Has anyone use Boxx's RenderPro? Thinking about buying a few

[Daniel Black]

I am either going to build my own renderslaves or purchase 3 RenderPro's. Anyone have any experience with these?

[Daniel Black]

No one??

[Tom Livings]

Everytime I look at Boxx I come back to the same thing, its just more expensive than buying regular hotrod pc's. If space is an issue and you are swamped with work, go ahead and buy. Im at peak efficiency with 10 pc's under my fingers, more machines would have to be more cost efficient than Boxx to make me buy. Unless I landed a big budget job that justified the purchase. Or unless I hired someone and needed to power more people.

[Nils Norgren]

We recently bought some machines from http://www.lantechpc.com/ I have always liked Boxx, but after shopping around we ended up going with lantech.

Nils

[Daniel Black]

Tom, I agree on their expense, but space is limited in my home office.

Nils, tell me about Lantech.....what did you buy exactly and what kind of result are you seeing?

The reason I am looking into this is because I have gotten very busy, with 3 large jobs on the horizon and only myself to do them. I am now looking into hiring someone for the first time and upgrading my hardware. I recently ran into a huge problem outsourcing to a renderfarm, because of my plugins, and it was a disaster. I won't go thru that again. In order to accomplish this, I am looking into small business loans and credit lines.

[Daniel Black]

Tom, do you have a pic of what your renderfarm looks like? i'd love to see how much space it takes up.

[Vance Lazar]

I have several renderboxx's here in the office. 3 desktops, a renderboxx blade (server rack mount) older, and purchased one of the newer Renderboxx Pro about a year ago.
Not sure Id suggest it again. Probably get something cheaper and just as fast...

Arkitec

[Tom Livings]

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Tom, do you have a pic of what your renderfarm looks like? i'd love to see how much space it takes up.

Sure, and here's a cost breakdown of my setup:
well I have 7 nodes, 2 x workstations and 1 server.
Server: 1350
WS: 2 x 2800
Nodes: 7 x 1100 (an estimate as they are 5 years old but have been upgraded from Q6600 to i7 2600k)

I have 6 of the nodes on the rack under the Epson next to my standing up workstation, the other is in hospital having an MRI as it keeps passing out due to an un-diagnosed condition...

Edit: my farm is kind of like the Millenium Falcon, junk made to go fast.

[Nils Norgren]

Nils, tell me about Lantech.....what did you buy exactly and what kind of result are you seeing?

Lantech was very reasonable about cost. They are willing to do discounts if buying #s.

Here are the specs for our newest additions to the farm:
Render 6200 series
Intel X8 5500 Render System Board
DUAL Intel Quad core Xeon E5620 2.40 GHz L3 12 MB 5.86 GT/s QPI x/HT &TB
Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
48 GB DDR-3 PC3-10600 1333MHz ECC Unbuffered (12x4GB)
Embedded SATA II 2 Channel RAID storage controller with RAID 0,1 support
500GB SATA II HD 7200RPM
60GB Solid State HD
Dual 10/100/1000 Gig Ethernet Adapter Integrated
Rail Kit
3 year Parts and labor

We didn't need the RAID controller (it was integrated on the MB) and the Solid State HD was thrown in at the last second (It is too small to be much use).

We have not finished an image for the new machines yet, but they are using them down in our NYC office, they are screaming fast. One very important note, they take significant amounts of power and they are loud! we have a dedicated room here at the main office, but down there they have them out in the office, and they are looking to build some sort of noise baffle or part wall to block some of the noise.

It is also important to think about power and cooling if you are going to put any number of these together in a small space. When they are rendering the power draw goes way up.

I will post a picture when we get the new machines in the Racks.

-Nils

[Daniel Black]

Nils....how many 6200's did you purchase? In your research, did you ever find a comparison of the rendering speed of a 6200 compared to the
a single Boxx RenderPro 12? I guess those are my 2 choices and the most important things for me are:

1) Being able to continue work in Max while rendering is taking place, which I cannot do now
2) Increased rendering speed.
3) Small footprint

I could only afford 1 or 2, probably more like 1.

Your