Generally, figure a 20 gig HDD, 512megs of ram. You only need basic video, no audio. gigabit ethernet is hot right now, but either 10100 or wireless will more than suffice. I use Athlons and Win2k Pro on my garden machines, but P4's will do as well. For that matter, so will used P3's. With the rendergarden boxes, unless you are planning to use serious software at some later time, cost is pretty much the governing factor. My 4 boxes have between 20 and 40 gigs of hard drive each; 512 to 1.25 gig of ram ranging from PC-133 to PC-2700. The slowest is an XP-1700, the fastest is an XP-2500+. I frankensteined all of them, and they span a pretty wide spectrum of parts (Mobo's are Gigabyte, Chaintech, ECS, and Shuttle. Video ranges from Jaton 4 meg to a GF2mx550. Power supplies are 250 watt compusa specials; since I keep the add-ons to a bare minimum, they suffice for stable operation, and don't generate a lot of heat). One thing you will want is a KVM switch that supports the number of boxes you have (and you can find a 4 station switch on pricewatch.com for cheap), so you only need one monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Do some close shopping, as the changeover in hardware standards are going to make some good buys. My AMD setups run fine with Vue and VuePro, with Mover 4 and 5. I really need to sit down and put all of this together in a coherent manner, don't I?