[Nuttyman54]

Max 8 ships with Backburner 3, which allows you to use up to 999 CPU's if they're all networked together..the limitation being that you've got one CPU crunching each frame, so if you've got 80 frames, it doesn't matter if you've got 80 CPU's or 800 CPU's, it'll still take the same amount of time.

As for reducing the render time, you can try reducing the number of hairs and increasing the number of hair passes by the same proportion. (IE reducing 9000 hairs with one pass to 3000 and 3 passes) Also, how many lights do you have illumination/shadow casting on the hair? It could help to exlude some of the lights from illuminating the hair, and using dedicated spotlights for the hair. Also, turn off shadow casting on any lights illuminating the hair, as it will drastically increase the render time. Hope that helps!