The Cost-Effective PC from Extremetech.com 2005 Edition

Build a PC with the Best Bang for the Buck
June 7, 2005
By Jason Cross, http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=153659,00.asp

Finding the Sweet Spot Our usual Modus Operandi for the recommended configurations presented in the Build It section of the site involves trying to put together a quality PC for a specific purpose. Perhaps it's a money-is-no-object Gaming PC, a Media Center PC destined for the living room, or a Linux-based home server.

The very nature of the PC is to be flexible and customizable, but we realize that not everyone can have his needs pigeonholed into these purpose-built PCs. Some of us need a good general-purpose PC that can handle almost any task. Something that's great for typical office desktop applications, downloading music and video, syncing up with a music player, burning DVDs, light video editing, playing games, watching movies, editing photos…the whole kit and caboodle.

With this edition of our Build It series, we strive to recommend system components for just such a PC. The idea is simple: Rather than picking a price point or a particular task and optimizing a PC for it, we'll examine each part in turn, considering its usefulness in a general-purpose PC and choosing the component that reaches that magic intersection where performance and features intersect with price.

We realize that all PC users' needs are different, and your own might not quite fit into our idea of a general-purpose PC. That's fine. This is a starting point—a set of recommended components that we feel combine for a great all-around PC—from which you can deviate from as your tastes warrant. Maybe you are a music and movie downloading addict who requires more hard drive space. Perhaps burning DVDs holds no attraction for you, but you want an even faster graphics card for the ultimate in gaming. Only you can tailor a PC toward your specific tastes, but we think this configuration definitely delivers a whole lot of bang for the buck. Continued...
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CAPTION
We tried to find the sweet spot between price and performance for every component of this PC.-->Rule Number 1 for our Build It systems is this: The stuff we recommend has to be readily available, in stock, at online vendors we would trust with our own money. We don't just go with the lowest price we can find anywhere in the wild land of online commerce. Prices tend to fluctuate and we're sure that you can find a better deal if you dig around enough. We'd rather err on the side of "you can actually find these prices" than promise a super-cheap system you couldn't actually build. So with those things in mind, here are our part choices:
Component
Product (with review link)
Price
Summary
CPU
Athlon 64 3800+ (Socket 939)
$370 check prices
Great for games, video encode or decode, and any other CPU-intensive task.
Motherboard
WinFast NF4UK8AA
$109 (street)
A great value for those looking to get an nForce 4 Ultra board.
Memory
Kingston ValueRAM KVR400X64C25 (512MB x2)
$114 check prices
For DDR400 RAM, CAS 2.5 latency stuff is the sweet spot right now.
Graphics
ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB
$295 check prices
This is one of the best all-around graphics cards on the market. It lets you get the most out of current games without breaking the bank, and will sustain you through next year's games, too.
Sound card
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (OEM)
$69 check prices
If you want your PC to sound good and your games to run fast, you really should invest in a good sound card like this one.
Keyboard
Microsoft Natural Multimedia
$20 check prices
Microsoft makes reliable and comfortable keyboards with good software. The large media keys are more useful than you think.
Mouse
Logitech MX510 Optical
$28 check prices
Fast, responsive, and programmable, the MX510 is a great mouse for the price.
Hard drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB SATA
$95 check prices
For under $100, this gives you plenty of capacity and good performance
Optical drive
Sony DRU-720A Dual Layer
$80 check prices
The Sony drive is a great DVD burner, offering exceptional burn performance and a compact size at a reasonable price, but other drives may offer better DVD read performance.
Case
Antec Sonata
$90 check prices
The Sonata strives for reduced noise—and succeeds for the most part. It's neither beige nor garish.
Speakers
Logitech Z-640 5.1
$60 check prices
Decent 5.1 speakers for only $60.
Floppy drive/media reader
Mitsumi FA404A w/flash memory reader
$26 check prices
You still need the floppy for installing RAID drivers, but at least you can use your memory cards, too.
Power Supply
Thermaltake W0068 460W
$87 check prices
Your unused power plugs may cause a little clutter since it doesn’t offer detachable power lines, but this is plenty of power with all the right connectors
Operating system
Windows XP Home
$74 check prices
If you're into games, you want Windows XP. The Home Edition gives you everything you need, and costs a lot less than Pro.
Total
$1,517

When the final price is right around $1,500 for a system this complete and capable, we think we've found an excellent price/performance ratio. However, we left out the display this time around. There are tons of good LCD flat panel displays arriving on the market, some with very fast response times, but some people still prefer CRTs. So we're punting on this until the next time around. By then, we should see sub-8ms flat panels on the market. But we did include the keyboard and mouse, which can be very personal choices. If you have a current system to keep your input devices, monitor, and speakers from, you're looking at substantial price reduction.
The price drops to $1,378 without those parts—well within the budget for most computer buyers.

This system isn't all about price, though. It's about what you get for that price. Let's go component-by-component and discuss why we think each represents the best value for your PC-building dollar.

AMD's high-end Athlon 64 CPUs are some of the most powerful on the market, able to hold their own with Intel's best on almost any task, and surpassing them on some CPU-intensive tasks like video encoding. For playing games, they simply cannot be touched. But we went with this CPU for more than its current performance. We know AMD will be supporting Socket 939 as a CPU platform for some time to come, even after the introduction of its next socket format some time in 2006. This is a platform with the headroom to move to a far more powerful dual-core Athlon 64 X2 somewhere down the line, without requiring you to replace the motherboard or RAM.

AMD does offer more powerful and expensive CPUs, but once you cross the $400 boundary, you start running into diminishing returns on the price versus performance curve. We're big fans of AMD's dual-core CPUs, but they're just not readily available yet, and they're a bit too costly for our tastes.

Also, when you're shopping around, it's worth looking for a 3800+ based on the Venice core. Venice is AMD's code name for the Athlon 64 built on a 90nm SOI process, and includes the SSE3 instruction set.

An Athlon 64 3800+ is plenty beefy for now, but you'll be able to easily move to dual-core in the future.-->
Product Name:
Athlon 64 3800+ (socket 939) (Venice core)
Company:
AMD
Price:
$370 (street)
Pros:
Great bang for the buck; socket 939 allows easy future expansion.
Cons:
Only 512KB of L2 cache.
Summary:
Great for games, video encode or decode, and any other CPU-intensive tasks.
Rating:

We first reviewed Foxconn's nForce 4 Ultra board back in March, and found it an exceptional value. What better board to use in a system striving for the most bang for the buck? The WinFast NF4UK8AA may not be perfect—we're not fans of the location of the SATA-II connectors, for instance—but it offers all the features of the nForce 4 Ultra chipset at an extremely attractive price, it's stable, and there's nothing about it that would keep us from recommending it. Continued...

Product Name:
WinFast NF4UK8AA
Company:
Foxconn
Price:
$109 (street)
Pros:
The cheapest nForce 4 Ultra board on the market; feature rich and stable.
Cons:
SATA-II connectors could be located better; no CPU multiplier adjustment.
Summary:
A great value for those looking to get an nForce 4 Ultra board.
Rating:

We're not concerned with really super low-latency or high-frequency RAM in this machine, nor with RAM that can withstand higher voltages. That stuff is great for maintaining stability in a highly overclocked rig, but we're sticking with stock speeds here. To that end, we wanted to make sure we had 1GB of name-brand RAM, but the brand is less important than the price and warranty.

We found a good deal on a pair of 512MB Kingston ValueRAM modules with a CAS latency of 2.5, which is just fine for our needs. It's a step up from the really inexpensive stuff with a CAS latency of 3.0, and its will give us a little performance kick, but moving up to CAS 2 RAM generally carries a pretty high price increase. CAS 2.5 stuff is the sweet spot right now, if you're not going to do major overclocking. Continued...

The best absolute price/performance ratio in graphics cards is in generation-old technology. The problem is, while the price is really super low, the performance isn't quite high enough to last you very long. There's no value in buying a video card you'll need to upgrade in six months to play the latest games.

So where's the "sweet spot?" Graphics cards around the $300 price mark offer probably the best mix of raw performance, price, and cutting-edge features. They're fast enough to run all modern games with all the details cranked up, often with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, and you can rest easy knowing that the games coming six months from now won't make you want to upgrade again.

We examined a whole pile of video cards in our Graphics Price/Performance Shootout. Of them, the Radeon X800XL really stands out as a product that can push high frame rates without costing over $500. If you prefer Nvidia-based graphics cards, the GeForce 6800GT would also be a great choice.

Product Name:
ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB
Company:
ATI
Price:
$295 (street)
Pros:
Great performance; future-proof enough that you won't need to upgrade soon.
Cons:
Newer, better, cheaper graphics cards are always on the horizon...
Summary:
This is one of the best overall graphics cards on the market.
Rating:

If you're really on a tight budget, you can skip the sound card entirely and just use your integrated PC audio. We find that's almost always a bad idea, though. The signal-to-noise ratio is typically awful, 3D audio options are limited, and since all the processing is host-based, games that use lots of audio channels can slow down a bit.

If you really want your games, movies, and music to sound good, you need a decent sound card. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS—just about the most full-featured consumer sound card on the market—can be had for only about $70. The ZS model supports up to 7.1 sound for DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX movies, is THX certified, and lets you record and playback full-resolution 24-bit audio. Get all the speeds and feeds in our Audigy 2 ZS review.
Product Name:
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value
Company:
Creative
Price:
$69 (street)
Pros:
Solid audio quality; DTS-ES; lower- and mid-range editions deliver good value.
Cons:
It's $70 that you don't necessarily need to spend with integrated audio essentially free on all motherboards.
Summary:
If you want your PC to sound good and your games to run fast, you really should invest in a good sound card like this one.
Rating:

It takes a bit of digging around, but you can find really fantastic deals on keyboards and mice on the web. As long as you're not buying the very latest cordless laser mouse or some crazy does-everything multimedia keyboard, you can get a lot for very little.

Microsoft's Multimedia Keyboard is quality stuff. We priced out the ergonomic "Natural" model, but the straight-key version costs about the same. Once you start using the media and shortcut keys above the function keys, you might get addicted to them. It's especially handy for flipping through your audio tracks if you play your own music in the background while gaming. Nobody wants to minimize their game just to skip a track.

We wanted to step up to a high-performance mouse for this system, but the really great cordless mice are still pretty expensive. For only about $30, you can pick up the fantastic Logitech MX510 gaming mouse. It's got a great shape and plenty of programmable buttons, plus an 800 DPI tracking sensor and 12-bit report rate for really smooth motion.
Product Name:
Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard
Company:
Microsoft
Price:
$20 (street)
Pros:
Good key response; well-designed shortcut and media keys
Cons:
Split-key shape bothers some users, though a straight version is available too; no USB ports.
Summary:
A USB version with a couple extra ports would be nice, but this is a well-designed and sturdy keyboard
Rating:
Product Name:
Logitech MX510 Mouse
Company:
Logitech
Price:
$28 (street)
Pros:
800dpi resolution; 12-bit sampling; comfortable shape; plenty of programmable buttons.
Cons:
A corded mouse in an increasingly cordless world; 800dpi is a little tame by "extreme gaming mouse" standards.
Summary:
It was a pretty good mouse when first released, but recent price drops have made this a fantastic deal.
Rating:

If you use your computer for lots of tasks, you need lots of storage space. It's all about digital media. Sure, games can suck up several gigabytes each, but the boom in peer-to-peer media downloading has just exploded the typical PC's storage needs. Whether you're legally sucking down thousands of songs with a subscription service like Napster to Go or illegally snagging every episode of Chappelle's Show, you'll find that your hard drive can fill up with digital media in a heartbeat.

So we budgeted a few more dollars for a nice 160GB hard drive. Yes, there are bigger drives out there, and if you really don't like to delete anything, you'll want to spend a few more bucks to go up to 200GB or more. We've found that the 160GB size drives represent a really good value when you balance performance and capacity against cost. Continued...
Product Name:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB SATA
Company:
Seagate Technology
Price:
$95 (street)
Pros:
Good performance and capacity.
Cons:
With SATA-II interfaces starting to appear, it would be nice if this was a SATA-II drive.
Summary:
For under $100, this gives you plenty of capacity and good performance.
Rating:

We reviewed this Sony drive's brother, the DRU-710A, and found it to be one of the best optical drives on the market. There's really no substantial difference between the 710A and the 720A we can discern, once you upgrade the 710A's firmware to support full 16X burning.

This is one of the fastest optical drives we've tested, and it handles pretty much every format on the planet except for DVD-RAM, but who uses that anyway? What's most remarkable is that what once was a $100+ item is now available for $80 or less if you shop around! Truly a great deal on one of the best drives around. Oh, and it comes with a black faceplate in the box, so we can swap that out to match our black case. Sweet. Continued...
Product Name:
Sony DRU-720A Dual Layer
Company:
Sony
Price:
$80 (street)
Pros:
Excellent burn performance; good software bundle; compact size.
Cons:
Not the best DVD-ROM performer.
Summary:
The Sony drive is a great DVD burner, offering exceptional burn performance and a compact size at a reasonable price, but other drives may offer better DVD read performance.
Rating:

You don't have to spend a fortune to get decent 5.1 audio on your PC. Sure, you could go for those THX-certified, 400-watt megaspeakers that set you back several hundred dollars, but unless you're trying to piss off the neighbors, what's the point? For more modest listening levels, these Logitech Z-640 speakers are just great. They're not part of Logitech's most recent line-up, which is probably why you can find them discounted for around $60. No, they won't blow the roof off, but they deliver plenty of punch for games and movies at reasonable listening levels. Continued... We've been big fans of the Antec Sonata since we first reviewed it two years ago. (Get it? Big fans I'll be here all week, be sure to tip your waitress.) It's small enough not to dominate your computer room, but big enough to work in comfortably. The drive bay is easy to access, since it's rotated 90 degrees for the drive trays to slide easily out toward the side of the case rather than the back. Best of all, it's pretty quiet—this is one of the first cases to make use of lots of top-end ventilation (where that hot power supply is) combined with a large 120mm slow-moving rear exhaust fan. The Sonata has good competition these days, but it's more affordable than ever, and has a certain simple elegance about it. We can't wait to see what Antec brings to the PC desk with the Sonata II, coming soon but not quite here yet.
Product Name:
Antec Sonata
Company:
Antec
Price:
$90 (street)
Pros:
Understated, elegant finish; quiet operation; relatively easy installation.
Cons:
It's a bit tight around the socket of an Athlon motherboard; front door can be a nuisance.
Summary:
The Sonata strives for reduced noise, and succeeds for the most part. And it's neither beige nor garish.
Rating:

The Sonata often comes with a 380-watt power supply, but in today's computing world, that's not very forward-looking. CPUs are getting more power hungry with each passing month, graphics cards are chewing up serious amperage, and then there are those drives and USB devices and fans and… well you get the idea. We thought a really good power supply upgrade was in order, and Thermaltake's W0068 460-watt unit does the trick. The lower fan is really large to help keep the unit cool without making it noisy. It's got plenty of amperage for those power-hungry graphics cards, processors, and fast DVD burners. It's even got a little internal blue light that sort of leaks out the holes in the side of the Sonata case, matching the case's front blue LEDs. Naturally, it has all the connectors for modern high-power motherboards, SATA hard drives, and PCI Express graphics cards. We wouldn't put anything less in a brand new system. Continued...
Product Name:
Thermaltake W0068 460W
Company:
Thermaltake
Price:
$87 (street)
Pros:
Good wattage and amperage ratings; SATA and PCIe connectors.
Cons:
No removable power lines.
Summary:
Your unused power plugs may cause a little clutter since it doesn't offer detachable power lines, but this is plenty of power with all the right connectors.
Rating:

If you really want to do everything with your PC, the question is not whether or not to run Windows XP, it's which flavor of XP should you run? There's no need for XP Pro, since we're not running a dual-CPU system. Media Center Edition is an option, but with no TV tuner card, we wouldn't recommend it. Naturally, you could run Linux for free, but it's sort of a challenge to do real media stuff with Linux, you can't access the major online music services, and of course the game selection is paltry.

This particular Build It recommended configuration is as much about utility as performance. Still, you can't claim to deliver a lot of "bang for the buck" if you don't quantify how much "bang" you have, right? So let's look at a few performance numbers.

When compared with our old Bang-for-the-Buck PC, the new system predictably runs much better on the general computing tasks tested by the synthetic PCMark benchmark. Take special note of the dramatically higher memory score. Our old system used a Socket 754 processor, with a single 64-bit memory channel. The new system has a 128-bit memory controller from a Socket 939 CPU, delivering lots more bandwidth.

Our previous CPU choice was an Athlon 64 3400+, and the step up to the 3800+ model has improved media-encoding times quite a bit. The differences here aren't as dramatic as in other areas, though.

When it comes to games, our old Bang-for-the-Buck system wasn't much to write home about. It got the job done, but just barely. What's more, that system was old enough that we don't have benchmarks on many of our newer games. To give a better comparison, we're stacking it up against our recent $800 Gaming PC. That might not seem fair, considering the price differential, but consider that the $800 Gaming PC doesn't include a monitor or speakers, while our current system at least has speakers.

All recent games are running well over 60 frames per second here, which is excellent. Several of them are running fast enough that we could easily turn up the resolution, or add some anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Continued...

We're certainly happy with the performance of this $1,500 system, but it's really about much more than performance. We could easily have gotten the same benchmarks scores—higher even—for hundreds of dollars less if we didn't care about things like hard drive capacity, DVD burning, 5.1 speakers, or an aesthetically pleasing and quiet case. What makes this PC special is not just the dollars spent divided by some arbitrary benchmark score, it's the value of the package as a whole. It's not just that the PC is fast, it's that it's nice, too.

Except for the monitor, this $1,500 system is a complete package. It's got a high-end CPU and motherboard, ready for the next generation of dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processors. It's got a speedy SATA hard drive offering plenty of storage space. One of the best optical drives around will burn your CDs or DVDs, including dual-layer discs. The sound card has a killer signal to noise ratio and 3D audio acceleration to deliver truly great audio from your movies, music, and games. And it's all stuffed into a quiet, pleasing case that's easy to work on, with a power supply that delivers enough juice to handle a few CPU and graphics card upgrades down the road.

We didn't skimp on the external stuff, either. There are inexpensive 5.1 speaker systems out there, but many of them sound so hollow and tinny that we wouldn't recommend them. Logitech's Z-640s won't embarrass you, though. Even the keyboard and mouse are a cut above the generic stuff you typically get with pre-built store PCs.

As you've looked over our recommended components, you no doubt have said to yourself "well you don't really need that, you can get something cheaper" or "I can't believe they went with something that skimpy, people need more than that." If you have a strong opinion on either the component choices or price, drop by the discussion forum and share your insights with us and other readers. What we have presented here is a great place to start, and if you're not sure what to buy, this is a template we're sure you'd be happy with.

Copyright (c) 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.