Quote - "A little tidbit that was a bit mysterious to me was the render speed on it.  Now, granted my computer and my wife's computer are both primarily gaming boxes so render speeds are a LOT slower than most of the other folks in here; but, this one was crazy slow to start with."

Reading through the posts again this made me curious.  Why would a gaming box be so much slower than one used for rendering?

Not sure on the exact pro's and con's xandi.. I just know that each configuration has a different focus.  Doesn't help that this computer was new in the summer of '09.  It could stand a complete rebuilding anyway.  What I'll probably do is let the kids use this one to watch netflix(caillou and backyardigans re-runs) and for my teenager to do his home-schooling on and then build a serious box for me to render with