hard drive speed and rendernodes??

[tecton3d]

Alright - here's my situation: I'm an Arch grad student and have a ton of images to crank out for my portfolio and thesis within the next 5-6 weeks and I'm still trying to work out what configuration is ideal for rendernodes and since my wallet is getting a little thin (i'm a poor student after all and, well - case in point - I've had to switch from the lovely black goodness of Guiness = $4/pint to PBR = $1.5/bottle. . . talk about sacrifice : ) anyway . . .) I'm trying to pinch pennies when considering the hard drives for the rendernodes I plan on building soon. My specs ~

 

rendering from:

Boxx 7400 - dual 248 opterons...yadda-yadda

 

preliminary renderer - Max 7 + Final Render

secondary renderer - FormZ 5.0... whatever the latest is... 5.0.6

(90% of the rendring tasks will be in Max and FR)

 

Node specs:

processors: 1.6lv D1 stepping xeons @ 3.0ghz

mobo: Asus PC-CL

ram: 1gb ram

HD: whatever hd is cheap

Vid card: any PCI vid. card.

PSU: AMS 460w eps 12v

Case: antec slk3000b or Chenming CMUI-P-601 . . .Server case with insane airflow - 90 cfm sunon 120's

[... these specs were recommended from the lads over @ 2cpu.com - still any and all comments appreciated! This system has already been referred to (11th line down) here:] http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showpost.php?p=111080&postcount=16)

 

I'm thinking that having a faster HD benefits greatly if you're out of RAM and it starts caching on the HD, swap file, and working with large render files (which is the basis for my concern!)... therefore slowing things down and negating the implementation of powerful processors. I've always planned on 1gb of ram for each node since 2gb would add another $80 bucks or so to each node, but I'm wondering if the extra speed of faster hd's would be worth it... 4200 - 5400 - 7200?? and still be cheaper than upgrading to 2gb of ram??

 

Ebay is where I've been planning on snagging the hd's... some "lots of HD's" come up that are dirt cheap 4200rpm's ~ which is very tempting.

 

disclaimer: I know intending to overclock is somewhat risky, nonetheless I accept the terms and have done an honestly insane amount of research regarding such things, which I mention here in hopes this thread does not digress to lecturing me on the inherent risks of said OC'ing.

[AJLynn]

Dude, you have a Boxx 7400 and you're drinking cheap beer? PBR even? That's just wrong. Anyway...

 

Why dual Xeons? You'll get better price/performance out of AthlonX2, yes? If you plan on building more than one of these things, dual-dual Opterons may be even better.

 

Hard drive speed isn't very important unless you run out of RAM and Windows starts using virtual memory. Go with the cheaper hard drives and more RAM. If the lack of $80 worth of RAM slows your render the rest of your hardware is wasted. Look for deals. Don't be too proud to buy a premade system off Ebay if you see it at a good price. Use the savings to buy better beer.

[tecton3d]

Dude, you have a Boxx 7400 and you're drinking cheap beer? PBR even? That's just wrong. Anyway...

No kidding... : ) . . . as I swaller a big gulp of a quart of PBR!

Why dual Xeons? You'll get better price/performance out of AthlonX2, yes? If you plan on building more than one of these things, dual-dual Opterons may be even better.

good question: I already have 4 pair of 1.6lv D1 Xeons sitting on top of my boxx! When I was first entertaining the idea of building a small farm, I was able to catch a great deal on the xeons, and the x2's - at that point, hadn't dropped in price. I've done the math with respect to rendernode (as of 2 months ago) and you can have a brand new dual 265 machine for under $1300 if you watch for sales and even cheaper if you stalk E-bay. And an X2 system for $620: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3317393&postcount=5

prices have probably dropped since then with the socket F expectation closing in... I haven't had time to indulge my hardware obsession!

Hard drive speed isn't very important unless you run out of RAM and Windows starts using virtual memory. Go with the cheaper hard drives and more RAM. If the lack of $80 worth of RAM slows your render the rest of your hardware is wasted. Look for deals.

that's my concern... I'm afraid rendering huge - 1mil or more poly's will bring my farm and its lack of RAM to its knees... which, as you well know, is not a good thing!

Don't be too proud to buy a premade system off Ebay if you see it at a good price. Use the savings to buy better beer.

I'm never too proud ~ enter PBR : ) . . . I passed on 7 renderboxx dual athlon MP 2800 nodes (i think they were 2800's) on e-bay about 8 months ago for $750 a piece... I didn't have the cash, but should've donated a kidney to have a sweet 1u x 7 plugin farm like that! I've been looking for anything that fits the bill, and between researching for my thesis and the normal workload of classes, I can't come up with anything!

[AJLynn]

Hey, if you've got the CPUs, use them - that's good price/performance

 

But skimp on hard drive, not RAM.

[tecton3d]

Hey, if you've got the CPUs, use them - that's good price/performance

But skimp on hard drive, not RAM.

 

thanks for the advice!

 

2gb of ram it is... any suggestions as to 4 x 512 or 2 x 1gb?

[AJLynn]

Well... the 4x512 is probably a bit cheaper but the 2x1GB is better if you want to upgrade later. Your call. Check on whether your MB/CPU combination requires anything special like ECC, and whether there is a limitation on how many DIMMs you can use while running the memory at full speed - with some AMD boards you can't run 4 DIMMs at 400MHz, but I don't know if Intel boards have that issue.

[tecton3d]

Well... the 4x512 is probably a bit cheaper but the 2x1GB is better if you want to upgrade later. Your call. Check on whether your MB/CPU combination requires anything special like ECC, and whether there is a limitation on how many DIMMs you can use while running the memory at full speed - with some AMD boards you can't run 4 DIMMs at 400MHz, but I don't know if Intel boards have that issue.

 

2 - 1gb sticks are actually $11 cheaper as per newegg ~ anyway, I'll see what I can find out about the PC-DL and how many sticks can run at 400mhz. Luckily, that mobo doesn't require reg/ecc ram... a nice savings $$ : )