Introduction

The last time we did a true AnandTech buyer's guide was several months ago, just after socket AM2 had launched and before Core 2 Duo hit the scene. Since then, there have been a ton of new product releases, obviously with many of them focused around the Core 2 platform. However, new processors and motherboards for the Intel platform are just the tip of the iceberg. While there may not have been as many new product releases in the graphics card department, things have definitely been interesting there. Storage components haven't changed much, but DDR2 memory prices have skyrocketed over the past month or two. The net result is that nearly every one of the component choices we used two months ago is now at best slightly outdated, which of course means it's time for a new buyer's guide.

Things have been quite busy the past couple of months, and our buyer's guides and price guides have unfortunately been neglected, but we plan on updating all three market segments within the next few weeks. After that, we plan to publish a new buyer's guide every other week. That gives us six weeks between guides that cover the same market segment, which is enough time for some of the choices to change so that we don't just repeat the same thing month after month. We may also look into other types of buyer's guides as the need arises, but for now we will be focusing on entry level, midrange, and high-end configurations. Any time someone tries to define a price segment, there is naturally going to be some disagreement. It is always possible to cut a couple hundred dollars from the price if necessary, or you could spend a few hundred dollars more depending on your budget. For reference, we have defined our market segments as follows.

Starting with the entry level configurations, price is an overriding concern. For those that are simply looking for a computer that can handle most office tasks, the goal is to get the price down to around $500. This can be very difficult without making some significant compromises, and for some tasks it is nearly impossible. For example, building a complete "moderate gaming" computer for $500 is going to be extremely difficult, and it might be best to look at some of the offerings that you can get from major OEMs. Compromises will be made on those systems as well, but when you factor in the cost of an operating system and display, starting with a baseline OEM system and then spending a bit on upgrades isn't a terrible idea. However, this is not to say that you don't often get more bang for the buck by building your own system from scratch. For a slightly upgraded entry level configuration, we will be targeting a price point of $750.

The midrange category is what we will be discussing today, and this is generally the most popular market segment for computer enthusiasts. You can get a system that can do every task reasonably well for around $1000, and you can also downgrade a few components that are less important for your chosen tasks in order to upgrade other areas. For example, gaming depends largely on the speed of your graphics card, so if price is a concern, keeping other costs in check in order to spend as much money as possible on the GPU is a good idea. Most overclockers also tend to live in the midrange price segment, with the hope of purchasing moderately expensive components and then overclocking them to high-end performance levels and beyond. The low end of our midrange price point is $1000, while the upper midrange configurations will cost closer to $1500, and perhaps a bit more.

Finally, with the high-end system configurations price generally becomes less of a concern as users begin to focus on achieving optimal performance. There are still various types of users interested in purchasing a high-end system, ranging from the extreme overclockers to those that simply want the best money can buy, and there are also those that just want better than midrange performance and are willing to pay a bit more. The law of diminishing returns is definitely in full effect for most areas of the high-end market, although there are certain components where it still makes sense to buy high-end if possible. Skimping on displays is definitely something we don't recommend if you can avoid it, and for gamers moving to multiple graphics cards can significantly improve performance, particularly at higher resolutions. High-end system configurations begin at around $2000 and go up from there, although for the most part we will keep things well under $5,000 even for the maximum configurations.

We're going to try and keep things a bit more succinct in this midrange guide, and as always your feedback is welcome. Rather than looking at each individual component choice, we're going to focus directly on the four basic configurations. We will have two AMD configurations and two Intel configurations, aiming for the low end and high end of the midrange price segment with each platform. These configurations are basically a snapshot in time, and prices always fluctuate. We are also of necessity limited in the number of recommendations we can make for any component, so just because your favorite motherboard or graphics card doesn't get selected doesn't mean that it's a bad choice. If you've got questions, feel free to post in our forums or sound off in the comments section, and we will do our best to respond.



Baseline AMD Midrange Platform

For several years, virtually every single one of our buyer's guides has come out with the statement that AMD is the preferred platform for price/performance over Intel. This was simply a matter of choosing the best platform, which has been AMD's K8 processor architecture for about three years. Unfortunately for AMD proponents, this is no longer the case. Simply put, Intel has crushed one out of the ballpark with the launch of the Core 2 platform. If you are looking for faster processor performance, with very few exceptions Intel now holds the lead. The good news is that the AMD platform still has a couple points in its favor. We will get into those shortly, but let's start with the baseline AMD recommendations.

Basic AMD Athlon X2 AM2 System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon X2 3800+ (AM2 - 2.0 GHz 2x512K)	$152.00
Motherboard	MSI nForce 570 SLI K9N SLI Platinum	$114.00
Memory	2x1024MB GeIL PC2-5300 Value	$238.00
Video Card	Gigabyte GV-NX76G256D-RH GeForce 7600GS 256MB (fanless)	$103.00
Hard Drive	Samsung 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 8MB SpinPoint P	$76.00
Optical Drive	NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD+/-RW	$30.00
Display	Acer AL1916WAbd Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD	$202.00
Case and PSU	GIGABYTE GZ-X1 Black 0.6mm SECC w/350W Power Supply	$94.00
Keyboard and Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 with Optical Mouse	$28.00
Operating System	Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B (OEM)	$115.00
Bottom Line		$1,152.00

With prices being what they are, there's absolutely no reason to consider anything other than a dual core processor these days for a midrange computer. Not everyone is going to make full use of both processor cores, but even in everyday computer use the dual core systems feel more responsive and multitask better, and we only expect the gap between single core and multi-core configurations to widen in the future. That doesn't mean you need to go out and purchase the fastest dual core processor you can find, and in fact we have gone with the slowest Athlon X2 currently available, the 3800+ for socket AM2. Clocked at 2.0 GHz and sporting 512K of L2 cache, the 3800+ used to cost over $300 just a few months ago. With the price now cut in half, there's a whole lot to like. Overclocking capabilities are still good, and it should be pretty easy to run the 3800+ at 2.5 GHz if that's what you're after. Most people don't run a lot of CPU limited applications, so upgrading to a faster processor shouldn't be your first move unless you specifically run tasks that will benefit.

The biggest advantage of the AM2 platform is undoubtedly in the area of motherboards. Prices are so low on reasonable motherboards that we feel there is little reason to get anything other than a board that supports either SLI or CrossFire, at least in the midrange price segment. You may not need the second X16 slot initially, and perhaps it will never get used, but the cost of adding the second slot is only about $20, and you often get better features along with the additional PEG slot. We feel the best overall choice for midrange AM2 motherboards is the nForce 570 SLI chipset. Performance nearly matches the more expensive nForce 590 SLI offerings but at a significantly lower price. Doubling the PCI-E bandwidth sounds good in theory, but the reality is that very few tasks are truly bandwidth starved from the PCI-E bus.

Having decided on a chipset, the overwhelming favorite motherboard using this chipset would be the EPoX 570 SLI. If you can find one in stock at a reasonable price, that would be our primary choice, but at present most online retailers are on back order. A very good alternative is the MSI 570 K9N SLI Platinum, which still overclocks reasonably well. It also costs less than the EPoX board and it comes with FireWire support. The Northbridge heatsink can get quite hot without some form of active cooling nearby, but in a properly ventilated case with a typical CPU HSF, it shouldn't present any problems.


The one area that is an absolute shock after the last midrange guide is the choice of DDR2 memory. A few months ago, it was possible to find 2x1024MB of reasonable quality DDR2 memory for under $150. At present, prices are up over $50 across the board. The situation is illustrated nicely by this price graph of the Corsair PC2-5300 C4 memory. If you browse through the DDR2 section of our Real Time Price Engine, you will see this same type of graph again and again. Unfortunately, all we can do for now is hope that prices will drop, but anyone looking to purchase memory right now will simply have to bite the bullet. Thankfully, the GEIL PC-5300 2x1024MB Value memory that we selected performs very well. While it is rated at DDR2-667 5-5-5-15, we have found in testing that it will run at 4-4-4-10 with 1.95V at DDR2-667, 4-4-4-12 at DDR2-800 with 2.1V, and 5-5-5-15 at DDR2-900 with 2.3V. The integrated memory controller of the AM2 platform makes memory bandwidth less of a concern, but it is still nice to get memory that can run at DDR2-800 if you want to do some overclocking.

Choosing a good midrange video card really isn't too difficult, provided you know the intended use. For our baseline midrange configuration, we are going off the assumption that gaming isn't a primary concern. Taking a quick look at the $100-$125 GPU market, the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS comes out as the overall best performance and value. More importantly, the Gigabyte card received our editor's choice in the silent GPU roundup last month. This card consistently outperformed the other silent offerings, and it even manages to do so at a lower price than many of its direct competitors. Windows Vista will make GPUs more important for general use, so we don't feel that any new midrange system should go any lower than the 7600 GS. And even if we say that gaming isn't a primary concern, the 7600 GS is still able to handle most current games at moderate detail settings.

We will leave discussion of the remaining baseline component choices for the next page where we cover the Intel baseline platform, as the only difference between our AMD and Intel choices are in the motherboard and processor departments. If you're looking for other alternatives, however, we do have a few suggestions.

We already mentioned the Epox 570 SLI motherboard, but if you are absolutely certain you don't want the second X16 PCI-E slot, the DFI Infinity NF4 Ultra2-M2 is getting a great reputation as an overclocking king and it is $95 now. It is based on the nForce4 chipset but it still works with socket AM2. Really, the difference in performance between nForce4 and nForce 5 is negligible for most applications, and the DFI Ultra2-M2 is absolutely rock solid when it comes to stability.

Alternatives for the memory are easy to find, although we would stick with DDR2-667 or faster memory. All of the major manufacturers have reasonable products, and right now price is going to be a in determining which RAM to buy. A-DATA, Corsair, Crucial, G.Skill, Kingston, OCZ, PDP, PQI, and others are worth considering, and you might also want to check out the Value DDR2 section of the Conroe Buying Guide for more information. Gamers will probably want a faster graphics card, and we recommend looking at our upgraded configuration for more information on faster graphics cards. What about 2x512MB of RAM instead of the full 2GB? Windows Vista is really going to tax 1GB systems, and we feel strongly that any midrange PC should be viable without upgrades for at least the next year. We feel you are truly going to regret going with anything less than 2GB of memory in the near future, and we only recommend 1GB configurations for entry level computing these days.



Baseline Intel Midrange Platform

As we mentioned already, Intel has without a doubt regained the performance crown when it comes to CPUs. For pure number crunching, 3D rendering, video encoding, and other CPU intensive tasks, Intel's Core 2 Duo processors almost invariably outperform AMD's Athlon X2 offerings. They do cost a bit more, but they also run cooler and overclock better. All other things being equal, we currently recommend Intel configurations over AMD configurations, although there are a few advantages the AMD platform still holds. Most of our components remain the same as the previous page, with the exception of the motherboard and processor.

Basic Intel Core 2 Duo System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Core 2 Duo E6300 (775 - 1.86 GHz 2048K)	$183.00
Motherboard	MSI P965 Neo-F	$100.00
Memory	2x1024MB GeIL PC2-5300 Value	$238.00
Video Card	Gigabyte GV-NX76G256D-RH GeForce 7600GS 256MB (fanless)	$103.00
Hard Drive	Samsung 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 8MB SpinPoint P	$76.00
Optical Drive	NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD+/-RW	$30.00
Display	Acer AL1916WAbd Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD	$202.00
Case and PSU	GIGABYTE GZ-X1 Black 0.6mm SECC w/350W Power Supply	$94.00
Keyboard and Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 with Optical Mouse	$28.00
Operating System	Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B (OEM)	$115.00
Bottom Line		$1,169.00

Again, we feel there is little reason to consider anything other than a dual core processor these days. For Intel platforms, you really don't get much choice unless you want to go with an old Pentium 4 processor, as the single core versions of the Core 2 architecture won't be released for several more months. As with the AMD system, we selected the lowest end processor for our baseline configuration. The Core 2 Duo E6300 comes clocked at 1.86 GHz and features 2MB of shared L2 cache. Overclocking attempts with the E6300 have been extremely successful, and the limiting factor is almost always the motherboard and/or memory unless you spend money on higher end components. The default 7X CPU multiplier means that reaching a CPU clock speed of 3 GHz (something that is possible with most Core 2 Duo chips) will require a front side bus speed of 428 MHz, not to mention memory that can also run at DDR2-856 or higher. Unfortunately, motherboards that will support such bus speeds cost more money.

Unlike the AMD platform, picking an ideal motherboard for socket 775 is a bit trickier. We could always go with one of the cheap ASRock motherboards that we have reviewed recently, but most of those are a bit quirky and none of them overclock very well. For a midrange system, we really don't want to skimp on the motherboard at all, and the most reasonable choice is to get a board that uses the P965 chipset. The MSI P965 Neo-F gets our recommendation, as it is currently the cheapest P965 motherboard available and it still performs reasonably well. It won't overclock as high as many of the other offerings on the market, but it is a very solid offering overall. The ECS P965 P965T-A and Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H are similar in terms of stability, features, and overclocking support -- better in some areas, and worse in others. After our talk above about how high the E6300 can overclock, we need to make it absolutely clear that you'll never come near those overclock levels with any of the three motherboards we've just mentioned. Plan on flashing the BIOS as well, as the vast majority of P965 motherboards have had some serious memory compatibility issues with the initial BIOS revisions. Assuming you can live with those limitations, at $100 the board is still a reasonable option, but you do get what you pay for.

We've covered the memory and video card choices already, so let's move on to the storage and other options. The choice of DVD-RW drives is pretty simple: get whatever it is cheapest. Some of the DVD burners are more compatible with a wider range of media, but overall the NEC ND-3550A works very well and at $30 there's little reason to get anything else. If prices change in the near future, LG, BenQ, Pioneer, and LiteOn are reasonable alternatives.

Choosing a hard drive takes a bit more effort. Most of the major SATA drives are worth consideration, so it comes down to a matter of price and capacity, but warranty and noise levels also play a role. The Samsung 3.0Gbps 250GB SpinPoint P offers an extremely low price/GB and it is also the quietest hard drive presently available. It is not the fastest drive available, so if you do a lot of hard disk intensive tasks you might prefer something else, but 250GB of storage and a quiet drive to go with our silent GPU seems to make sense as a baseline recommendation. Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor (who is now owned by Seagate), and Hitachi all offer varying features, prices, warranties, etc. If you are less concerned about noise levels, the Western Digital 250 GB SE16 is a close second place that only costs a couple dollars more.

We won't worry too much about the keyboard and mouse other than to say get whatever you like best. Most of us like Microsoft and Logitech input devices, but if you have a personal preference stick with that. For the case, we wanted something that was reasonably easy to work with, reasonably quiet, and not too expensive. The Gigabyte GZ-X1 fits these requirements and it also includes a 350W power supply. The power supply may not be the best for extreme overclocking or running a high-end configuration, but the baseline selections that we've chosen will be hard-pressed to get over ~250W of total power draw. If you don't like the way the Gigabyte case looks, as with the keyboard feel free to get something that you do like. For the power supply, if you want something better than a bundled PSU, we would recommend looking at Fotron Source (FSP Group/Sparkle), Enermax, OCZ, and SeaSonic as quality upgrades, although most aftermarket PSUs that are substantially better than the bundled 350W PSU are likely to cost quite a bit of money.

We have covered all of the baseline components with the exception of the operating system and the display. We will save discussion of the LCD choices for a separate section. As for the operating system, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 falls somewhere between XP Home and XP Professional, both in terms of price and features. For home networks, we definitely prefer XP Professional over XP Home, but MCE 2005 includes most of the features we like and it only costs about $10 more than XP Home. In addition, users who add a TV tuner also get the MCE interface, which does a very good job at providing PVR functionality.



Upgraded AMD Midrange Platform

Moving on to the upgraded recommendations for our midrange platforms, the AMD vs. Intel story doesn't change much. Motherboard options on the AMD platform are better if you're looking for multiple GPU support, while overall performance is going to be lower. We have upgraded almost every component in order to provide a better overall system. Base performance will be higher, overclocking capability will generally be better, and the expansion options are also improved. Here is the upgraded AMD platform recommendation.

Upgraded AMD Athlon X2 AM2 System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon X2 4200+ (AM2 - 2.2 GHz 2x512K)	$185.00
Motherboard	MSI XPRESS 3200 K9A Platinum	$136.00
Memory	2x1024MB Crucial PC2-6400 Ballistix	$270.00
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon X1900GT 256MB	$206.00
Hard Drive	Seagate 3.0Gbps 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.10	$95.00
Optical Drive	NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD+/-RW	$30.00
Display	Acer AL2216Wbd Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD	$341.00
Case	Thermaltake Soprano VB1000BWS	$98.00
Power Supply	FSP Group (Fotron Source) FSP550-80GLC 550W EPS 12V SLI	$88.00
Keyboard and Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 with Optical Mouse	$28.00
Operating System	Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B (OEM)	$115.00
Bottom Line		$1,592.00

If you're willing to choose an AMD platform right now, processor performance shouldn't be your primary concern. As we have stated, Intel's Core 2 Duo is going to be faster at virtually every price point. Nevertheless, we have upgraded the CPU slightly from the 3800+ to the 4200+. That adds 10% more CPU clock speed for a 22% increase in CPU cost. Other than the discontinued 1 MB cache 4000+, which will be slower than the 4200+ in nearly every instance, the next possible CPU upgrade for socket AM2 is the 4600+. That adds another 200 MHz but it costs $110 more, so we really wouldn't go beyond the 4200+ if you're trying to build a midrange computer.

We have a few options on the motherboard as an "upgrade". We typically feel nForce 590 SLI boards are a bit too expensive to fit into a midrange budget, and they really don't offer a lot more performance than nForce 570 SLI anyway. Instead of making a minor upgrade to the chipset performance, we have swapped NVIDIA chipsets for an ATI chipset, thus gaining CrossFire support and losing SLI support (official support at least). Unfortunately, while our initial look at the ATI Xpress 3200 showed that it was a capable overclocker, few manufactures seem to have fully tapped the potential. If you're looking for maximum overclocking capability, you may need to stick with an nForce 570/590 chipset, but the MSI K9A Platinum still performs well and offers a moderate amount of overclocking support.

We upgraded the memory selection for both platforms, although Core 2 Duo is more likely to make use of the extended bandwidth. Memory prices are extremely volatile right now, with both AMD and Intel moving to DDR2 and the impending holiday season. The Crucial 2x1024MB PC2-6400 Ballistix uses high quality Micron memory and is rated for 4-4-4-12 and 2.2V operation. It should reach as high as DDR2-1000 and 5-5-5-15 timings with 2.3V, and possibly a bit more if you go beyond 2.3V. That is certainly enough bandwidth for socket AM2, and all but the most extreme overclocks with Core 2 Duo shouldn't present a problem. As before, many other manufacturers offer competing RAM: Corsair, G.Skill, OCZ, PDP, and others manufacture memory rated at DDR2-800 or higher, although prices can quickly reach extreme levels for the highest performance memory. We have already changed the memory recommendation once, due to rapidly fluctuating prices. Hopefully the RAM prices will return to normal soon, although it may take until the New Year for that to happen.

With the change to an ATI chipset, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we also changed to an ATI graphics card, the Sapphire X1900 GT. The X1900 GT offers competitive performance to its NVIDIA counterpart (the 7900 GS), and prices are similar. Depending on your game of choice, the X1900 GT may be slower or faster than a 7900 GS, and overclocked 7900 GS cards are also available. With the ATI Xpress 3200 chipset, however, you will probably prefer an ATI graphics card. If you should instead decide to stick with an nForce 570 SLI motherboard, 7900 GS cards are readily available. The EVGA GeForce 7900GS KO 256MB HDCP offers some interesting features that the Sapphire X1900 GT lacks, for example HDCP support. For gamers on a budget, either card should suffice, and either card can be upgraded to a dual-GPU solution in the future should you so desire.



Upgraded Intel Midrange Platform

If we had to choose one system as an overall recommendation today, it would have to be this upgraded Core 2 Duo configuration. There are almost no compromises made, and without spending significantly more money it will be difficult to improve performance. As usual, the one exception is gaming, where a faster, more expensive GPU is almost always a possibility. Below is our upgraded Intel recommendation.

Upgraded Intel Core 2 Duo System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Core 2 Duo E6400 (775 - 2.13 GHz 2048K)	$226.00
Motherboard	Gigabyte P965 GA-965P-S3	$123.00
Memory	2x1024MB Crucial PC2-6400 Ballistix	$270.00
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon X1900GT 256MB	$206.00
Hard Drive	Seagate 3.0Gbps 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.10	$95.00
Optical Drive	NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD+/-RW	$30.00
Display	Acer AL2216Wbd Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD	$341.00
Case	Thermaltake Soprano VB1000BWS	$98.00
Power Supply	FSP Group (Fotron Source) FSP550-80GLC 550W EPS 12V SLI	$88.00
Keyboard and Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 with Optical Mouse	$28.00
Operating System	Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B (OEM)	$115.00
Bottom Line		$1,620.00

As with the AMD platform, our upgraded Intel system has moved up one rung on the performance ladder. Moving from the E6300 to the E6400 represents a 14% CPU speed increase, and it comes with a 23% price increase. Bang for the buck is actually better than the AMD upgrade, but there are other advantages as well. The base clock speed is now 2.13 GHz with an 8X multiplier. Clock speeds of beyond 3 GHz should now be achievable, with a 400 MHz front side bus equating to a 3.2 GHz CPU. Even without overclocking, the E6400 is no slouch, generally offering performance that falls somewhere between that of the Athlon X2 4600+ and 5000+. With overclocking, the E6400 at 3.0 GHz appears to be out of reach of anything AMD can offer with their current architecture and process technology, all at a price of about $225.

You could upgrade to 4MB of cache and 2.4 GHz for another $90 if you so desire, and there are various reasons to do so. The increased clock speed will improve performance about 12%, and the larger L2 cache will on average add another 5% to performance - assuming nothing else is your bottleneck - for a total speed increase of about 18%. The price increase is 41% however, so you are essentially getting 1-for-2 performance scaling. If you are more concerned with CPU performance, the E6600 is a nice upgrade; for gamers you would be much better off spending the money on a faster GPU.

For the upgraded configuration, we still couldn't go with a super high-end motherboard, but we did upgrade to a motherboard that should offer some great overclocking potential. The Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 first showed up in our labs as a pretty mediocre offering, but with the latest BIOS updates it has turned into a real gem. The Gigabyte DS3 will still overclock a bit better in terms of maximum bus speed, but you're much more likely to run into the limitations of your memory and/or processor first. 400 MHz bus speeds are easily achievable on the S3, and a 3.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor is extremely fast. Note that you do only get a single X16 graphics slot, so if you want more gaming performance you will have to resort to something like the 7950 GX2 cards or wait for faster models to arrive on the market.

Again, we've already looked at the memory and video card options with the upgraded AMD configuration, so let's move on to the storage and other components. We stuck with the NEC ND-3550A DVD-RW drive for all of the reasons we listed previously and we also kept the same mouse, keyboard, and operating system to keep things simple. On the hard drive, we make the upgrade to a slightly larger 320GB model that supports 16MB of cache and comes with a five year warranty from Seagate. Western Digital, Samsung, Maxtor, and Hitachi are again competitive with slightly varying features and performance.

Where we made a big change over the baseline configuration is the choice of case and power supply. Opinions on cases are going to vary widely from person to person. What one person thinks looks awesome another person is going to think looks garish; slick and sleek for us might be dull and boring for you. The Thermaltake Soprano is a nice looking case, at least in our opinion, and you get two 120mm fans that provide a good amount of air flow without creating a ton of noise. The case also features a mostly tool-less design, and you can get it with or without a side window. If you don't like the case that we picked, by all means go out and select a case that you do like. Sticking with the baseline case is certainly an option to save money, although the power supply is a different matter.

While we still haven't created a configuration that really needs an extremely high-end power supply, if you are going to spend money for a quality aftermarket power supply there's no reason to save $10-$15 and miss out on some features that might prove useful in the long run. Fotron Source is one of the most well-regarded power supply manufacturers, and several well-known power supply providers basically offer rebranded Fotron Source PSUs. We did have to draw the line somewhere, so you won't see is recommending $150+ power supplies for a midrange computer. We ended up settling on the 550W SLI ready FSP550-80GLC, which offers plenty of power, relatively silent operation, and it's ready for multiple graphics cards should you ever decide to take that step.

If you only intend to run a single GPU and you aren't going to overclock, many of our upgrade options could easily be changed. The RAM in particular was chosen to really allow some overclocking headroom, but you could stick with the cheaper RAM and instead simply buy a faster CPU. Getting a good quality PSU is rarely a bad decision, but for non-overclockers you can stick with a bundled PSU of around 400W and you shouldn't have problems. In the end, we are limited in the number of configurations we can list due to time constraints, but by all means feel free to ask or comment on the component choices, as there is no "one size fits all" computer system.



Display Selections

You have already seen our Display selections for the various system configurations, but we haven't discussed the details. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of which is that we would encourage people to buy a better display if at all possible. Many people are more than happy with a 19" LCD, but with their fixed resolutions LCDs are not quite as flexible as CRTs. If you want more pixel real estate, generally that means you need to purchase a larger LCD. Prices do begin to increase rapidly with increased display sizes, but LCD prices have also dropped quite significantly during the past year or two. Here's a brief selection of several LCDs we would recommend, and we will briefly discuss each one.

LCD Summary
19" Widescreen 16:10	Acer AL1916WAbd 19" 5ms 1440x900	$202.00
19" Standard 4:3	Acer AL1916Fbd 19" 2ms 1280x1024	$229.00
20" Standard 4:3	Acer AL2017BMD 20" 8ms 1400x1050	$253.00
20" Widescreen 16:10	BenQ FP202W 20.1" 8ms 1680x1050	$304.00
22" Widescreen 16:10	Acer AL2216Wbd 22" 5ms 1680x1050	$341.00
20.1" Standard 4:3	Samsung 204B-BK 20.1" 5ms 1600x1200 $60 Mail-in Rebate Available	$366.00

There are quite a few options at around a $200 price point. We could choose to go with a 19" standard aspect ratio LCD with an 8ms response time for slightly less than $200, or for about the same price you can upgrade to a 19" widescreen display with an advertised 5ms response time. Which is "better" is going to be based somewhat on individual opinion, but widescreen displays are becoming increasingly popular, and with video content continuing to move into the high-definition realm most of us at AnandTech prefer the format. The Acer AL1916WAbd is the first of several Acer LCDs in our list, mostly because they offer extremely competitive prices with very good overall performance and quality. BenQ, ViewSonic, Dell, Samsung, and others are reasonable alternatives if you can find them for a lower price or if you feel they have some extra feature(s) that you would like. For overall value, the Acer 19" widescreen display gets our pick.

The next step up in terms of price is a standard aspect ratio 19" LCD, again from Acer, only instead of a 5ms response time it features a 2ms response time. Some people have more issues with slow pixel response times and others, but the 2ms LCDs are among the fastest displays currently on the market and few people should notice any pixel smearing. The total amount of pixels is actually slightly more on the 19" standard aspect ratio display compared to the 19" widescreen display, and games are generally far better at supporting 1280x1024 resolution as opposed to 1440x900. Many games can now be configured to work properly with widescreen resolutions, but not everyone wants to go through the effort.

Sticking with Acer once more, we have a 20" standard aspect ratio display. For a long time, 20" LCDs had a native resolution of 1600x1200. Recently, several manufacturers have begun releasing 20" displays with a native resolution of 1400x1050. The pixel response time is up to 8ms, but for a slight increase in screen resolution some people will be willing to spend the extra $30.

Moving to 20" widescreen displays, the least expensive model we could find is the BenQ FP202W 8ms LCD. The native resolution is now 1680x1050, which means you can display 1280x1024 content without any vertical compression -- something that is not possible with the 1440x900 display. Gaming support is still going to require a bit of effort depending on the title, but after you've played some games at 1680x1050 resolution you may find it difficult to return to standard aspect ratio gaming. Last year, displays similar to this BenQ (like the Dell 2005FPW) would typically cost close to $500, although they were periodically on sale for less money. With the price now down to $300, it is becoming increasingly easy to recommend 20" widescreen displays as a great all-around solution.

Recently, however, Acer released their 22" widescreen display with the same 1680x1050 native resolution. Small increases in display sizes have often come with a price premium, but for once that is not the case. Some people might not like the slightly larger pixel size of the 22" Acer display, while those with less than stellar eyesight will likely disagree. If you like to play games but you don't have a top-end graphics configuration, the larger display size while maintaining the same resolution might also be preferable. 24" LCDs may look great, but a lot of GPUs are going to struggle to run games at the native resolution of 1920x1200, and the Acer 22" LCD strikes a nice middle ground. For this reason, it gets our upgrade recommendation.

The final option we list is a 20.1" standard aspect ratio LCD from Samsung. Compared to the 20" Acer LCD mentioned above, you get the reverse of what we just talked about with the 22" widescreen display. This time you get a higher resolution in roughly the same screen size, which means smaller pixels. Whether that's good or bad will again very by individual, but unfortunately you do have to pay more for the Samsung LCD, although there is currently a $60 mail in rebate available. Considering that similar displays cost well over $600 a year ago, the current price is very attractive, although we would still give the edge to the Acer 22" widescreen display.

The final option that we haven't bothered to list outright is to upgrade to a 23/24" display. With a price that's roughly double the cost of the Acer 22" LCD, it is anything but a cheap upgrade. Such large displays are definitely nice to use, and they have the added benefit of being able to display native 1080i/1080p video content without any stretching/squishing. They are definitely a high-end option still, and with the way display prices have been dropping today's $700 LCDs may end up costing under $300 in another year or two. At least, we can hope that will be the case. In the meantime, the 19"-22" is definitely the sweet spot in terms of price/performance. Don't be afraid to spend a bit more to increase the quality of your display however, as you will likely be staring at it far more than any other part of the computer.


Conclusion

Hopefully you have enjoyed this abbreviated look at the current midrange price segment. Since most of our readers seem to skip directly to the final component lists anyway, we thought this might be a better way of presenting our recommendations. We do understand that there's still a lot of room for variation in component selections, and by no means are these configurations the only ones we would currently recommend. Spending more or less money on any individual component is almost always justifiable depending on the intended use. A lot of people can't even dream of filling up a 250 Gigabyte hard drive, for example, but dropping to anything smaller usually results in purchasing an older model and you don't save more than $20. The motherboard, memory, and graphics card selections are all areas where there are many good alternatives that we didn't have the time to list, but we do feel confident in our recommendations and believe that the majority of users will be more than happy with the performance offered.

We'll be back with another buyer's guide in a couple weeks, and next time we will take a look at the high-end segment which we haven't specifically covered in quite a while. If you are looking for other alternatives, you can also check out our recently expanded system reviews section, where you can get someone else to do the assembly and testing for you so you can concentrate on the important stuff like actually using the computer.