Buyer's Guide: Dream System - August 2002

Case - Cool Master ATC-AX1 and 430W Power Supply - $290

We are not such big fans of flashy cases in general, but there are certainly some visually pleasing cases that offer style as well as function. We think that the Cool Master ATC-AX1 is one such case.

Not only does the ATC-AX1 look great and is not overly flashy, it is also very functional. The case has four front accessible 5.25" drive bays and a total of six 3.5" drive bays, two of which are front accessible. The case is fully aluminum and has an acrylic front panel that keeps the drive bays and buttons protected.

Truthfully we chose the ATC-AX1 because we think it looks good; real good. Cases are really just a matter of taste and one is pretty much safe going with any case that is visually pleasing to them and offers good cooling.

Our ATC-AX1 did not come with a power supply installed so we outfitted it with a generic, name brand 400 watt power supply. We suggest you go with a reputable company, like Sparkle or AOpen when choosing a power supply but most power supplies in the 400+ watt range are going to be fairly well made. The 430W model that we chose should prove to be powerful enough for almost anything you can throw in the ATC-AX1 case but if you want feel free to go with a 500W or greater power supply for even greater piece of mind.

Sound Card - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum - $166

The Creative Labs sound cards have continually set the standard in computer audio reproduction and the top of the line Audigy Platinum continues this tradition. The card includes pretty much everything one could want in a sound card, including S/PDIF in and out ports for digital audio, EAX audio support, and even an IEEE-1394 port. This is the top of the line internal Audigy card and includes key features not present in some of the other Audigy products, such as 5.1 audio support. The Audigy Platinum is pricey but it will not disappoint.

Another option for those looking for a sound card in a dream system is the Audigy Platinum EX, which is the external version of the Audigy Platinum. The external version is more targeted at those who are uncomfortable with opening up their computer to add sound and those needing easy access to many input and output ports. One reason that we stayed away from the Platinum EX was that it would take away visually from our system, with wires running all over the place.

Speakers - Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 - $360

Klipsch is the computer audio leader. Their ProMedia series of speakers have won praise time and time again for their excellent audio reproduction. The newest line in the ProMedia series is the ProMedia 5.1 speakers. This 6 piece speaker set is THX certified and offers 500W (RMS) of power. The speaker set makes an ideal match with our Audigy Platinum sound card which is able to provide the ProMedia 5.1 speakers with the 5.1 channel audio feed it needs.

Ethernet - Linksys EtherFast 10/100 - $20

You are pretty safe going with the old and trusty Linksys EtherFast 10/100 NIC in your dream system. Even if you are hooked up to one of the best internet connections out there you are not going to come close to approaching the 100 mega bits per second throughput that the EtherFast card offers. Plus, we have been using these cards for years now and have never one had a problem with them.

If you are looking for something a to run on a gigabit ethernet network (of which very few exist), you can spend around $20 more and get one of those.

Hard Drive - 2x Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP 36.7GB - $660

Hard drives are the largest bottlenecks in computer systems today. Everything that your computer does was based in information stored on the hard disk at one point or another. This means that for everything that your computer does it must turn to the hard disk often.

We spared no expense when choosing hard disk drives for our dream system. The Seagate Cheetah X15 series drives are the fastest hard drives out there. Based on the Ultra160 SCSI standard, the X15 drives spin at 15,000RPM and have a mind blowing 3.6ms average seek time. The 36.7GB model of the X15 is the highest capacity X15 available (it is hard to get dense platters in such a high performance drive) and it is for this reason that we outfitted the system with two drives thus increasing storage capacity to 73.4GB.

SCSI Controller - Adaptec 39160 - $220

When we set out to build our dream system we wanted to put a SCSI RAID 0+1 setup in the system. We searched and searched but we just could not find a good Ultra160 SCSI RAID controller that would work properly in the ASUS P4T533-C. All the RAID cards we could find required a 64-bit 33MHz PCI slot to work properly. Since there is no i850E board that offers a 64-bit PCI slot (only i860 Xeon boards), we were forced to abandon our RAID ideas and instead go with a SCSI controller.

We ultimately decided upon the Adaptec 39160 Ultra160 SCSI controller. Adaptec and SCSI are almost synonymous and there is little question that they make some of the best SCSI controller on the market. The 39160 is unique because it actually offers two Ultra160 controllers on one card. This means that we can hook our two Cheetah X15 drives up without having the drives compete for bandwidth, since each drive can be on a separate controller. Given the lack of a 64-bit 33MHz PCI slot on our i850E solution, we thought that this setup was best.

CD-RW - Plextor PX-W40012TA/SW 40x12x40 CD-RW - $125

There is no reason to go with a slow burner in our dream system so we stuck the Plextor PX-W400012TA/SW drive in it. The drive is one of the fastest burners available and is able to offer a 40x burn rate. This should make backing up data and transferring files much more pleasant.

DVD+RW - HP DVD200XI 2.4x2.4x8 DVD+RW - $390

What dream system would be complete without a DVD burner? We chose to include a DVD+RW drive in our dream system configuration in order to provide an extremely large backup and storage option. DVD+RW discs can hold up to 4.7GB of information. There are a variety of DVD recordable formats on the market today but DVD+RW seems to be getting the most support. The standard was created by HP, Philips and Sony with the support of Verbatim, Ricoh, and Yamaha. Most importantly, DVD+RW discs are more compatible with existing DVD-ROM drives than DVD-RAM discs.

The HP drive that we chose also features the ability to burn CD-ROM discs as well, although at 12x10x32 our dedicated Plextor burner will get the job done faster.

OS - Microsoft Windows XP Professional - $275

Windows XP Professional is really a no brainer in our dream system. Windows XP is not only becoming a quickly adopted standard among operating systems, the Professional version of the OS adds advanced features to the base Windows XP package. You should be able to find an OEM copy of Windows XP Professional out there for significantly less. If you are building the machine from scratch, by all means go for it.

Bottom Line - $7444 (without operating system)