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FORMULA5 Ikea Renderfarm


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Hello,

 

Just wanted to share with you my recent renderfarm build, inspired by xhelmer and bunnyburg, I decided to build my own renderfarm inside of ikea helmer cabinet,you can read more about it here: FORUMAL5 RENDERFARM

PB110844.jpg

 

 

Specs:

Intel i7-3770S

ASRock H77M-ITX Motherboard

OCZ 64GB SSD

Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 16GB

190-Watt Pico-PSUpencil.png

FORMULA x5.jpg

FORMULA 5.jpg

PB110841.jpg

PA220741.jpg

Edited by artmaknev
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I have no bias towards Samsung, I just happen to know ppl that were burned with Sandforce based drives, so it became a habit suggesting Crucial and Samsung which were the fastest drives 1-2 generations ago that weren't based on Sandforce controllers - like the top of the line OCZ, Corsair, intel and others.

 

Current OCZ drives have much better reliability and equal speeds, but are powered by indilinx controllers - a company owned by OCZ, but despite having more players doing equally well - like Plextor, the newer Samsung 840 Pro is becoming the de-facto choice, at least till Crucial m5 comes out, and the rest of the promised 2013 gen SSDs.

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The OCZ drives I have are pretty good, have some kind of "infused" tech or something inside, not sure what that means. But one day, it might have been human error, not sure what happened, I turned on the 4th node while accidentally holding front fan, the fan started to make weird sounds, so I let go, after that the fan started to spin just fine, but the SSD stopped working completely, it just died for no reason. So after this accident, I order 5 Samsung 830 series SSD's and cloned all my nodes to each one, I thought I had faulty OCZ drives. But everything is working great now, all the other OCZs are working fine except the one that died, and my Samsung backups are in the closet.. can't have drive going bad on me while on tight deadline, so having cloned backups is always good idea!

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Jason - so far no heat issues, temperature never go beyond 72C while rendering for a week, but one thing I noticed is that the 3rd node, the one in the middle is the hottest, I guess it is because it is sandwiched between all the others, but it is only 3-4C hotter.

 

Francisco - thanks!

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This is pretty sweet. You did a bang-up fantastic job with this. One thing that shocks me is the fact that you don't have any issues with heat. You'd think with a metal case that wasn't designed for anything like this would have at least some trouble.

 

He has a clean air flow path and low voltage parts.

Tbh I would expect even a FX 8350 or 3930K node to be cooled just fine in it...a small mod I would make, is recess the mobo an inch or so more inside the case, so that I could fit a 80mm rear fan (matching the front intake).

 

The slotted "bottom" on each case is also a good idea, that could also be improved/assisted with a fan, forming a vertical tube that along with the stack effect would eliminate hot spots (i.e. hot air trapped at the top of the cases).

 

Remeber that blade / 1U rack servers have a much higher thermal density. and still "survive" just fine.

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This is pretty sweet. You did a bang-up fantastic job with this. One thing that shocks me is the fact that you don't have any issues with heat. You'd think with a metal case that wasn't designed for anything like this would have at least some trouble.

 

Thanks Scott, but really no heat issues so far, the CPU is only 65W it is slightly more than i3 processor, it is amazing how they accomplished that with i7-3770S chip. To prove it, here are snapshots of each node while rendering, the temperatures are even lower now because the farm is at my living room and I didn't turn on heater yet, the farm temperature during load is exactly same as my living room ambient temperature at the moment. temps.jpg

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He has a clean air flow path and low voltage parts.

Tbh I would expect even a FX 8350 or 3930K node to be cooled just fine in it...a small mod I would make, is recess the mobo an inch or so more inside the case, so that I could fit a 80mm rear fan (matching the front intake).

 

The slotted "bottom" on each case is also a good idea, that could also be improved/assisted with a fan, forming a vertical tube that along with the stack effect would eliminate hot spots (i.e. hot air trapped at the top of the cases).

 

Remeber that blade / 1U rack servers have a much higher thermal density. and still "survive" just fine.

 

 

Yes, I actually thought about having fan underneath the motherboard already after it was assembled, the motherboard is indeed raised from the bottom by 1/2", this allows good airflow. Maybe for next build :)

Edited by artmaknev
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Hello Art,

Any chance you could list all the ingredients per node? I'd like to cost it out. My farm is so ugly...

 

The list:

 

Intel Core i7-3770S 65W Processor Intel HD 4000 - $305

ASRock H77M-ITX LGA 1155 mini-ITX Motherboard - $100

Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 16GB (2x8GB) 240-PIN DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) RAM - $60

0CZ Vertex Plus R2 60GB SATA II SSD - $50

Pico-PSU-160-XT + 192W Adapter Power - $80

Additional components, front and back fan, buttons, wires, temp display - about $100 per node

 

Total per node about: $700 without tax

Total for renderfarm: $700 x 5 = $3500 + $50 Helmer + cutting tools ($150) = about $4000

 

I am working on a step-by-step guide, and will have that soon.

Edited by artmaknev
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Looks great! Good luck with those :)

But how do you add each of the no to the distribution render?

You actually install windows + 3ds max + all plugins on each node?

 

I installed all the software on first node, and then cloned the hard drives for the other nodes using Acronis, then I just had to change usernames on each node.

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It's not a problem with Railclone, it's my license problem. I bought a stand-alone license and I must activate Railclone on each node.

The problem is iToo limit each license to 5 activations only.

So it means I need too extend this limit contacting iToo, or switching (somehow) to a network license.

Probably ill just contact them when this will be needed.

Nice of you checking it for me but there is nothing you could do for it, I was just wandering out loud :)

 

By the way it's a great plugin. I'm happy I bought it last week.

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