb stick as the first choice and 2 512mb sticks in dual channel as the 2nd choise would be best.
As far as the video card recommendations: just switch them. ;)