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Deciding what components to put in a professional 3D system on a budget can be a daunting task. As 3D modeling and programing increases in popularity, more and more computer shoppers are looking for a system that can handle not only Word and Excel but also 3D Studio Max and Maya. Obviously the hardware requirements for professional 3D applications is much higher than those for simple office tasks. The hardware requirements can seem intimidating and may suggest that only systems costing multiple thousands of dollars will be capable of running the programs smoothly. Our value professional 3D buyer's guide sets out to dispel the rumors you may have heard. It is possible to build a fully functioning and fairly fast professional 3D system at a price that does not break the bank.

Every component in a recommend system, from case to monitor, is covered. The only hidden costs are shipping costs, which can add anywhere from 5% to 10% to the total system cost depending on what you get and from where. The best way to keep shipping costs down is to order as much as possible from a single vendor or pick things up locally. Be sure to take a look at the AnandTech Hot Deals Forum to see if any AnandTech readers have posted a special deal on a piece of hardware in the recommended system. Also be sure to check out our Weekly CPU & Video Card Price Guide and our Weekly Memory & Motherboard Price Guide to see if prices have been updated since the buyer's guide was last posted.

This Week

Today we take a look back and reevaluate our value professional 3D system recommendation made about two months ago. We have made some minor changes to the value professional 3D lineup but for the most part the system remains very close to the configuration suggested last time around. The value professional 3D system actually closely mirrors our value gaming system recommendation: the two share the same motherboard, case, sound solution, and optical drive solution. What we did decide to go with a slightly faster processor, more memory, a different video card, and a faster hard drive compared to the value gaming rig.

Value Professional 3D

Processor - AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz) - $85

AMD processors have historically done win in professional 3D environments. Depending on the situation, we have found the Athlon XP to perform very strongly in a number of professional 3D applications such as Maya and 3D Studio Max. In a number of instances the Athlon XP 1900+ that we recommend here performed at or above the speeds of Intel Pentium 4 processors costing $100 more. This makes the Athlon XP processor the best solution for our value professional 3D system.

We bumped up the speed of our CPU this time around, going from an Athlon XP 1800+ to an Athlon XP 1900+. The extra speed ended up costing $8, an amount which is trivial especially in the case of a professional 3D workstation where CPU performance is a large factor in application performance. The next step up, the Athlon XP 2000+, runs $14 more and would offer fairly little in terms of performance.

For more information on the AMD Athlon XP processor, check out our most recent AMD Athlon XP review.

Motherboard - MSI MS-6380E KT3 Ultra2 - $75

Our last value professional 3D system recommended the MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard as the motherboard of choice. We decided upon the KT3 Ultra for a number of reasons. First, we were pleased at the price that the KT333 motherboard was being offered at (very close in price to the older KT266A motherboards). Secondly, we chose the KT3 Ultra because of its integrated 6 channel audio solution (provided by a Avance Logic ALC650 chip). Finally, we decided upon the KT3 Ultra because it won our Editors Choice Silver award in our KT333 roundup.

This time around we slightly modify our motherboard selection. Today we replace the KT3 Ultra with the updated KT3 Ultra2, just as we did in our value gaming guide. The two are essentially the same motherboard except the KT3 Ultra2 now uses VIA's new southbridge solution, the VT8235, which adds USB 2.0 support. The board still maintains the quality build, stability, and integrated sound that got it here in the first place. The bottom line is that the KT3 Ultra2 is only $10 more than the KT3 Ultra was seven weeks ago and is the next logical step in the KT3 Ultra series evolution.

You can read more about the MSI KT3 Ultra in our KT333 roundup and more about the KT333 chipset in general in our VIA KT333 article.

Memory - 512MB Mushkin PC2700 DDR SDRAM - $169

Memory plays an important role in professional 3D workstations so we decided that 512MB was a minimum requirement even for our value configuration. We opted for slightly more expensive PC2700 memory and not PC2100 memory based on the fact that the increased memory bandwidth should result in some tangible gains in the performance of 3D applications.

Memory prices remain the same as they were seven weeks ago in our last professional 3D buyer's guide. Again, we chose to go with slightly more expensive memory from a reputable manufacturer as opposed to cheaper memory from a no-name company. Motherboards, especially those of the KT333 variety, can be very picky when it comes to what memory it will run with. Trust us when we say that the extra money you spend buying from Mushkin, Crucial, Kengston, ect is well worth it.

Since we can afford to be a bit more lenient with price in our value professional 3D system we chose to outfit it with a GeForce4 Ti 4200, the same card we chose to put in our last value professional 3D system. We knew that putting a DirectX 8 card in our value professional 3D system was a must as it is only with a DirectX 8 ready card that we can take advantage of vertex and pixel shaders. The professional 3D NVIDIA cards that include this functionality, the Quadro4 XGL cards, are priced far to high to find their way into a value system of any sorts. Don't fret: the hardware antialiased lines, hardware overlay planes, and two-sided lighting that the Quadro cards offer wont be missed much but the $400 or so that you save by going with the Ti 4200 would be.

We would suggest you stay away from previous generation Quadro based cards. Although prices of Quadro2 cards have fallen quite a bit from their prices a year ago, the cards miss out on the advanced GeForce4 features such as DX 8 compatibility and an enhanced T&L engine. When deciding what GeForce4 Ti 4200 to go with, just stick with the least expensive one you can find. We saw in our GeForce4 Ti 4200 roundup that all 4200 cards are created equal. The price of the least expensive GeForce4 Ti 4200 card in our recent price guide was $126. This represented a $14 decrease in price from last value professional 3D buyer's guide and make the card even more attractive to the value market.

The other card you may consider going with is the card we placed in our value gaming system, the ATI Radeon 8500 LE. The 8500 LE will not be as fast as the GeForce4 Ti 4200 but it will cost you about $40 less.

Be sure to check out our GeForce4 Ti 4200 roundup for more information about the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200.

Monitor - Cornerstone C1035 - $499

Just like 19" monitor prices, 21" monitor prices have been falling the recent months. We decided that the extra money that a 21" monitor will cost you is worth it on a professional 3D system such as this one. We chose to recommend the Cornerstone C1035 due to our personal experience with it. Again, this is the same recommendation made almost two months ago in our last value professional 3D buyer's guide.. During our testing we were very pleased with the monitor and found that it was able to provide quite the bang for the buck.

You are fairly safe going with a 21" monitor from any major monitor manufacturer. Just make sure that it can display a resolution of at least 1600x1200 at a refresh rate of 70Hz or above.

For more information on the Cornerstone C1035, check out the review we did on the monitor.

Case - Antec SX630 II - $75

The Antec SX630 is a case we have been recommending for quite some time now in our value system configurations. The SX630 II is a slight modification of the original SX630 and offers new front USB and IEEE-1394 connections.

The SX630 II is a mini tower case solution that offers 8 drive bays (five 3.5" bays and three 5.25" bays), seven expansion slots, a swing-out side panel, and an 80mm rear case fan standard. Cooling-wise, the SX630 can also accept two front mounted 80mm case fans. The SX630 II's 300 watt AMD approved power supply should have no problem with our KT333 motherboard and Athlon XP 1900+ processor.

Sound Card - Integrated 6 Channel Avance Logic ALC650 - "Free"

Sound really should not play that large of a role in a professional 3D system but it is always nice to have the ability to work and listen to high fidelity music at the same time. We found in a recent on-board audio test that the 6 channel Avance Logic ALC650 AC'97 codec is able to provide exactly what we were looking for. The MSI KT3 Ultra2 that is at the heart of our value gaming setup makes use of the ALC650, providing a very low cost 6 channel audio solution that provides audio functionality not previously available in an integrated audio chip.

Avance Logic's software allows you to remap the three 1/8" jacks on the KT3 Ultra2 to handle front, rear and LFE outputs. Because of this, these three jacks enable 5.1 channel analog outputs without the use of any additional brackets. The audio quality of this solution should be just about as good as a high end discrete audio card with a price much more attractive: free.

Check out our page covering onboard audio in our KT333 roundup for more information.

Speakers - Generic - $20

Because sound is not the most important thing in most professional environments,we chose to outfit our value professional 3D system with a set of speakers that do not really do the integrated audio justice system justice. Any pair of stereo speakers at your local computer store will make do for now as all we are looking for is the ability to play back Windows sounds. If you are interested in getting a higher end audio system, try the Logitech Z-540s. They cost about $40 more than the generic stereo speakers but sound a world better.

Ethernet - Linksys EtherFast 10/100 - $20

We have been recommending the Linksys EtherFast 10/100 network card for what seems like ages now. We continue to stick with the card because of our personal experience with it. We have been using EtherFast 10/100 cards in the lab for years now and have never been disappointed. Plus, the card offers full support for all major OS's.

Hard Drive - Western Digital WD400JB 40GB - $88

This time around our hard drive recommendation has changed a bit. Previous value-level buyer's guides recommended the Western Digital WD400BB hard drives as the hard drive solution of choice. After a number of e-mails which suggested that the WD400BB drives actually use different platters than the WD800BB drives that we based the performance of the 40GB hard drive on,we decided to investigate the issue. The e-mails were right. It seems that the WD400BB does use older 20GB platters meaning that the drive consists of 2 platters and 4 heads. The WD400JB, on the other hand, uses a single 40GB platter with 2 heads. Add to that feature the fact that the WD400JB includes 8MB of cache and is only $18 more than the WD400BB and it becomes clear that the WD400JB should be the hard drive of choice for our value professional 3D system.

A hard drive actually ends up playing a large role in the overall speed of a system. With the WD400JB, one should not be disappointed. Those looking for more space may wish to check out the 80GB WD800JB at $115.

CD-R/CD-RW - Name Brand 32x10x40 Drive - $50

We decided to put a CD-R/CD-RW drive in our value professional 3D system because the additional money that the drive costs is worth it in the long run. The price of a CD-R/RW drive is only slightly higher than that of a read only CD drive and the added functionality is well worth it. Thanks to the addition of a CD-R/CD-RW you can now store and distribute 3D files with ease. We took a look at a Benq (aka Acer) CD-R/CD-RW drive when pricing our selection but other brands like ASUS , AOpen, and Lite On offer drives with similar specifications at competitive prices.

OS - Microsoft Windows XP Home - $190

Thanks to your feedback, we opted to make Microsoft Windows XP Home the operating system of choice for our value systems. Windows XP Home offers the same functionality and stability as Windows XP Professional but leaves out some networking functions that, although nice in a professional environment, are far from necessary.

Bottom Line: $1207 (without software)

Summary