Great info guys!

I use reflection in my SSS skin shaders and quite often use SSS on hair or reflection on dynamic hair (like the fur hat in my avatar) This kicks my render times way up but makes them look better. Using optimized render settings as well but still long render times.

Already have a pro external sound device for music and a lot of other stuff (a rack full of gear,vintage synths and guitars)

Brian

Hi Brian I'm using only SSS on my skins and SSS on hair this I've tried twice with very mixed results and dynamic hair this I'm using only on few bits

Yes agree really depends how many bounces you have and how much SSS you have set(my SSS is around 35-45% and render times are pretty good too) and as I said my scenes are pretty complex too and my render times rarely goes to to more than 1 hour,but if I enable Light emitter on hair,then renders will be longer... Are you enabling Light emitter on hair ?

I've got only TC Electronics Powercore and mostly I'm using there my trusty Virus plugin which is good and still cheaper than Access Virus which I would love to have,but in general my PC is during the day used for making music with Reason and Re-wired to Ableton where I'm using lots of plugins(usually I end with 24 plugins) and samples etc and still my CPU never goes beyond 25% 

Clock for clock,Xeon will be faster than any Sandy Bridge CPU,in only specific applications you will see difference and in games I can't see any difference,which I've compared with friend PC

I would build own PC with above CPU and I would invest money to good CPU cooler,will be worth it,as I'm running only Thermalright Macho HR02 and my temps during rendering are in low 60's and CPU is clocked from original 2.93GHz to 4.2GHz(sometimes I'm using 4.4GHz when I do render in Luxrender or V-RAY) and PC is turned on 24/7 in last 6 months 

If you will need help,please let me know

Thanks,Jura