I was in the same place as you Taybox. I couldn't decide if / to what extent I wanted to box. I started out with 3 accounts doing RAF (2 refered to main account), so I leveled up 2 teams of 3 and got 2 toons granted to 60 out of it.

It was good fun, fast to level ... but I have no use for just 3 accounts besides leveling up. I decided if I was going to box at all it would have to be with 5, because I'm not going to pay for even 1 extra account to just level, farm, and quest with. I want to use them for isntances also (and gear them up).

For me it's just a time issue. I do have friends and guildmates that I run instances and raid with, but there are many times where my friends aren't available, so it's all about being able to progress in the game on a set schedule without waiting for others. As far as the hardware, I had a core 2 duo system that I cannibalized to make a new q6600 system with 4 gigs of ram. I reused my case, video cards, hard drives, sound card and ordered a new cpu, cooler, mobo, psu, and ram for around $500 on newegg. I'm only using a single 7800 GTX and running 5 toons on this system, and it works great (XP horizontal span).