It seems the decision to buy a computer becomes harder every year with all the available choices.

Here are my current thoughts on the subject till further notice.  ALL PC.  And this is a good guideline for anyone looking to buy a computer not just skiwillgee.

• Use XP Pro and skip the mistake that Vista is... anyone remember Windows millennium?? A nice little mistake that Microsoft swept under the rugg.  Well thats what Vista is.

• 2GB Minimum RAM - Dual Channel prerfered for optimal performance.   Requires Dual Channel RAM Sold as a pair and motherboard needs to support it.

• So many processor choices which to get?? on the Intel side anything with the words "Core" is the higher end of their Processors.   "Core 2" Preferred.   with AMD anything with the words "Athalon"  but "Athalon X2" is preferred.  This is one component you dont want to go cheap on.

• HD:  Not only have hard drives come down in size, but as well motherboards with Raid support are becoming common place.   I would recommend Raid 1 as a good method of data loss redundancy.   I have a Raid 1 with 2 x 500GB HD's.   Some people will look at this as a waste of disk space.  I see it as an assurance that if one HD Fails.  I can rebuild my system with the healthy drive.  Raid 1 works by Mirroring the data between the two drives.  So 2 x 500GB with Raid 1 will only give you 500GB of data and not 1000 GB.

• Video Card... this can be hard to choose and the choices are just over the top.  you can spend as low as $40 or $1500 and upwards.  So far I havent seen any data that suggests that Video Card speeds up rendering times.  If you want to render only, than a Low to Mid Range video card around the $150-$200 mark should do just fine.. if you want you're system to handle the latest games etc.. $300-$700 Range cards will do the job.

At this point I would like to also mention that you can get a PS3 for around $200-$300 much cheaper than an expensive video card and you can play games and Blu-Ray DVD's.

Brand Name? or no Brand Name?  Dell allows you to customize to a certain extent, and the positives would be that they have already done the work for you and the components should work together and there is a good warranty system incase something goes wrong.

You can also have a very good system built by people like ncix.com a good alternative and might get the better performance system.  But service/warranty might not be as good as Dell or Compaq.

So in my personal opinion  a Solid Motherboard + Fast Processor + Fast RAM will probably be the factors of a good rendering machine.

If you dont care for any of the above, there is the $300 rule.

What is a $300 dollar rule?   A $300 Motherboard, $300 Processor, $300 RAM, $300 Video Card should yield a fast machine.