Hi Patrick,
I thought that Cinema out of the box came with a render engine. 900 hundred seems fair.
Your right about the steep cost of his set up for a non professional. I often wonder how so many people just starting out with 3d are able to spend thousands of dollars for software they dont even know how to use. Weird.....
No worries about being cheap. My first 3D program cost me like 30 bucks and had no render engine. I used to use flight sims as my engine
And did the whole open source route for a while. There were a few great free programs back then. Then I entered a contest and received a 1 year use license of my first real software and at that point I decided to save my money and give this ago. The investments have more than payed for themselves over the years.
Your right about getting new hardware. I'm at that point too. Every couple of years my skill level starts to exceed my hardware capabilities.
Keep up the good work.....
Polys forever!