Hi. Since I have a job with a good computer and a farm I've let my home computer gather dust, but now I need to do some rendering at home. We use V-Ray at work, but I played around with Corona alpha, like it much better and will buy a license for personal projects. My old computer has an i7 920 (2.67ghz), 12gb ram and some other stuff in a Fractal Design R5 case.
My question: Would it be better to upgrade this with a new motherboard, CPU, ram and cooling or is it worth keeping it as a render node and get a new budget PC with new components? What would be the best budget price/performance setup? Budget is $800-$1000 at most, more like "as cheap/good as possible".
Thanks!
edit: I know this has been asked before, but reading all the posts and trying to digest all the info is making my head hurt. Last time I build my own computer was 5 years or so ago, I'm completely out of the loop.