Wow. Many thanks for the responses: this has helped me focus on what's important: raw grunt power. Looks like I'll go with a "safe" (known, stable) option of dual 1Ghz PIII's in an ABit VP6 board with 2Gb of RAM. The RAID is appealing plus I don't have to change my beloved SuperMicro case or upgrade the PSU. I'll keep my "old" ASUS GeForce card and ATA66 drive for now. All this to render animations faster. Maybe I should have chosen a cheaper hobby, like diamond collecting. Thanks again, Mark