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The Perfect System - Last updated 06/02/98I know everybody out there has a system they are just dying to have. But actually, when I think about it, dreaming about or buying the perfect system is a little stupid. Because, let's face it, the perfect system is a dual 300 MHz Pentium II with 1GB of RAM and a big 15 disk RAID 5 array of Seagate 10,000 RPM Cheetah's (as of 7/23/97, anyways). Or maybe a Cray supercomputer or an SGI Onyx. The Perfect PC in this context is simply something which you throw as much money at as possible. And that's no fun (well, it would be fun to have that system, but let's face it, most people can't!). When people sit down to construct their dream systems, the allure of it is that it's almost within your reach...if you saved a little more money, or if you spent today the money that you spent on your last computer, you might just be able to afford it.... So I have something different in mind for my definition of the perfect system. The Perfect System has the following points: The Perfect System is almost affordable. There are no outrageously bad price/performance values in it just so the whole system can eke out an extra point on Winstone 97. Now granted, some people need the best in a category no matter what the cost, because their particular specialization or field of work justifies it. Those people can go buy the rest of the stuff here and spend whatever they want on whatever part it is they need. The Perfect System is versatile. You want it to be packed with a lot of cool features. Cool, but not so completely specialized that only 0.1% of the population cares about it. The Perfect System is still awesome. It's good enough so that you can tell people exactly what you have in your machine and they will say "Man, that kicks butt!" Essentially, the Perfect System is the concept of putting together a whoop ass system without a whoop-your-ass price. Now isn't that a lot more practical AND interesting? After all, anybody can say, "Hey, let's spend an unlimited amount of money and buy the best and most of everything!" Building a fast, flexible and powerful system that is still affordable...now that's where the real work comes in. OK, so it's not literally "The Perfect System". But what else could I call it? "The Damn Good System"? No, that's a stupid name! So here we go... Processor(s) Pentium Pro 180 - $190 - Buy from: Net
Express These are my current picks for different CPU's. The Pentium Pro 150 is (or was) easily found and overclocks with almost 100% reliability to 166 MHz and often to 180 MHz. Plus, at around $180 street, it is (or was) by far the best processor value among the Pentium Pro's. The reason I keep saying "or was" is that the supply of these may be drying up since the price was so good and Intel discontinued production of them. If you picked these up and built yourself an SMP dual PPro 150, congratulations! This was a very popular option for the past half-year or so and may not be one much longer. It was a great value, but its performance may now be lagging compared to the other chips. The Pentium Pro 180 was not as good a value for a long time, but its price has dropped significantly over the past month or two, making it the new successor to the PPro 150 as best buy. It, again, is easily found and is in a different class of overclocking altogether from the PPro 150. The PPro 180 apparently comes from the same line as the Pentium Pro 200, meaning it usually can clock (or overclock) within the same range as easily as its bigger brother. This simply means that with a PPro 180, you are nearly guaranteed to hit 200 MHz, you can expect a very good chance of reaching 233 MHz, and you may even get to 240 MHz if you are lucky. I skipped the Pentium Pro 166 for one reason...it's in a class of its own. This processor only comes w/512K cache on-chip. If you pay a little attention to CPU pricing, you know that the Pentium Pro 200 w/512K L2 is more than double the price of the 256K L2 model. The extra cache for all but the most heavy-duty applications is not terribly important, but among people who know computers it will probably earn you some bragging rights. Not only that, but the PPro 166 overclocks within the same range as the PPro 180 and 200, making it the best overclocking value of any Pentium Pro. Price and availability are the catch with this processor. Few people even know that this processor exists, let alone are capable of buying it. The price is also an unknown. I managed to get mine for an amazing price, but whether or not this is the going price is unknown to me, since nobody sells them. However, this is without a doubt THE best buy, if you can find it (Problem 1), and at the right price (Problem 2). I skipped the Pentium Pro 200 altogether because every PPro 180 I've heard of runs as a 200 anyways, so you might as well save yourself the extra $120. Plus, if you are going to spend the extra money, you should get yourself a Pentium II 233 instead. The Pentium 233 is not by a long shot as good a value as the PPro 150, 166 or 180, but is still within reach. You will also buy yourself the potential to reach up to 300 MHz by overclocking, which is worth a lot of consideration! There is another consideration which I haven't mentioned yet...multiprocessing. If you are going this route I'd have to recommend the Pentium Pro's for this. One Pentium II 233 is doable, but buy two of them and you will really take a beating price-wise. Plus SMP does not really play up to the MMX capabilities of the Pentium II and the full-speed cache of the Pro gives it a slight edge in SMP comparatively over the Pentium II. The K6-200 is the best value right now if you are an upgrader with a Pentium-based motherboard already and your performance priorities are in business and everyday applications. You could build a new system around the K6, but if you were starting with a fresh slate, I would definitely spend the extra hundred dollars more and go with the PPro 180 instead. Building an SMP system with K6's isn't even possible right so that also goes out the door. 8/20/97 - The Pentium Pro 150 is scarce and the Pentium Pro 180 has dropped sufficiently in price to the point where I feel it's better to buy a PPro 180 than a 150. The PPro 180 has a much greater range of overclocking potential, making it a nice buy. Again, although I don't think the Pentium II's are really that great of a buy right now, if you have to get one I would probably buy a Pentium II 266 instead of the 233. The difference is only $100 right now, which is probably worth it. Update - 9/6/97: The Pentium Pro 180 has dropped even more. It's a no-brainer right now as far as I'm concerned. Update - 9/28/97: The Pentium Pro 180 is still by far the strongest buy. If you are dead set on Pentium II, the 233 and 266 are kind of a toss-up. The 233 usually o/c's in the same range as the 266, but the 266 is only about $100 more. The P2-300 is still way out of the reasonable pricing range. Update - 1/5/97: The recent round of price cuts on the P2-233 has made it an extremely strong buy. I'd probably pick the P2-233 over the PPro 180 at this point. Motherboard Single Pentium Pro - Tyan Tacoma S1672 - $195.95 - Buy from: NECX Direct Well, first of all, you'll notice that all the motherboards I list here are ATX. ATX is a different form factor for motherboards introduced by Intel that puts most components on the motherboard in a logical fashion (so that, for example, your brand new expansion card doesn't run smack dab into your CPU or RAM), facilitates system cooling, and is cheaper to manufacture too. If you are putting together a brand new system, ATX is the way to go, no doubt about it. It doesn't even cost more and sometimes it costs less! Of course, upgraders typically have to go the AT route because their AT case demands it. In my mind, for any dual Pentium Pro or Pentium II board, Tyan motherboards are the way to go. They are significantly cheaper, they are fast, they have just about maximum expandability, and they are stable, provided everything is set up correctly (which goes for any system). The key is good RAM...flaky RAM will make you tear your hair out for days trying to figure out what is wrong with your brand new system. Although Tyan clearly leads the field in price/performance as far as dual processor boards go, there are a number of good choices among single processor boards. Again, I believe Tyan is still the best price/performance wise among the single processor boards, but if certain other features catch your eye (like 75/83 MHz capability), you might spend the extra money to get another brand like ASUS, Abit, or Megatrends instead. No dual processor board offers 75/83 MHz settings, by the way, and, as I've mentioned on my other pages, the bus speed is not terribly critical in Pentium Pro and Pentium II systems. 8/20/97 - I recently read that the ASUS KN97-X supports 75 MHz bus speed (as an undocumented jumper setting). Considering ASUS's reputation for high quality products and the decent pricing of this motherboard, as well as the option for onboard audio, which can save you a expansion slot plus a few bucks, this board looks like a strong contender. Update - 9/28/97: The ASUS P2L97 series is one of the first 440LX options for consumers, and surprisingly enough, the boards are reasonably priced. The board comes with some fancy features like onboard temperature monitoring and software configurable bus speed and clock-multiplier settings, as well as the 440LX-based features like AGP and SDRAM support. Perhaps its greatest shortcoming is the lack of ISA slots - only 2 total, 1 of which is shared with a PCI slot. The onboard SCSI option (Adaptec Ultra-Wide AIC-7880) is a plus if you plan on getting SCSI anyway. Video card Diamond Stealth II - $106.95 - $20 mail-in rebate = $86.95 - Buy from:
NECX Direct The actual situation right now, is, most video cards are so damn fast it doesn't matter what you get. You know most people wouldn't be able to tell if they had a Mystique or Millenium II in their system and you probably know people who run at 640x480 because everything else makes the fonts too small for them to read! So leave raw speed out of the equation and you are left with features and price. Namely, driver feature set, stability and OS support. Potential add-ons and image quality too. The Jaton ET6000 covers the majority of people. Excellent video playback, great speed and good image quality in Windows 95 at resolutions of around 1024x768 or below, and excellent DOS (game) speed make this card the choice for most people. Weak Windows NT support. And the 135 MHz RAMDAC impairs its ability to output a good image at higher resolutions beyond 1024x768, but few people go beyond 1024x768 anyway. In fact, of the people I know, I'm the only one who does. For those people who do a lot of work in higher resolutions and especially if you use Windows NT, the Matrox Mystique fits the bill. Video playback is not as good, but stable and working accelerated NT drivers with many useful features combined with speed (in DOS and Windows) make this card one you won't regret buying. 1152x864 mode support and refresh rate customization down to +/- 1 Hz are two of the most notable features. You'd be surprised at how many vendors define Windows NT support as "you can get an image on the screen". That is, no acceleration; basically, video mode support and that's it. Additionally, the 170 MHz RAMDAC ensures a clean image at 1280x1024. 1280x1024 is about the highest usable resolution you can hit on an affordable monitor. Last, but not least, the Mystique has ports for Matrox's incredible video capture/editing/TV viewing solution, the Rainbow Runner. More on this baby later. At only $110, the Mystique doesn't have a hard price to swallow, and you might consider picking one up even if you don't need all its features. Finally, the Millenium II. Hands down the fastest 2D accelerator on the market. Blazing performance and image quality at even higher resolutions than 1280x1024. Overkill for almost everybody. Still, you might want it, who knows? Update - 9/6/97: The price on the Mystique 220 has dropped a lot and I'm changing the price to compensate. Update - 9/28/97: With the advent of AGP support in 440LX motherboard, the strongest contender seems to be cards based on the Riva 128 chipset from NVidia. The 3Dexplorer is fast is 2D and even faster than the Voodoo chipset in 3D. However, the card is severely hampered by its 4MB memory limit, although for full-screen games it should do the job just fine. It is possible that AGP support will make the constrictive memory size less of an issue, but this really has yet to be proven in practice. Driver support is weak and buggy but the situation is expected to improve since the chipset is so new. Update - 11/5/97: The driver support for this card has become considerably better. Drivers are good in 95 and NT, although video playback acceleration in NT is still pretty bad. The Canopus Total3D 128V is a new addition and a good one. The video-in features of this card easily make it worth the extra dollars if you don't plan on using the capabilities of something like the Rainbow Runner (most people won't need to). I heard that they might try to get you on the shipping and handling charges, though, so be ready to cancel your order if that's true. Update - 1/5/98: The Stealth II is the king of the hill for low cost 2D/3D acceleration. It's not the best at either, but it does both well and costs only $80 after a mail-in rebate. RAM Two 8x32 60ns 72-pin EDO SIMMS, 64MB total - $104 - Buy from: The Chip Merchant RAM is RAM, for the most part. Just make sure yours works and isn't flaky. The best tip I can give here is to ask specifically for Micron RAM. It typically doesn't cost anymore and the brand and quality are guaranteed to be about as good as you can get it. You can get Micron 50ns EDO RAM too, from Crucial Technology, which appears to be a division of Micron. They have lots of different varieties of memory, and they even offer 50ns EDO ECC RAM! Be warned, though, they are not what I would call cheap/inexpensive. Hard drive EIDE -- IBM DeskStar 8.4GB Ultra DMA - $384.95 - Buy from: NECX Direct The decision between EIDE and SCSI typically goes the way of EIDE. SCSI has two primary advantages over IDE: CPU utilization and physical drive performance. SCSI drives typically only use around 15% of the CPU during transfers, but EIDE, even with busmastering drivers, uses around 60-70%. The other point is that the highest performing drives can typically only be had in SCSI models. But make no mistake, you will have to pay for that performance increase. Consequently, SCSI is best used in situations where heavy disk access is constantly occurring or a lot of multitasking is taking place. SCSI has other advantages, but these are the most notable ones. The Quantum Fireball meets all of the requirements we are looking for in an EIDE hard drive. It's large, it's fast (5400 RPM), it's cheap per megabyte, and it even supports the Ultra ATA 33 standard, although that's not very important. There are a lot of good SCSI choices, mainly because they are all pretty expensive and in this case you tend to get what you pay for. IBM's UltraStar 2ES looks pretty good, at 4.3GB for $499.95. Update - 11/5/97: I replaced the Quantum Fireball with the DeskStar. The DeskStar is faster and a good drive. I included the 8.4GB DiamondMax, but I'd be wary of buying that drive if you are planning to do any overclocking, since recent models seem especially intolerant of higher bus speeds. Update - 1/5/97: The 8.4 DeskStar is the cheapest and the fastest. Why pick another? Monitor 17" MAG DJ-700 - $539.95 - Buy from: NECX Direct Unfortunately, the state of technology in monitor manufacturing/display technology has not kept pace with the advances in chip fabrication. Glass is glass and monitor tubes are almost the same today as they were 3 years ago. Until we find that fabrication based technologies have matured enough, this will continue to be the case. Consequently, monitors are only slightly cheaper than they used to be a few years ago and comprise a large portion of the system's cost. A lot of people are tempted to skimp here. I'd have to say, don't. The monitor is your viewport into the world of computing; it's what you are going to be staring at day in and day out. If you use your computer heavily, this is the last place you want to cut corners. Furthermore, think of it as an investment. Buy a nice monitor and it won't obsolete itself in a year like your processor will. You should be able to carry it over to your next system with no problems at all. My 17" monitor still looks great and is still worth pretty much what I paid for it. My Pentium 100, on the other hand, is a $60 lump sitting in a box on the other side of the room. I think 17" monitors are great for most. The MAG DJ-700 has a nice low 0.26mm dot pitch at a very reasonable price. 19" monitors are starting to become affordable now too, so if you really want you might get one of those. Modem Almost any 33.6 modem - $40-60 For most people, 33.6 is more than adequate. Most people can't even get that high,
actually. Do NOT get a Winmodem or any other software-based modem. These things may look like a good value but they are so cheap because they use your CPU to perform a lot of functions that modems typically do themselves. You will be screwed if you try to use these modems outside of Windows 95. Sound Card Creative Labs AWE 64 Value - $88.95 - Buy from: NECX Direct For the most part, few things cut the mustard today for Sound Blaster compatibility in DOS and Windows except for real Sound Blasters. Somewhat unfortunate, but so what, they don't cost that much. I remember paying $200 for my original 8-bit 11 kHz Sound Blaster with Talking Parrot software and Dr. Sbaitso, the talking psychiatrist. The AWE 64 value will suit your every need in terms of digital output, it's full duplex so that you can talk over the internet the way it was meant to be done, and it has wavetable to for MIDI. The MIDI is not that great, but hey, buy a better MIDI card if you need one or better yet, upgrade the RAM on the card and download some custom patch instruments. Most games have moved from using MIDI music to using Redbook audio or digital output anyways. Would you like a little tip? Use powered speakers and attach them to the line-out of the sound card. The speaker out generates a significant amount of noise, the line-out is WAY better. Speakers ???? - Buy from: NECX Direct CD-ROM Toshiba 24X ATAPI CD-ROM - $89.95 Plextor 12X/20X SCSI CD-ROM - $229 I still think 12X is excessive. I've never met anybody who needed more than 4X. It's not super expensive though, and Toshiba drives are pretty good and usually hit their rated speed, unlike many el-cheapo drive makers. If you want to buy the mother of all CD-ROM's, Plextor is the way to go. They are fast, they are SCSI (really low CPU utilization), and they can usually digitally extract audio at max speed. Very cool, but pretty expensive. I personally wouldn't buy one. CD-R drive ?Yamaha or HP? tentative - $350 The key for most people with CD-R's is not having the fastest speed to burn a CDR, but simply having the ability to burn one at all. 2X is cheaper and it gets the job done. Yamaha is pretty renowned in the CD-R community for its dependability and its support for the more esoteric features of CD creation, like Disk-At-Once, subcodes, etc. I'm a little unsure as to the availability of the 2X Yamaha writer, though. I only see the 4X one for sale, which is a good deal more expensive than most 2X models. I think I might have to recommend the HP6020i because it's really inexpensive. However, it lacks a couple of interesting features like packet writing and flash-upgradable firmware. Video Capture Matrox Rainbow Runner Studio - $178.95 - Buy from: NECX Direct Literally an unprecendented value in the history of Non-Linear Editing (NLE) on the PC. It has two primary drawbacks. It's only available as a daughterboard for the Matrox Mystique or Millenium II, and because it doesn't have onboard audio, it may be possible to lose audio/video sync during capture. This card is capable of capturing video at up to 704x480 resolution at 30 frames (60 fields) per second at a 6.6:1 compression ratio using MJPEG. And it really can do this, folks! The card comes with S-Video and composite inputs and outputs using a breakout cable which attaches to the back of the Mystique or Millenium II. But, that's not all! The Millenium gives you the ability to output your video to VCR via the outputs on the card. You can actually use this card as a home video editing solution to make your very own bad videos with cheesy plots! But, that's not all! The Rainbow Runner allows you use the outputs to display your desktop in Windows on a TV. Fun for playing games and watching Video CD's on your big 35" TV instead of your 17" monitor! But, that's not all! The Rainbow Runner features hardware MPEG1 and MJPEG based decompression. You can use it to playback those Video CD's you want to watch on your big 35" TV at full frame rate! But, that's not all! Hot damn! Like that isn't enough features already! Using something to tune channels with (like a VCR or Matrox's optional TV tuner card), you can actually watch TV on your PC, with all the capabilities of a computer like the ability to scan content, closed captioning, the works! Using the video inputs, you can watch anything you want on your monitor in real time! OK, that's it. Phew! Oh, an MPEG-2 accelerator addon for the Rainbow Runner is in the works (DVD!). Watch for it! TV Tuner Matrox Rainbow Runner TV Tuner - $69 - Buy from: NECX Direct I personally am not a big fan of watching TV on my PC but a lot of people seem to like to do it. The Rainbow Runner again provides an unbeatably low-cost solution if you happen to get the Rainbow Runner Studio. If you don't, you'll have to get a standalone card. I haven't looked into those too much yet, I'll try and get some more info on those soon. Scanner Microtek ScanMaker E6 - $280 - Buy from NECX
Direct I didn't bother much with scanners until my parents decided they wanted one. I went out, did a little research, and this is the one I came up with. The ScanMaker E6 is a flatbed scanner with most of the trimmings you'd need at an unbeatable price. 30-bit color depth, true 600-dpi resolution and high fidelity output mean you won't be sacrificing quality by buying this scanner either. It's only shortcoming as far as I can tell is its supposedly slow scanning speed...I can't imagine that would bother any normal user and professionals would obviously want to spend more money on a professional scanner. I'll have more info on this when I get the damn thing! Update - 9/6/97: If you read my news page you know that I got one of these guys (UMAX Astra 300P) and it works just like it's supposed to. Downsides are that it's a parallel port scanner and is only 24-bit dynamic color range and 300dpi optical resolution. I don't think it works in NT either. Upside is that it's only $99, man! Flatbed color scanner for $99!...That almost has impulse buy written all over it. Moral of the story is that it's cheap, it does the job, if you want a scanner, get it. 3D accelerator 3Dfx based card - $149.95 - Buy from: NECX
Direct There's really only one choice in this category so far and we all know what it is. The 3Dfx Voodoo chipset is so much better speed-wise, quality-wise and support-wise than other alternatives that it's almost scary. At this point in time it looks like the Voodoo Graphics chipset may finally be surpassed soon by other competitors (like Nvidia's RIVA 128), but considering the chipset has been in retail for nearly a year now, it's a pretty sad statement about the competition. All 3Dfx cards out right now are almost exactly the same, so choosing one isn't even that hard. For the sake of picking one, I'll say the Orchid Righteous 3D. Actually, there is a slightly different type of 3dfx card on the market based on the Voodoo Rush which is meant to be an integrated 2D/3D solution from Hercules called the Stingray 128/3D. It's plagued by bad support and slowdowns right now, so don't buy it. Update - 11/5/97: The Voodoo Graphics route is still a nice one, but at this point I think it might be better to go with the 2D/3D solutions like the NVidia Riva 128 based cards. They don't really cost all that much more than other cards and their 3D performance is great. When Voodoo 2 comes out near the beginning of next year, you'll have a serious 3D solution that you can tack on to your existing card without any worries. Ethernet card 3COM 3C595 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI NIC - $70? I believe you can always order one or two of these from 1-800-NET-3COM at evaluation pricing. You always get a great deal, but you can only get one or two. Fast, and with evaluation pricing, cheap too! What more do you need? You will probably never get a chance to use that Fast Ethernet, so you might be able to save yourself some bucks and get the 10 Mbps model. Case/enclosure Enlight 7230OM ATX Mid-Tower - $79 - Buy from: SDS Mark II I've already outlined the advantages of the ATX form factor: better layout, better cooling and cheaper to produce. Well, here are the cases you want. The Enlight has a good price and fairly compact. It has many drive bays and everything is modular or removable with clips or drive rails. The case is screwless, making it easier to open and close, but very secure. If you are concerned with having the most bays and/or making quite sure you have adequate airflow through the case to keep the system cool, then the full-tower InWin is for you. Heatsink/fan Big deal, huh? Well, as I've already noted on the thermal specs page, this can be one of the critical links in your system, even more so if you are overclocking. Get as big a heat sink as you can, use as big a fan as you can, and use thermal grease. Keyboard Obviously this is all personal preference. A lot of people like keyboards from NMB or Focus, a lot of people like the Microsoft Natural style keyboards, and a lot of people like their keyboards as cheap as possible. Perhaps you'd like a Dvorak keyboard, or maybe you need your function keys down the side and the CAPS LOCK and CTRL keys back in their original positions from the days of the first IBM PC. Mouse Most people go with Microsoft or Logitech Mice. Logitech has three buttons, which is a plus, and once you start using the middle button for the double-click, it's hard to go back. Microsoft also has an Intellimouse out with a mouse button/wheel in the middle, but they are not available as OEM models as far as I know, which makes them rather expensive. Joystick Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital - $40 Again, very much personal preference. I like this particular joystick becuase of its ergonomic design and heavy base, which provides stability when the action gets rough and you are thrashing the joystick about wildly. Floppy drive Any damn floppy drive - $15??? Truly a commodity item. Who cares how much they cost? Plus, they all come in one speed - SLOW. The only reason these things exist is so you can exchange really small files with your friends or, more importantly, boot your system. What I would build - Last updated 11/5/97This is all personal preference, arrived at by selecting my own favorites from the above parts as well as factoring in budgetary constraints. You can be reasonably confident of getting a nice deal if you were to go ahead, buy all these parts, and put them together. Two Pentium Pro 180's Total price: $3330 History of revisionsAugust 20 - Removed the Pentium Pro 150 and the Pentium II 233 from CPU recommendations and replaced them with the Pentium Pro 180 and the Pentium II 266, respectively. Added the ASUS KN97-X w/onboard audio as a motherboard recommendation.September 6 - Revised pricing on the Pentium Pro 180, Matrox Mystique 220, Rainbow Runner, Quantum Fireball 6.4GB IDE, and maybe some other stuff too but I've forgotten. Added a section on the UMAX Astra 300P flatbed color scanner. September 28 - Removed Pentium Pro 150 & 166 and added some clarifications about the P2 to the CPU section. Added the ASUS P2L97/P2L97-S to the motherboards section. Added the ASUS 3Dexplorer 3000 to the video card section. November 5 - Changed a bunch of stuff. Just go look. Richard Kuo, |
