unless you are Bill Gates, way overkill on the processors -- especially the graphics card.

"Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the extra RAM usage won't really speed up render times, since they are limited by CPU."

ive seen RAM usage as high as 15GB with Poser. it depends on what you have in the scene, if youre using dynamic hair, your render settings and bucket size.

ideally you should have no virtual memory usage (hard drive clicking away) while rendering, or it really slows things down.

 

 

for the record im running Windows 7 x64 on a Phenom II X6 1090T @ 4GHZ
16 gigs RAM
GTX 560Ti 448 Classified
Seasonic X-650 PSU
main OS and programs on a 128GB SSD,
all my data on two mirrored 1TB drives in RAID 

what id consider a 'budget' system for someone who works in 3D, but i have been very happy with the rendering performance and i dont feel the need to upgrade anytime soon. my only upgrade this year was a better UPS.

unless youve won the lottery and dont care about money, the bleeding-edge high end CPU and GPU (especially workstation graphics) segments offer the least amount of value for your money. you pay out the ass for that last 10-20% performance.

you could build two less expensive rigs and use one as a full-time rendering machine while you worked/multitasked totally unimpeded on the other, or use them both with the Queue Manager (and still have a lot of money left over to put in the bank).  paying ~2000+ for a processor is insanity.