Don't know about the RAM but...
POSER PRO will support either 3 or 10 render nodes, depending on which version you buy.
I'm thinking that it will only support 1 CPU per node, so Intel's SkullTrain second CPU would go
unused by POSER, as would a second Xeon.

  I was thinking more like 8 intel 2180 CPUs & oc the crap out of them, or now maybe 8
5200 wolfdales. Don't like the .5 (12.5) multiplier though.
As for RAM, 4Gb should be enough for render nodes of this type.

  I would say that for the price mentioned $23,500 we could use 8 Q9650s, oc them to 4Ghz
and use 8Gig RAM per node and still have money left over!
After all the 8 CPUs will only Us set back about $4,750 ;)
The sad part is, Vista Retail will cost us $2,400. Seems fair to me :(

   Just one more thing. While I understand that porting POSER to LINUX is
impractical, render nodes running on LINUS does seem doable. While the cost
of WINDOWS is high, the worst part is trying to manage, maintain, update
and upgrade said render nodes. Under Microsofts increasingly draconian laws
regarding Windows, such things may well become all but impossible!

What we need most as a community of POSER users is quality documentation!

  What POSER needs DESPERATELY is CREDIBLE DOCUMENTATION!
The superfluous computer generated circular references that lead to meaningless
entries is unacceptable. As far as I can tell, most of POSER PROS documentation
is identical to that of POSER 5. That’s 4 full versions of POSER and NO improvement
in documentation AT ALL! As to the first entry here, POSER PYTHON would be of
great help in some of the areas mentioned and I’m sure in many other situations as
well. Unfortunately, the POSER PYTHON documentation seems to come from
POSER 3!

   If the people in charge of  POSER are serious about the future of POSER, then,
they need to assemble a small team of qualified individuals, who have the sole
purpose of systematically addressing POSER documentation and making that doc-
umentation available for free download by POSER users. The single goal
of this small team would be to strive to increase to productivity level of the
POSER community as a whole. This in turn would cause an increase of both
quantity and quality of POSER stills and animations, which in turn would raise
the awareness of POSER on the whole, which in turn would cause an increase
in demand for the product.

   Let me ask you this: If you take a U.S. History class, who knows more about
U.S. History, you, or the teacher? We would hope that the correct answer is the
teacher. It would stand to reason then, that the people that work on POSER know
more about it than we do! Therefore, they are the most qualified to provide the
required information that would allow us to make more efficient and effective use
of POSER!

   I would suggest that they begin with POSER PYTHON, as the documentation
is all but nonexistent. Then, proceed on to the FireFly Render Engine and the
Material Room. Use your imagination. Everything you wanted to know about the
FireFly Rendering Engine and some things you didn’t, but were afraid to ask.
Such As: Where exactly did the FireFly render engine come from? What is it’s
History? How does it handle ray tracing? How exactly does it use/allocate memory?
I’m sure as a community of POSER users, we could fill pages with relevant
questions on the inner and outer workings of FireFly alone. And so on…

What we need most as a community of POSER users is quality documentation!
Quality documentation that comes straight from the horses mouth.
Only then will we be able to proceed.
 

Don't know....
For $23,500 you can buy a 48u Cabinet & fill it with some nasty hardware!
POSER PRO. Fun to play the price game with Render Farms.
Now, if only I had the money to build one!

Don't know if it matters here but...
   I've found the same problem when the trans map has dimentions of less than 512 pixels
in either width or height. I have 3Dreams Egypt Hair and the trans map is 1500x1200 so
it seems to work fine, but it might be worth checking.