Buyer's Guide: High-End Systems - June 2000

High-end SOHO
The small office/home office machine has a unique set of requirements. It must provide quick and snappy 2D performance and be very stable. The keys to good performance on such a machine is lots of RAM and a fast hard drive. This system should be able to handle just about anything a typical business user might throw at it.

Processor – AMD Athlon 700 - $200
Although CPU performance isn’t the most important factor for many office applications, there are some where CPU performance is critical. At similar clock speeds, the Athlon holds a significant advantage in price, and for that reason, we’ve chosen an Athlon 700 - a boost of 50 MHz over last month at no additional cost.  Throw in a Golden Fingers device and the 700 can easily overclock to somewhere between 750 and 850MHz. 

For more information on all Athlon processors, read our Athlon 1GHz Review.

Motherboard – ASUS K7V - $160
If you’re going with an Athlon CPU, the VIA KX133 chipset is clearly the best platform to run it on today.  Last month there was a huge dearth of good KX133 motherboards that were actually available, but times have changed. The ASUS K7V is now available and is our pick as the best overall KX133 motherboard. It's a bit pricey at $160, but well worth the added cost.

You can save a few bucks by going with the AOpen AK72 or ABIT KA7, both of which performed very well in the AnandTech lab.

For more information, read our ASUS K7V Review.

Memory – 256MB Corsair or Mushkin PC133 SDRAM (2x128MB DIMM’s) – $150 x 2
Even though memory is relatively cheap these days, 256MB is more than enough.  We could have dropped down to 128MB, but the savings didn’t justify the performance loss.  Besides, this is our high-end SOHO machine, and there’s room in the budget. 

As for the exact brand of memory, we recommend Corsair or Mushkin modules.  We use them in our test systems and have had absolutely no problems with them. 

Video card – Matrox G400 32MB Dual Head - $120
We’ve always found Matrox cards to do an excellent job in business environments, and their latest card, the G400, is no exception.  You’ll get snappy 2D display, DVD playback, and excellent display driver utilities that include useful features like virtual desktop.  With the option for dual head, you can add a second monitor to potentially double your workspace.  And if you need to take a break from work, the G400 is ready to frag away ;) This month, the price is down $60. Thank the release of faster and faster products from NVIDIA and 3dfx for that price drop.

For more information, read our Matrox G400 & G400 MAX Review.

Monitor – iiYama VisionMaster PRO 450 - $650
If you’re going to be sitting in front of your monitor for hours a day, it’s critical that you have a crisp monitor that can provide a flicker-free refresh rate at your resolution of choice.  Using a Mitsubishi Diamondtron NF, the iiYama VisionMaster Pro 450 provides a perfectly flat display surface using the same technology in Sony’s FD Trinitron models, but at a lower cost.  The VisionMaster PRO 450 is a 19” monitor and has been highly acclaimed here on AnandTech and by owners alike.  If you’ve got the funds, we highly recommend you go with the 22” VisionMaster PRO 510 for about $1000.

For more information, read our iiYama VisionMaster PRO 450 and VisionMaster PRO 510 Reviews.