Your very regular daily buys in hardware

IF YOU know of any good value IT sales (auctions, rebates, one-off, clearance, surplus, classified ads) going around in the United Kingdom, France, USA or Singapore, don't hesitate to contact me, at least 24 hours before the sales end.

France
David Atherton also known as Dabs also exists in France. Its French wing is selling the cheapest DVD writer in the Hexagon. The DabsValue/Nutech DDW-081 is a well known model. It is amongst the cheapest 8X DVD writer you will find in any markets around the world. Although it was supposed to be a DVD+R writer, firmware updates exist here which will magically convert it to a fully blown dual format DVD rewriter. The brand might not be very well known on the market but NuTech comes from Quanta Storage Incorporated - Quanta might ring a bell in your head, they are amongst the world leader in notebook production.

With the newer B370 firmware, the writer is capable of 24x CDRW, 8x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW in addition to 4xDVD+RW and 8X DVD+R. Of course, the drive is capable of reading DVD's and CDROMs. The price of the drive is only € 54,68, which is slightly more expensive than the £35.99 you would pay in Dabs UK. These low prices make DVD/CDRW combo basically obsolete as DVD writers are capable of much more at a lower or similar price. The software package consists of Cineplayer, Sony MyDVD and Record Now. The writer also supports Mount Rainier technology from Microsoft. Reviews online confirm that it is a fast DVD writer and though one might argue that 16x DVD writers have already appeared, supported media has yet to come on the market. The Nutech DDW-081 is quite simply, as CD Freak said it, the best value for money drive on the market, bar none.

UK
Looking into a long forgotten project, I wondered what would be the fastest way to burn DVDs. A simple DVD writer would certainly not do, nor would two of them or three. What I need therefore would be a kind of duplicator. But these beasties do not come cheap. Although the price of the cheapest DVD writer in UK is £27.66+VAT, Personally, I wouldn't touch them - Philips DVDRW416K - with a barge pole because they are DVD+R - rebadged NEC ND-1100, and DVD+Rs are more expensive than DVD-R.

So I set my thoughts on the Samsung TS-H552B 16x Double Layer DVD+R/RW drive which would allow me to burn DVD-R at 4x, 8x and consequently jump into the Dual layer bandwagon. 14 of these babies - that's the minimum for this project would cost me only £517.86+VAT, only £36.99 a pop, really the cheapest 16x DVD DL writer in town.

The writer comes with a 2MB buffer and should prove to be a fast writer given the appropriate media. Who would have guessed that the difference between the cheapest and arguably one of the fastest drives would be less than £10. The DVD reader to be used would be the LG16x which can be found at Microdirect for £13.75.

The maximum write speed for DVD-R media is 12x while DVD+R can be written at 16x. As for the duplicator, I have chosen the Acard 1 to 7 Standalone DVD duplicator with nine bays for only £195.74+VAT. Bearing in mind my initial requirements, two duplicating towers would cost you exactly £1100. For that price, you would get a virtual 112x DVD writer, theoretically capable of churning a DVD every 35s under ideal conditions, using 8x media.

USA
Wanna play for cheap? Get yourself a Geforce FX 5600 which seems, according to some benchmarks to be better than the rest of the bunch. The Chaintech A-F60-128 comes with 128MB memory, TVO and DVI. The card has a 128-bit interface but can manage 8.8GB/s bandwidth. Engine is clocked at 325MHz while memory is clocked at 550MHz. The card scored a respectable 2691 marks under 3Dmark 03, ahead of the Radeon 9600 and more than twice that of my card, an ageing Radeon 8500 DV. It should allow you to play DOOM III and the likes in all their splendour. The card in itself does not come with RAM sink which is a pity and means that overclocking might not be exciting as it might get.

Nonetheless, at $72 here, you can get much better at that price. However, you might also try the ATI Radeon 9500 with 64MB memory, DVI and TVO, The card is an OEM one and comes with a 300MHz clocked DDR memory as well as a engine clocked at 300MHz. This bodes well for overclocking although as for the previous card, there are no heat sinks for the memory modules. At $65, it provides with excellent value for money Lastly, for those who long for the time when the Ti4600 card was the best card on Earth, you can get one of them for only $70.

On the menu, a branded Visiontek XTasy Geforce Ti4600 with 128MB memory. They use Samsung 2.8ns memory which should give them 11.42GB/s bandwidth. From its default 300/650Mhz memory, the card has been overclocked with success up to 335/800MHz. Even on a game as demanding as Flight Simulator 2004, the Visiontek card can churn 53 frames per second, an astounding performance for a $70 card. µ