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| AB9-Pro Dream Machine on a Budget |
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Page 5 of 8 The Case Choosing a budget case can be quite a task. Most cases under $40.00 feel and look cheap while also having issues with sturdiness, rough edges, etc... Luckily for us, our recently reviewed Rosewill R6AS5-BK was the perfect match. For only $40.00 this case will last, and also sports a blue light design with its high quality front bezel.       PSU We used an inexpensive Black Steel 480W PSU, purchased off of NewEgg. Nothing earthshatteringly good here, just an inexpensive power supply that at least had a modicum of positive reviews.         Memory Thanks to Kingston, Crucial, Corsair and Super Talent, we were able to test a variety of memory modules in the AB9-Pro. We found that all 2GB kits from the above mentioned companies worked and overclocked just as well as our 1GB kit from Corsair.         We could have gone a dozen different directions here with the market literally awash in low end and midrange graphics cards, almost confusingly so. Ours was a choice made after weighing various trade offs of cost and performance, which isn't a perfect process. To make a long story short, we went with a Powercolor Radeon X800GTO. Based on ATI's last generation R480 core, this is a card that hovers around a $100.00 price point and gives acceptable performance in a wide variety of games, admittedly with some concessions in the resolution department.   All in all, there are so many graphics cards on the market today to choose from, and before buying, we suggest taking a look at TechARP's Graphics Card Comparison Guide to help with the confusion. It's important to remember that a lot of older GPU's still perform very well, and that in today's market, the "latest" isn't always the best value or performance. Hard Drive Right now, hard drives in the 250GB range are very inexpensive. We went with the HITACHI Deskstar 7,200RPM T7K250. In budget fashion, we didn't opt for a RAID configuration. The AB9-Pro can support up to nine SATA drives, thus upgrading to meet storage or performance needs will certainly not be an issue. The T7K250 costs just under $80.00, so purchasing a second drive for a RAID 0 configuration wouldn't break the bank and wound be a recommended choice for those who work with large video files, or just need the added performance. The Deskstar T7K250 is a SATA II drive, and supports up to 300MB/s. It also supports Native Command Queuing, a feature also found in the ICH8R south bridge. The drive sports 125GB platters, and this means that it packs more data into the platter, thus letting the drive head access more data over a shorter area for improved performance. Having higher areal densities helps performance, and this is something one should consider when looking for a hard drive. With the above mentioned suggestions, one could go with any SATA drive within their price range.   Optical Drive DVD burners cost about as much as ordering a pizza and our system wouldn't be functional in today's world without one. Our recently reviewed Liteon 160P6S was the perfect match, both in terms of performance and cost. Furthermore, with the all black case, the drive matches with its optional black bezel. Most brand name drives are repackaged Liteon's. For around $30.00, there are quite a few DVD burners to choose from. However, we would recommend going with at least the 8x burn speed standard. Read our full review on the Liteon 160P6S here.   |
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