CUDA sounds good in theory, but from research it effects the quality of the renders just like the matrox max rendering card I have, and since I'm doing member's area videos, can't have that.
CESS seems to have it right, dual 6 core chip system:
2 of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117256
on this MB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121446
with some good SSD drives and 24 gigs of ram, should last a couple years and looks like I can build it for around $3k which is pretty cool.
Of course if I was a big time player I would just render once in the office, upload to a pimpin' video rendering server system with 7 to 14 servers pumpin' out any codec on demand... but I got a bit to go before that's affordable.