Buyer's Guide: High-End Professional 3D - August 2002

Case - Antec Performance Plus PLUS1080 - $145

We are going to need a fairly big case for our professional 3D system and one thing we don't want to be limited by are expansion options down the road. The Antec PLUS1080 provides a perfect home for our professional 3D system, as it is spacious, well cooled, and comes with a powerful power supply.

The PLUS1080 offers a total of 10 drive bays (four 5.25" and six 3.5") and two rear and one side panel fans standard. It also comes with a hefty 430W power supply that should be more than happy to run our power hungry dual Athlon MP motherboard.

Like before, if you are looking for something smaller, try the Antec PLUS660. It is the mini-tower version of the PLUS1080 and actually costs $45 less.

Sound Card - Sound Blaster Live! Value OEM - $30

We are really only going to need basic sound for our professional 3D system but since the Tyan Tiger MPX does not include any onboard sound, we decided to put a Sound Blaster Live! Value OEM in our system. The card, which does not offer the Dolby Digital decoding found on the "5.1" Sound Blasters, should prove to be an adequate solution for our speaker setup. The Sound Blaster Live! cards have proven themselves time and time again so it should not disappoint in a system not fully dedicated to sound, such as our high-end professional 3D system.

Speakers - Logitech Z540 - $57

It is true that the user of our high-end professional 3D system really shouldn't care too much about audio playback but, at the same time, we are building a high-end system and a decent set of speakers is almost a must. We have recommended the Logitech Z540's time and time again due to their excellent sound quality. The speakers are a 4.1 setup and should be able to play back music nicely while working.

If audio playback is of no concern, try going with just an inexpensive set of stereo speakers that you can pick up at your local computer store. Even a $5 or $10 speaker set has the ability to play back Windows sounds and notifications.

Ethernet - Integrated 3Com 3C905 - "Free"

The Tyan Tiger MPX may not come with any integrated sound but the board does come with a good integrated LAN controller. The 3Com 3C905 chip on the Tiger MPX should serve all your networking needs with no problem. Plus, at a price of zero dollars, there is no reason not to use it.

Hard Drive - Western Digital Special Edition Caviar WD800JB 80GB - $110

Many disagreed with the hard drive selection we made in past high-end buyers guides so we took a step back and reevaluated. As a result we have changed our hard drive recommendation from a Maxtor DiamondMax D740X to a Western Digital Special Edition Caviar WD800JB.

With a massive 8MB buffer the WD800JB offers compelling performance for an IDE hard drive. We have seen the WD800JB excel in real world benchmarks where it has scored substantially higher numbers than competing products. We chose to go with the 80GB version in our high-end professional 3D system due to the fact that professional 3D applications and files typically take up a lot of space. Western Digital also offers the drive in a 120GB version. Called the Western Digital Special Edition Caviar WD1200JB, the 120GB drive runs about $50 more than the 80GB version but offers virtually identical performance.

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

A fast burner is a must for our high-end professional 3D system. Many of the files generated during professional 3D creation are too large to fit on a floppy, meaning that CDs will likely be created often. The Plextor EIDE PX-W40012TA/SW is one of the fastest burners available and with a 40x burn rate, those CDs will get done fast.

DVD - Name Brand 16X DVD - $40

We decided to throw a DVD drive into our high-end professional 3D system simply because the cost of such a drive is fairly reasonable. It is not too likely that professional 3D programs will come on a DVD any time soon, but the drive can make CD copying much easier and DVD movie watching possible.

OS - Microsoft Windows XP Professional - $275

Windows XP Professional is the operating system of choice for our high-end professional 3D system. Not only does the OS offer the most compatibility with 3D creation programs, it is also very stable. The Professional version adds advanced network and other features to the Windows XP package; features that will likely be useful for a professional 3D system which will likely be found in a network environment.

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 - $2521 (without software)