>>7669
I started doing 3d rendering too, and there is no need fro super expensive hardware.

my computer is using 3ghz quad core xeon, crappy video card which as no use for rendering and 7 gb of ram. with total cost of everything less than 100$
and I can render somewhat adequate 3d image with iray within 20 minutes

so I guess that main issue here is memory, because memory usage close to 6Gb during renderings and if you have only 4 gb, computer may very likely crash or go extremely slow.

also if you have very bad video card it may have problems even to render view port.