Advice for a Friend

Hi, I jsut need some advice for a friend, he needs to be using 3ds max and other such programs, no games nothing else but rendering in that program.  I fail to advise as I only really know about intel gaming builds and know nothing about AMD chips and nvidia GPUs.  He would like to build for as cheap as possible as he is a student.  What would be the best for him for rendering?

Thank you.