Renderfarm setup

[fraggle]

Hello,
there is several point, while trying to setup a small render farm, that I would like to clear.
The farm will be composed of several supermicro L5420 bi CPU (4 core, no multithreaded).

RAM: while using DR (still), is 8 Gb enough or not?
KVM: Do I need a KVM?
Switch: what type/brand of switch do I need?

I will dedicated one of the server as data server for map and texture while other will be slave.
What are the topical bottleneck in this kind of setup? The Switch/hub, the hard drive?

Thanks

[muoto]

is 4 core bi cpu not multitreaded the way to go ? why not go for faster processors in order to have less slaves, less power consumption etc ?

[fraggle]

is 4 core bi cpu not multitreaded the way to go ? why not go for faster processors in order to have less slaves, less power consumption etc ?

4 years old server cost nothing, that's why I went this way.