thanks Dom for that info, and opened your file, got a bunch of errors, and 2/3 modeled objects were missing.
so, I selected each object in original scene file separately, did a mesh>cleanup
deleted all lights in scene(except monitor lights), created 2 area lights, set depth map resolution to 4096 with a filter of 2
scene renders in under 42 seconds.... wOw
amazing how just the lights alone could affect the render by so much
I know the change I just made isn't correct, just wanted to see if there'd be a difference
will do some learning on proper lighting and come back in future to do it right.
many thank to all for their help and input.
J.B.
I'm not lazy, I'm just resting before I get tired