Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
products: OptiQuest. If you buy a Pro Series monitor, you know it's going
to cost more than the lower-end models, but you also know it's going to
have excellent performance and will likely be quite reliable. Conversely, if
you buy an OptiQuest monitor, you know it's going to be cheap and not
very good. A few manufacturers also have special high-end brand names,
although that practice has declined as margins have eroded throughout
the industry.
A Rose by Any Other Name
It's not uncommon for several
manufacturers to relabel identical or
very similar products from the same
Pacific Rim factory. For example,
the factory that makes many of the
cases that Antec sells under its brand
names also makes similar cases that
are sold under other brand names
such as Chieftec and Chenming. Con-
trary to web wisdom, that doesn't
mean those similar products are
identical to the Antec cases. Different
companies can specify different
levels of finish, quality control, and
so on. A case with the Antec name on
it meets Antec's quality standards.
An “identical” case with a different
brand name may not be of the same
quality.
This practice is also common with
power supplies. Many well-regarded
brand-name power supplies are in
fact manufactured by a company
other than the one whose name they
bear. For example, many Antec and
PC Power & Cooling power supplies
are actually made by Seasonic,
which also sells power supplies under
its own name. Once again, don't
assume that two very similar power
supplies are of equal quality simply
because they were made by the
same manufacturer. Seasonic-
manufactured power supplies that
are branded by Antec, PC Power &
Cooling, or Seasonic meet those
companies' respective quality control
standards. The same is not necessar-
ily true of a similar power supply with
a different company's name on it.
•
If you're on a tight budget, shop by brand name rather than by speci-
fications. For the same price, it's usually better to choose a component
that has less impressive specifications but a better brand name rather
than a component with better specifications but a poor brand name. For
example, if you can't afford a high-end 24” Samsung LCD display, but a
22” Samsung model with similar specifications or a Brand-X 24” display
with similar specifications is within your budget, choose the 22” Samsung
model. It may be a bit smaller than the Brand-X display, but the Samsung
will almost certainly have better display quality and be more reliable. In
other words, if you have to choose between better quality and higher per-
formance, choose quality every time.
• Similarly, if you're choosing between two lines offered by a particular
manufacturer, choose the better-quality model. For example, if a display
manufacturer offers a 24” model from its entry-level line at about the
same price as a 22” model from its premium line, choose the latter. You
give up a bit of screen size, but display quality will be higher, and possi-
bly reliability as well. Conversely, if the manufacturer offers good/better/
best lines, you'll probably get optimum bang for the buck by choosing
the midsize “better” model rather than the small “best” model or the large
“good” model.
In this chapter, we tell you what we've learned based on more than 20 years
of experience buying PC hardware components. By necessity, the project sys-
tems in this topic are built with specific components. The obvious problem
with any such list of specific components is that new products are constantly
introduced and older products discontinued. A product that is leading-edge
when we proof the final galleys may be midrange by the time the topic ar-
rives in bookstores and discontinued by the time you read it. Nor is this prob-
lem limited to printed topics; even enthusiast websites can't keep up with the
flood of new products. So, rather than a detailed discussion of such ephem-
eral details, this chapter focuses heavily on the important characteristics of
hardware components—the things you need to understand to make good
decisions.
Fortunately, progress in PC components is generally evolutionary rather than
revolutionary, and the quality level you can expect from any particular man-
ufacturer is pretty predictable. If we use, for example, a Seagate Barracuda
7200.12 hard drive in one of the project systems, and that exact drive is no lon-
ger available when you start ordering parts for your own system, it's probably
safe to assume that a similar 7200.12 model will do the job just as well. And if
Seagate has by then introduced a 7200.13 series, it's very likely that those new
models will be at least as fast and reliable as the earlier models.
