Hello CGArchitect!
I'm starting out pretty soon and I have been using my trusty Phenom x6 1055T + HD 5770 (served me really well) for at least good 4 years now (bought it when I was a student so I couldn't afford the best pieces) and it's about time to upgrade my machine. Due to budget I've decided to jump to an i7 4970k + GTX 770 4gb/GTX 780(would love to get the 6-cores but that's out of reach at the moment) and utilize my Seidon 120XL cooler. I do Arch-Viz stills, but plan to learn the animation side of it in the near future.
I guess what most people would do is sell off the old parts to gain some profit and place the money for the new one, but I would like to use my old machine as a node/slave instead. I am uneducated in setting up such parts but I have tried to do my research and all the references I could only find were for larger networks comprising of usually 6 and above units of computers. I'd love to hear some experienced advice on how to set up such a configuration. As I am doing some work from home I'd like to keep power consumption to a minimum with my slave unit by doing away with parts that aren't really needed so to speak. I'd also like to save some space since I am also moving to a new case (my current case is about 8 years old), are there alternatives to small form factor cases (since these usually have space to house a GPU) to further save some workspace? I like my workspace spacious, if that makes sense. I have also found out that I would need a common storage space for both machines for distributed rendering - does this mean I need to purchase a seperate server HDD-housing unit or can I just insert an additional HD in the new case and link them together?
I apologize if I sound pretty messy right now but I would definitely appreciate any kind of help and tip to a direction. Thank you very much!
