[Izzy Mason]

Finally decided to ride the rendering bandwagon! I have to agree. All this hype about GPU encoding is all marketing. I do loads of family video archiving.

Few things I would do:

1. Get the best processor you can buy – i7 or Xeon Processors.
2. For i7 Processors, consider getting a better cooling fan than your stock especially if you plan to do a lot of CPU rendering as it will get hot. Xeon processors tend to be made for this kind of job.
3. Get as much RAM as you can.
4. If you are not into gaming, get a decent graphics card that can take the video load off your CPU so it doesn’t eat up your integrated memory.

Iz