ronhermi Posted October 9, 2012 Share Posted October 9, 2012 (edited) Hi, I need some help in building some render nodes. Sadly I am not really up to date, my last system is about 4 years old.... I have a budges of 1500€ (~2000$) and want to get as much renderpower as possible. After some research the i7 3770 seems to have the best price-performance relation. So which other components are cheap and effective? I found some really cheap mainboards for about 40€ (50$). Do they work properly? Do SSDs make sense for render-nodes? It would be cool to get about 2 or 3 nodes for the budget. Any help would be great its really hard for me to get into all the stuff by myself... Cheers, Ron Edited October 10, 2012 by ronhermi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 (edited) Where are you buying from? Give us a couple of links to the e-shops you will be usingWhich are the components you've already found?Where do you hope to house the units? DIY case, ready made 1U/2U/4U rack, stand alone towers, desktop cases etcWhat renderer / platform will you be using? 3770K is great, lots of rendering power. In lack of a better tool, I will mention some Cinebench 11.5 generic scores (stock clocks): i7-3770K = 7.9 pts i7-2600K = 7.5 pts i5-3570K = 6.3 pts FX8120 = 6 pts i5-2500 = 5.9 pts Depending on your sourcing, space availability etc, you might be able to get more rendering power through 4x 3570K or FX8120 nodes instead of 3x 3770K. Cons 3 vs 4 nodes - Extra node(s) to setup (if you budget includes the OS will be tight, yet possible) - Higher electric bills @ full power - but electricity -> speed relationship is unavoidable. - More space needed - Possibly more noise Pros - 4 nodes will be faster - i5s will be upgreadable to i7s if you need more speed, same for FX as AMD will continue using AM3+ socket. 3770K is an end-game choice. - 4 nodes give you slightly better redundancy - in case one node fails, you lose 25% of your CPU power, not 33% etc. --- SSDs: Given that for the nodes 60/64 GB drives will suffice, I would not see a reason to opt for an HDD instead. You can get such 2011-12 SSDs pretty cheap lately - just stay away from the sandforce based OCZ/Corsair etc drives and reliability won't be an issue. I believe Samsung 830 and Crucial m4 64GB float around 70 euros in Europe, depending on region, and cheaper on the occasional sales. The price difference is not that far from a low-end 5400-7200rpm 500GB desktop drive which i think is the cheapest option - unless you go for a 250GB 2.5" laptop drive. In most cases you won't be spending much less than €45-50 anyways. Edited October 10, 2012 by dtolios SSD comment Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronhermi Posted October 10, 2012 Author Share Posted October 10, 2012 Thank you very much for your reply! I think I will buy from mindfactory.de here is a konfiguration which includes the cheapest modules in each category: Intel Core i7 3770K 4x 3.50GHz So.1155 BOX - 294,85€ ASRock H61M-S Intel H61 So.1155 Dual - 37,75€ 16GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM - 57,49€ 400 Watt Cougar A-Series Non-Modular 80+ - 45,84€ Rasurbo Basic & Case BC-10 Midi Tower ohne - 20,3€ 64GB Samsung 830 Series 2.5" (6.4cm) SATA - 63,55€ ---------- 519,81€ Changing i7 to i5 --> 423,72€ I was looking for th cheapest solution but if the quality is not good enough I would also change to a more expensive option! Housing in a case would be the cheapest and easiest option I think?! I will mainly render in Vray. The budget is for Hardware only, the OS will come on top. Will overclocking make sense for me? I never did, so are there any dangers? Thank you very much for helping me out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 (edited) Overclocking will have 2 main disadvantages: - The stock cooler can do 4GHz i believe without much trouble, but you will need a better cooler to go higher while keeping temperatures low. Something like the Cooler Master 212 is hard to beat as value for money, but in your case will add to the overall cost vs. your already tight budget. With the 212 or equiv. you can do 4.4-4.6GHz depending on the motherboard and ambient temps - always capping CPU temps around 70oC. The O/C boost does reflect in rendering speeds. - It does draw considerably more power. Nothing the 400W PSU won't be able to handle, but these mobos probably won't. I would say that mild overclocks with conservative power settings (the 3770K can overclock decently even on stock Vcore, pretty high with very little more) there is no real danger of hurting the CPU itself: the CPU is as a whole more resilient than a cheap MoBo. Ofc side effect of O/C is your electricity bill going up - but if you plan on stressing those 3 nodes, you will notice that even @ stock speeds. So I doubt that you would be able to do much with this AsRock as far as overclocking, but what bothers me a bit more is that it has no GBit NIC. The lan will be limited to 100 mbps which will slow down stuff for sure. I would pick at least a mobo with GBit LAN capabilities. ASRock H61M-DGS seems to be a version of the board you've found, with GBit capability. 16GB of RAM is just fine, and more than 1333 speeds won't really make much difference. SSD is not a bad deal - make sure you get some mounting brackets for it, doubt the cheap case will come with brackets for 2.5" drives, but you can always check before Edited October 10, 2012 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronhermi Posted October 10, 2012 Author Share Posted October 10, 2012 Thank you! Okay I will definately change to the ASRock H61M-DGS! But the rest will be fine in your opinion? One last thing: is the 3770"K" Version worth the 40€ compaired to the 3770? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Should be ok. The 3770K is the "unlocked" version of the 3770. It comes with slightly higher clock 3.5GHz vs. 3.4GHz (non K) but that's all. Unlocked = the mobo can take-over and say "I am switching your 35 x 100Hz multiplier to w/e" -> w/e x 100Hz = your overclock speed. The 3770 is locked @ 34x 100 = 3.4GHz. So if you don't plan on ever overclocking your nodes - not that you would do much with these cheap mATX boards anyways - the 3770 will get you within 95% (or more) of the performance levels of the 3770K with ease. Still faster than stock 3570K, and you save €40 over the flagship K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johannestiner Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 The "K" means that the cpu has an unlocked multiplier and that is good if you want to overclock the cpu. The samsung 830 is a great choice, solid like a rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronhermi Posted October 10, 2012 Author Share Posted October 10, 2012 Thank you very much! I think i'll go with that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 It is rarely a suggested option - at least here in the states where price diff. hovers in the $20 range: If you can do a $300 CPU, you can do a $320 one, so even if O/C is not an immediate priority, most ppl say "why not"... €40 is really a totally different game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superkames Posted October 14, 2012 Share Posted October 14, 2012 (edited) I think you should wait for AMD FX 8350 for rendernode instead of I7 3770 , just few more days .!! I have some3dsmax's rendering result] for you: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?276245-AMD-quot-Piledriver-quot-refresh-of-Zambezi-info-speculations-test-fans/page34 You can see the Cinebench R11.5 @4.5ghz ~ 7.7x pts . --> at the same speed the I7 2600K ~ 8.82 pts as I know . But in realworld application , with the two famous 3D aplication + renderer : 3dsmax 2011 + Vray 1.5SP5 , the thing you already know seem to be stronger. Rendering time (second): Lower is better: FX 8120@4.5ghz : ~ 679sI7 2600K@4.5ghz : ~ 621sFX 8350:~ 580s ...maybe its realworld rendering performance is similar to a quadcore I7 Ivy Bridge .. ...It must be very important to anyone who care about computer graphic....May try mentalray later. Edited October 14, 2012 by Superkames Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 I am in favor of AMD for many applications, but unfortunately it cannot be aggressively priced enough to be that competitive...surely the 8120, if you plan to O/C, beats the i5 in both price and absolute rendering performance, but that's about it...the 8150 in the US is already as expensive as a 3570, it won't O/C that much better than the 8120 - so there is little point in it. 8350 will be faster, but I doubt it will be $190 (current 8150 price), or less for some time... If I was building a cluster for myself today, I would go with 8120s - to support the company that needs it the most and tbh is the inventor of the current x86-64 architecture...if AMD was anything like Apple, we would be still using P4s... The 8350 will be a sweet CPU in 6 months or so - with prices and boards settling. I hope they will introduce a few good mATX AM3+ boards soon too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superkames Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 AMD FX-8350 rendering review : --> Faster & muchmore cheaper than I7 3770K: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/880-7/rendu-3d-mental-ray-v-ray.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 I have seen other reviews were it barely matches or gets a bit faster than the 3570K, and remains slower than both 2600 and 3770. The 61xx / 81xx also had some ravaging reviews that were proven "rigged". That said, AMD is going through rough times (in many ways due to immoral trade practices, extortions and bribes intel has been convicted for, yet little have changed), and needs our support. Ppl crave about intel, which is the undisputed king of performance a long time now, but we comfortably forget how much of the current x86-64bit architecture and CPU advancements have nothing to do with intel's R&D. AMD's price/performance is hard to beat. They do sell almost at cost just to make it. Do support them whenever posible, and for render nodes all 8xxx FXs are amazing - even if those don't beat the 3770K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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