Realizing your a starving student... but, you could always make a beowulf cluster... use that for the rendering... slap linux onto it... and find software to export from your machine to the cluster.
or.
go make nice with some students at SAIT... i'm sure someone there either has one... can make one... or know's where you can access some higher cpu power.
or.
go make nice with some students at SAIT... i'm sure someone there either has one... can make one... or know's where you can access some higher cpu power.