To Buy, or not to Buy?

We haven't done a Buyers' Guide for a while, and enough things have changed in the midrange sector that it's high time we rectify the situation. We're going to try and narrow the focus a little bit this time, so there will basically be two system recommendations: one for AMD and one for Intel. That's not to say there aren't plenty of alternatives, and we will be listing many of the other options on individual component pages. The simple truth is that there are a lot of reasonable choices out there, so just because we don't list something explicitly doesn't mean that it's a bad choice. If you have any questions, you can always email me or ask our forum members for advice.

If you follow the computer hardware scene, you're probably already questioning the timing of this Buyers' Guide. AMD will be launching their new socket AM2 platform in just a few more weeks, so going out and purchasing a new system right now based on their older 939 platform doesn't seem to make much sense. However, the truth of the matter is that socket AM2 doesn't appear to be ready to add much in the way of performance. Basically, it will change memory types, there will be a couple new high-end processors, and later on we should also see some budget Sempron processors for the platform. This is the midrange sector, though, so we can immediately toss out chips like the FX-62 that will cost over $1000. Likewise, we can toss out the low-end single core Sempron chips. Given that this is a brand new platform, it's also reasonable to expect prices to be somewhat higher than the current platforms, and choice of components is also going to be limited - mostly in the motherboard area, but that's a critical component.

What it all comes down to is that we really don't expect AM2 to seriously change the outlook of the AMD market. It certainly won't be a bad platform, but we expect most midrange buyers will wait at least several months before switching, as that will give the platform a chance to mature, and it should also bring lower prices. High-end buyers will definitely want to wait, because at the top of the performance spectrum the new platform should offer the potential for another 10% more performance. Overclocking enthusiasts might also want to wait, if for no other reason than to see how DDR2 affects the price/performance overclocking scene. The current prices of DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 are much lower than competing DDR offerings, and while latency is slightly higher, you can get much higher bandwidth - that's especially if you want 1GB DIMMs. For the remaining potential buyers as well as upgraders, there is much less incentive to wait for the new platform. Waiting a few more weeks might save you $20, but that's probably about it.

What about Intel and the new Core Duo 2 chips? That question is a bit more tricky to answer. We fully expect Core Duo 2 to outperform anything else Intel currently offers, potentially by as much as 35% for the same price CPU - maybe even more! However, the launch date for Conroe is still two months away, and you still have to worry about the cost of motherboards, motherboard availability, not to mention the nature of version 1.0 hardware. The Intel overclocking enthusiasts can probably be happy short term by purchasing something like the AOpen i975Xa-YDG and Core Duo T2400. Unfortunately, that particular motherboard is rather expensive, and the Core Duo processors aren't cheap either. You basically end up matching the performance offered by AMD X2 overclocking at a higher price. Socket 775 975X motherboards are also expensive, and we're still not 100% sure they'll all work with Core Duo 2 chips, but they do potentially provide an upgrade path.

If you're willing to wait and find out how the market develops over the next couple months, that certainly isn't a bad idea. As we always say, you really only need to upgrade your computer when you're unhappy with the current level of performance. Plenty of people are still running old socket 478, 462, and 754 systems, and they're perfectly happy with the level of performance and they have. The "latest and greatest" computer games (in terms of graphical complexity, not necessarily gameplay) almost certainly struggle on those older systems without reducing the graphics quality, but if you don't play games you probably won't care about or notice the "missing" performance. We will of course be providing updated Buyers' Guides in the future, but for the most part we don't recommend waiting for the Next Big Thing to show up - you could potentially end up waiting forever for the "perfect" time to buy. Our Buyers' Guides are simply a recommendation for what we would buy at this point in time, and not an indication that we think you need to upgrade if you're running slower hardware.

AMD Platform

Starting with AMD, we immediately get to the most difficult part of the selection process. There are many good processors and motherboards on the market right now, and choosing one of each and calling it the "best" is not possible. Let me tell you my philosophy. Right now, for any computer that costs over $1000, I am going to be extremely hesitant about purchasing anything other than a dual core processor. That's based off of the way I use my computer: while I run plenty of tasks (e.g. games) that won't take advantage of the second core, I also run many tasks at the same time. Multitasking will inherently benefit from multi-core processors, and the overall experience is improved enough that I'm willing to spend an extra $150 for this upgrade. If all you ever do is play games, for the time being you can get by with a single core processor, and putting the extra money into a faster graphics card will improve the overall gaming performance more.

The second factor that needs to be considered is overclocking. In terms of the CPU, this isn't a major consideration, since almost all AMD chips currently overclock to around 2.6 GHz or more; overclocking considerations have a major impact on your choice of motherboard, however. If you don't intend to overclock at all, most motherboards will be fine. Your primary concern should be the features offered - do you want FireWire, RAID, high-definition audio, multiple graphics card support, etc.? Those of you who are interested in running multiple graphics cards will also need to decide between SLI and CrossFire platforms. Personally, I like to overclock, because it's entirely possible to get one of the cheapest processors and come close to matching the fastest processors on the market. A $300 X2 3800+ overclocked to 2.6 GHz is only about 5% slower on average than a $1000 FX-60. It will require more effort to reach that level of performance, but I'm willing to put forth the effort. Here then are our selections for the base AMD platform.

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AMD Motherboard: DFI nForce4 SLI Infinity
Price: $115 shipped (Retail)
AMD CPU: Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2x512K 2.0GHz (939) - Retail
Price: $297 shipped (Retail)
Total: $412

That takes care of more than one fourth of the allocated budget for our midrange AMD system. However, you get a lot of performance for the price. The motherboard comes with all the standard features (SATA2, IDE, USB 2.0) as well as FireWire support. It also happens to overclock reasonably well - perhaps not quite as well is something like a DFI LANParty or ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe, but close enough for the needs of the price/performance conscious overclocker. It also sports two X16 slots (with X8 bandwidth in SLI mode), so of course you have the potential to run SLI, but for the midrange sector we're not going to go with dual GPUs. About the only caution we have to give in regards to the motherboard is something that we generally say with most motherboards: plan on manually specifying your RAM timings. The vast majority of "memory incompatibilities" that we encountered have been caused by people running "auto" timings and expecting everything to work fine - or even worse, they load the "optimized" BIOS settings with value memory and wonder why the system doesn't run. If you buy 2.5-3-3-8 memory, we strongly recommend setting the timings manually to those values - though of course you can try "overclocking" the memory to faster timings.

What about alternatives? On the motherboard, there are literally dozens of reasonable candidates. You can choose to go with a CrossFire motherboard if you prefer ATI chipsets, or you can forget about multiple X16 slots and downgrade to something like the nForce4 Ultra chipset. EPoX, MSI, ASUS, DFI, and quite a few other manufacturers are reasonable choices. For maximum overclocking, especially on the lower cost motherboards, we recommend sticking with DFI or EPoX. Many other brands will top out at around 250 MHz HyperTransport bus speeds, which is pretty average for current AMD motherboards. On the processor side, single core chips like the 3000+, 3200+, 3500+, and 3700+ are all potential candidates. You can also go with one of the Opteron models, including the dual core 165. We would stick with lower cost processors for overclocking, but if you don't want to overclock you can basically throw as much money as you want at the CPU. We did put together a list of a few reasonable alternatives, which you can find below.

AMD 939 Alternatives
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon 64 3000+ Venice Retail	119
Processor	Athlon 64 3500+ Venice OEM	161
Processor	Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego OEM	192
Motherboard	EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra	91

Intel Platform

We mentioned before that gaming enthusiasts might prefer maximum single core performance for the short-term. Given that AMD single core processors are significantly faster at gaming than Intel processors, we would only consider single core processors from AMD. Intel also offers much cheaper dual core processors, making it even more difficult to recommend anything else. Overclocking and other factors can still play a role, and as long as you're not interested in 64-bit support, the AOpen i975Xa-YDG and Core Duo T2300/2400 remain an interesting possibility. If I were about to go out and spend $400-$500 on a new motherboard and processor, and I wanted an Intel platform, that AOpen board would get my current pick. However, Intel's Presler processors are also pretty potent, and motherboards are significantly cheaper - plus you get 64-bit support, though that still isn't in widespread use. All of the comments about selecting an appropriate motherboard still apply, but we chose a motherboard that we've had good experiences with.

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Intel Motherboard: ASUS 945P P5LD2 Deluxe
Price: $151 shipped (Retail)
Intel CPU: Pentium D 930 2x2MB 3.0GHz (775) - Retail
Price: $212 shipped (Retail)
Total: $363

Even with a reasonably expensive motherboard, our Intel platform is significantly cheaper than the AMD platform. The ASUS motherboard comes with a well designed layout, two X16 slots (the one of them is limited to X4 bandwidth), FireWire, good overclocking support, and a wide open CPU socket area that will allow the use of just about any heatsink on the market. The Presler 930 processor comes clocked at 3.0 GHz by default, and at that speed the X2 3800+ is certainly faster. Once you overclock the Presler to 4.0 GHz though, things become more interesting. We would still give the Athlon X2 system the edge in overall performance - at stock clock speeds or overclocked - but there are a few applications that are very optimized for Intel's NetBurst architecture, and some people simply prefer Intel systems. Note also that the Pentium 930 will definitely run hotter and require more power than the X2 3800+, but you should all be aware of that fact by now.

Alternatives on the Intel side of things are almost more confusing than the AMD side. In most situations, we would recommend using an Intel chip set for an Intel processor. However, if you want to run SLI, you'll need to switch to an NVIDIA chipset. Motherboards using the NVIDIA nForce4 chipsets are almost all cheaper than boards using Intel chipsets, but my personal experience is that they require a lot more user knowledge in order to get them configured optimally. You also have to be careful about proper support for Presler and Smithfield 820 CPUs, as the early nForce4 SLI chipsets can still be found floating around on some of the cheaper motherboards. If you want guaranteed SLI support as well is support for the Presler processors - not to mention good overclocking features - spend the money on the ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe. If you want all of the extras but you want CrossFire support, go for the ASUS P5WD2-E Premium. The P5WD2 also reportedly supports Conroe, giving you a good upgrade path for six months from now.

If you're looking for different CPU options, we would mostly recommend looking at the cheaper CPUs. The Pentium D 805 and 820 are both pretty cheap, especially for a dual core processor. If you want to overclock, we recommend getting an aftermarket heatsink, as that will often get you another 200 or 300 MHz as well as lower temperatures. The Thermaltake Big Typhoon, Scythe Ninja, and Zalman 9500 are a few of the top air cooling solutions currently available. All three of them are also huge, so don't plan on using them in a small case, and make sure the motherboard you select will work with them. (All three ASUS motherboards mentioned above work fine.) Again, here's an abbreviated list of potential alternatives.

Intel 775 Alternatives
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Pentium 805 Retail	126
Processor	Pentium 820 OEM	158
Motherboard	ASUS 975X P5WD2-E Premium	219
Motherboard	ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe	198
Motherboard	Biostar TForce4U-775 (nForce4 Ultra)	96
Intel 479 Alternatives
Motherboard	Aopen 975X i975Xa-YDG (479)	287
Processor	Intel Core Duo T2300 1.66 GHz Retail	254

Memory Recommendations

While we wait for AMD socket AM2 to launch, we still need to have separate memory recommendations for AMD and Intel systems. Just as I'm done recommending single core processors for midrange computers, I'm upgrading both systems to 2GB of RAM. If you're running a dual core processor and doing a lot of multitasking, the extra memory will definitely come in handy. Prices have also dropped to the point where even good quality 2GB kits don't cost that much. It was about 18 months ago that we stopped recommending 512MB configurations for midrange computers, which means it's about the right time to bump up to the next level of memory. Hopefully, in another 18 months we will be able to recommend 4GB of RAM for less than $200.

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DDR Memory: Patriot PC-3200 2x1024MB EPLL (2-3-2-5-1T)
Price: $190 shipped (Retail) - $55 Mail-In Rebate until 5/15/2006

Choosing a 2GB kit of DDR memory was actually relatively easy. There are kits out there that will overclock higher (without using lower memory ratios), but the majority of them cost quite a bit more. There are also a lot of mail-in rebates currently available for DDR memory, most likely due to the pending launch of AM2. This Patriot memory comes with the lowest timings you can find on any DDR 1GB DIMM, and it also happens to be one of the cheapest 1GB DIMMs available. My experience is that you can push the memory up to around DDR-450 with relaxed timings, so combined with the memory ratios on AMD motherboards you can still achieve good overclocks. If you're willing to spend a bit more money, Corsair, OCZ, G.Skill, Kingston, and Crucial are all reasonable alternatives - and potentially cheaper, depending on whether or not you take advantage of the mail-in rebate.

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DDR2 Memory: G.Skill PC-5300 2x1024MB Extreme LA (4-4-4-12)
Price: $148 shipped (Retail)

Moving to the DDR2 recommendation, there are thankfully no mail-in rebates to worry about. Balancing maximum bandwidth against latency and price, DDR2-667 looks to be the sweet spot. The G.Skill memory offers reasonable timings of 4-4-4 at that setting, and the price is only about $15 more than DDR2-533. A quick glance at the DDR price shows that without mail-in rebates, DDR2 definitely has the advantage, and a higher potential bandwidth doesn't hurt either. If you're thinking about DDR2 memory for the new socket AM2 platform, you might want to upgrade to DDR2-800 memory. That will bump the price up to $220 or more, but for Intel platforms we don't feel it's truly necessary (except for the extreme performance people that are buying $1000 P4XE processors). Should you spend the extra money right now to upgrade to DDR2-800, so that you can take it over to your AM2 platform in the future? Personally, I would say no - you can just sell off your current system and buy new memory if you upgrade motherboards and processors in the future. Six months from now, there will almost certainly be better DDR2 memory available anyway.

Video Recommendations

Both platforms use PCI-E graphics, naturally, so at least we don't have to worry about that aspect of choosing a graphics card. Beyond that, there are a wide variety of graphics cards that are all suitable recommendations, especially depending on individual needs. If you don't care at all about gaming performance, we would still stick with a GPU that costs somewhere in the $125 range. On the low end, the Radeon X1600 and GeForce 7600 products are reasonable choices. We spent slightly more money in order to get more performance.

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Graphics Recommendation: EVGA GeForce 7600GT CO 256MB (580/1500)
Price: $184 shipped (Retail)

For only a few dollars more than the stock 7600 GT, the EVGA 7600 GT is factory overclocked (from the default 560/1400 clock speeds). The price difference is small enough and EVGA's warranty policy is so much better than average that we feel it's a good choice. If you can't find the EVGA card in stock where you live, just about any 7600 GT should be acceptable. The performance offered is slightly better than the old 6800 GT cards overall, due to architectural enhancements. That said, there are certainly games out there (Oblivion and F.E.A.R. for example) where you will still have to turn down the detail levels in order to get acceptable frame rates. If gaming is your only passion, you might consider one of the following upgrades - and you can always cut the cost of the processor if you're trying to stay within a budget, as most games will still be GPU limited at high resolutions.

If you prefer ATI cards, for a bit more money (about $200) you can go with the X1800 GTO. In benchmarks, the GTO trades places with the 7600 GT, and both are 12 pipeline cards. Priced at around $290, you can find the 7900 GT cards. Maximum performance (with factory overclocked models) is about 50% to 75% higher than the 7600 GT, so performance scales almost linearly with price. At just over $300, you can now find X1800 XT cards on sale. They don't have all of the architectural improvements of the X1900 series, but you do get 512MB of RAM which is starting to become useful in a few games. We would say it remains a reasonable alternative to the 7900 GT, and in games like Oblivion the X1800 XT comes out on top. Going beyond the $300 range, cards like the X1900 XT/XTX and 7900 GTX are available, but that's definitely moving out of the realm of midrange components.

Storage Recommendations

There hasn't been a lot of excitement in the area of computer storage lately - unless you follow the flame wars being waged online between the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD marketing departments? I've used quite a few hard drives over the past year, from every major manufacturer. Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, and Samsung all make reasonable hard drives, at least as far as performance is concerned. Without running benchmarks, I certainly can't tell the difference between any of the hard drives. A second area of performance is noise levels, and while most of the hard drive manufacturers are pretty close together, Maxtor drives are definitely among the loudest on the market. (A friend described them as "bongo drums" recently.) Older model drives can also be louder, so we would recommend sticking to the latest models if at all possible. Samsung and Seagate are the quietest drives, with Samsung having a slight lead, but depending on the rest of your computer it may not matter too much. Hard drive noise levels only become a factor if you have a relatively silent system. If you plan on having three or more case fans (counting the PSU), it's unlikely that you will notice hard drive noise.

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Hard Drive Recommendation: Western Digital SATA3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16
Price: $95 shipped (OEM)

Since performance isn't the overriding concern, we're mostly left with looking at price perGB. It's also reasonable to state that most people don't need more than 250GB of hard drive space - and probably not even that much. The 250GB models continue to offer the best price perGB of storage, and for a couple dollars extra you can get 16MB of cache on certain models. Coming in at $.38 perGB, the Western Digital 250GB SE16 SATA2 gets our pick. I've purchased four of these drives in the last six months, and I haven't had any problems. (I haven't had problems with my Hitachi, Samsung, or Seagate drives either.) If you're looking for a bit more storage capacity, the Seagate 300GB 7200.9 and the Western Digital 320GB SE16 both have a similar cost perGB and also come with 16MB of cache. Seagate also carries a standard five-year warranty, but of course if you ever need to use the warranty you'll be really unhappy with the loss of your data. The best way to avoid data loss is to back up your hard drive, which brings us to our optical drive recommendation.

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DVDR Recommendation: NEC 3550A (OEM)
Price: $37 shipped (OEM)

With prices under $40, we once again reiterate the statement that there's no point in getting anything other than a DVD burner these days. If you've already got several DVD burners in other computers, you might want to go with a 16X DVD-ROM, but that's about the only case where we wouldn't spend the extra money. BenQ, Pioneer, LG, Plextor, and Lite On also make reasonable burners, but in terms of price/performance we would take the NEC 3550A. Plextor also has an 18X burner out, but with a price of $100 not to mention reported media incompatibilities, you should save your money for now.

Hard Drive Alternatives
Western Digital 3.0Gbps 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16	125
Seagate 3.0Gbps 300GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.9	122

Case and Power Supply

You can choose a case merely for functionality, or your case can make an aesthetic statement. If you don't like our case choice, you're more than welcome to choose something that you do like. The only comment we have is that we like cases that have 120 mm fans, as they tend to be a bit quieter overall. Of course, a high RPM 120mm fan certainly isn't going to be quiet, but you can usually get lower RPM 120mm fans that still move more air than a high RPM 80mm fan.

For the power supply, we're going with a separate PSU rather than a case with one included. For the midrange sector, quality takes precedence over price, and bundled power supplies usually are pretty mediocre in terms of quality. They might still be sufficient, especially for a system that's not loaded up with lots of extras, but they will be noisier and less robust. That said, I haven't had a power supply fail in over 18 months, and that includes a couple of junk power supplies that came with $40 cases. If you don't have one, picking up a power meter like the Kill-A-Watt device isn't a bad idea. Even a cheap 400W power supply will often be fine for a long time if your system never draws more than 200W.

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Case Recommendation: Cooler Master Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW
Price: $61 shipped (Retail)

The Cooler Master Centurion 5 is a decent mid-tower ATX case. You get more external 5.25" bays than you need (5), one external 3.5" bay, and 4 internal 3.5" bays. The case is relatively attractive, and it comes with a tool-less drive mounting mechanism for all the drive bays. It also includes a 120mm rear fan, and you can add an optional 80mm front fan. The case is also available with a side window if you want to spend an extra $10. Finally, the case has front USB, FireWire, headphone, and microphone jacks. It's easy to work with, relatively quiet, and well made.

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PSU Recommendation: Enermax Liberty ELT400AWT ATX12V 400W
Price: $86 shipped (Retail)

I'm a big fan of modular power supplies, ever since OCZ released their first ModStream product. (And incidentally, the 450W ModStream is still going strong after a couple years.) Enermax has now joined the crowd of modular power supply manufacturers with their new Liberty line. As with many of the quality power supplies on the market, you might find the 400W rating seems a little low. Realistically, it's difficult to reach anywhere near 400W without multiple ultra high-end graphics cards, multiple hard drives, and a partridge in a pear tree. Unlike generic brand power supplies, the Enermax Liberty should actually be able to sustain 400W of power output, and it's extremely quiet.

I've got a few other modular power supplies around - OCZ, Kingwin, and Sunbeam - and they all work well for my needs. Not surprisingly, they also cost about the same as the Enermax Liberty, and the higher wattage models cost even more. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for, and we would recommend sticking with power supplies that cost at least $60, unless you're trying to build a budget system. If you're looking at SLI/CrossFire as a potential upgrade, you might also want to bump the PSU up to a 500W or higher rating.

Display Recommendations

We used about one fourth of the total budget on the motherboard and processor recommendations, and we're willing to use another fourth of the budget on a good quality display. I've said it in the past: I'm done with CRT recommendations. It's not that LCDs are perfect, but CRTs pretty much target the budget market exclusively these days, not mention their size disadvantage. We wish it was possible to get a 1920x1200 LCD with a 100 Hz refresh rate, for example, but unfortunately such a resolution is not part of the DVI spec.

I also encourage people to overspend on displays if at all possible; a good display can easily outlast the rest of your system, and you're going to be staring at it every day that you use your computer. We've recommended 19 inch LCDs in the past for the midrange sector, but prices are at the point where we can now fit a 20 inch widescreen display into the $1500 midrange budget. Naturally, if you don't want to spend $325, you can skip out on the 20 inch widescreen displays, but we feel the extra $75 is money well spent.

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Display Recommendation: BenQ 20 inch 8ms Widescreen LCD FP202W
Price: $325 shipped (Retail)

BenQ's latest LCD offering has a great price, and it's a reasonable quality display as well. 16.7 million colors (no dithering), DVI and VGA connections, 8ms response times (gray-to-gray/GTG), and a native 1680x1050 resolution. You get all of that for a price of $325 - and Newegg even has a $40 mail-in rebate if you hurry. There's no pivot mode (does anyone actually use portrait mode with widescreen displays?), and a slightly more important negative point is that there's no height adjustment on the stand. The display also feels a bit flimsy, but we would still take it over a sturdier display that costs $100 more.

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Display Alternative: Acer 24 inch 6ms Widescreen LCD AL2416Wd
Price: $735 shipped (Retail)

This is the one alternative that we're explicitly listing. A 20 inch widescreen display is nice, but a 24 inch widescreen display is better! 6ms GTG response times, 16.7 million colors, and a native 1920x1200 resolution. It doesn't get much better than this, at least in the world of the LCDs. In order to keep the price down, Acer doesn't have as many options as some of the other 24 inch displays, but you probably won't miss most of the features. Integrated flash memory reader? Component inputs? The Dell 2405FPW has those, but it also costs more money - even if you can find it on sale. Subjectively, some people will prefer the look and features of the 2405FPW, but it's hard to argue with an extra couple hundred dollars in your pocket.

If you're looking for cheaper display options, check out the 19 inch standard aspect ratio LCDs. The Acer AL1951B ($257), BenQ FP93GX, and BenQ FP91G+ ($220) are some of our top picks, and all three have the requisite DVI connection. Of those, picking a "best" LCD is a matter of compromises. If you're after lower response times, the BenQ "2ms" FP93GX should deliver, though image quality may be compromised in the pursuit of response times on such panels.

For example, the Acer says it has 16.7 million colors while the BenQ displays only list 16.2 million colors with dithering. Dithering isn't the end of the world, but it can affect image quality, so if you do any form of image editing you might want a better display. Whether or not you can see the dithering depends on the individual, the display, as well as how the monitor is being used. Try looking at some color charts showing all 256 shades of red, green, and blue, and see if you can spot the transitions. Using those charts on several 8-bit LCDs, only the green clearly shows individual color transitions, and the 6-bit panel looked about the same.

Display Alternatives
BenQ 19 inch 2ms FP93GX	260
Acer 19 inch 6ms AL1951B	257
BenQ 19 inch 8ms FP91G+	210

Speakers and Accessories

All we're missing now are some speakers, a keyboard, and a mouse. This is one area where you can pretty much get whatever you want, but we will list a couple of recommendations just to complete the price. If you already have speakers, there's probably no reason to buy new speakers unless you really want to. Keyboard and mice are subjective, and while I still prefer Logitech and Microsoft models, just about anything will work. If you like wireless input devices, you can go that route as well, though we would caution against buying any of the cheaper models. Cheap plus wireless often means you will get flaky response from your peripherals, and for most situations I still prefer a wired keyboard and mouse.

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Speaker Recommendation: Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers
Price: $62 shipped (Retail)

"If it's not broke, don't fix it." I've been recommending Logitech's cheap 5.1 speakers for budget and midrange computers pretty much since I started writing Buyers' Guides. The simple fact of the matter is that they work well, sound decent, and have an impressively low price. No one is going to mistake the X-530 speakers for some Klipsch 5.1 cans, but unless you're an audiophile, you probably don't care. For playing games as well is watching movies and listening to some music, these Logitech speakers will get the job done.

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Keyboard and Mouse: Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047
Price: $32 shipped (Retail)

I like the old Microsoft Natural keyboards, but not everyone likes ergonomic split-key layouts. The Microsoft Comfort Curve strikes something of a middle ground, so if you don't like split-key arrangements, you might like this. There are additional "multimedia" and application buttons along the top of the keyboard that can be somewhat useful, and about the only complaint some people will have is that the keyboard is relatively large. Along with the keyboard you get the standard three button Microsoft optical mouse, and although you don't get any extra buttons it's still a good mouse. Logitech keyboards and mice can often be found for a few dollars less, but since you use the keyboard and mouse to actually interface with the computer, get something that you find comfortable. (Or you could always try speech recognition, right?)

System Summaries

Amazingly, we're actually under the $1500 budget with both systems this time. Some of you might argue that $1500 is still too much for a midrange system, but considering that you get everything other than the software and applications, we think that's a pretty reasonable cost. Drop the keyboard, mouse, display, and speakers and you're down to $1000, but of course you need to add in $90-$150 for Windows XP. All told, you may not get the same level of service that you get with a prebuilt OEM system, but the quality of components and performance offered will almost certainly be higher - much higher should you choose to go the overclocking route. Here are the system summaries, but if you're looking for additional options remember to check out the individual component pages where we have listed some alternatives.

AMD Mid-Range System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2x512K 2.0GHz (939) - Retail	297
Motherboard	DFI nForce4 SLI Infinity	115
Memory	Patriot PC-3200 2x1024MB EPLL (2-3-2-5-1T)	190
Video Card	EVGA GeForce 7600GT CO 256MB (580/1500)	184
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16	95
Optical Drive	NEC 3550A (OEM)	37
Case	COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW	61
Power Supply	ENERMAX Liberty ELT400AWT ATX12V 400W	86
Display	BenQ 20 inch 8ms Widescreen LCD FP202W	325
Speakers	Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers	62
Keyboard and Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047	32
Bottom Line		1484

Intel Mid-Range System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Pentium D 930 2x2MB 3.0GHz (775) - Retail	212
Motherboard	ASUS 945P P5LD2 Deluxe	151
Memory	G.Skill PC-5300 2x1024MB Extreme LA (4-4-4-12)	148
Video Card	EVGA GeForce 7600GT CO 256MB (580/1500)	184
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16	95
Optical Drive	NEC 3550A (OEM)	37
Case	COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW	61
Power Supply	ENERMAX Liberty ELT400AWT ATX12V 400W	86
Display	BenQ 20 inch 8ms Widescreen LCD FP202W	325
Speakers	Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers	62
Keyboard and Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047	32
Bottom Line		1393

If you're looking for a system that can do just about anything well, both of these qualify. Without any extra tweaking, the AMD system will usually be faster, but the Intel system certainly isn't bad. If you're looking for more performance from the Intel side of things, you might want to try the Core Duo + AOpen + Overclocking route, or else wait for Core Duo 2 to launch. Both systems as configured currently lock you into an "outdated" platform, but we don't generally recommend building systems for upgradeability. You end up spending more money for the potential to upgrade, and when the time comes to finally upgrade you often find that it's better to simply build a new system and sell off your old one.

As always, comments and questions are welcome - either via email or in the comments section. There is no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all" computer, so naturally it is possible to tweak the component choices in order to improve performance in the areas that you need it most. Upgrading the graphics card and downgrading the CPU, for example, is something to consider for gamers. I would still rather just spend the money on a faster GPU and go a bit over budget, however, because I really like my dual core systems.

If you're looking for something significantly cheaper, our next Buyers' Guide will be covering the budget sector, followed by a high-end Buyers' Guide once AMD AM2 platforms have begun shipping. We may also look at doing an HTPC Buyers' Guide in the future - let us know if you're interested in that one.