While we're on the subject of fans, know this: All your workstation components are adversely affected by heat. Too much of it and things will start to become unstable or even sustain damage. At a minimum, you should put a good 80mm fan in the fan cage at the bottom front of your case to draw in cool air, and another 80mm fan in the upper rear of the case to blow hot air out. This can get noisy, so I again recommend a high-quality, quiet fan like the Silencer 80mm from PC Power & Cooling.

Case recommendations: InWin Q500, Antec SX1240, Lian Li PC70, Cooler Master ATC-210.

Size matters with the Sony GDM FW900.

Monitor
There are a few issues to consider when choosing your monitor: CRT vs. LCD, size and quality. Oh, and of course, price.

CRT technology is the TV-style, picture tube monitor we are most familiar with. LCD technology is the active-matrix, laptop screen broken out onto the desktop. In general, CRTs are still the best bet for animation. They are capable of higher contrast and have more resolution choices than LCD panels. LCDs are not yet up to the visual standards of CRTs, although their low power consumption, small footprint and overall sex appeal make them quite tempting.

You can never have too much screen real estate. A 19" CRT is pretty good, 20"-21" is better. Sony makes a wide aspect-ratio, 24" CRT that is beautiful. Remember, the larger the screen, the bigger and heavier the monitor. Most large CRTs need a pretty deep desk to sit on. One note about LCDs: A 17" LCD is the equivalent of a 19" CRT.

The quality of the monitor is a very important consideration. Most manufacturers have a "graphics professional" or "CAD" line of monitors that is worth checking out. Look for a perfectly flat screen, a dot pitch of .22mm to .25mm (this is how densely packed the pixels are), and a good overall picture. It is important either to see monitors in person or read lots of reviews from trusted sources.

Monitor recommendations: IBM P260, ViewSonic PF815, Sony GDM FW900, iiyama Vision Master Pro 512.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (Socket A) vs. The Intel Pentium 4A: Both are fast.

CPU
Since the CPU is the "brain" of your workstation, it is one of the key selections you will have to make before choosing other components. Your motherboard and RAM choices will depend largely on which CPU you get.

The choice here is between Intel's Pentium 4 and AMD's Athlon lineups. They are pretty comparable; people have great success with both of them. Some days the Athlons are quoted as being the speed kings, on others it's the P4.