shaneis Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Who said high-powered computing couldn't look pretty. Get your credit cards ready for a rainy day http://helmer.sfe.se/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Who said high-powered computing couldn't look pretty. Get your credit cards ready for a rainy day http://helmer.sfe.se/ Thats awesome, can you build me one?????? Great job. I have been wanted to get my own little render farm, but have no idea how to do it. The ones I have looked at cost a small fortune. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 well the cpu's, motherboards and memory come out to $2622.00 not bad... and the cabinet is only $40.00...I guess you'd need power supplies, fans etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 well the cpu's, motherboards and memory come out to $2622.00 not bad... and the cabinet is only $40.00...I guess you'd need power supplies, fans etc... looks like about 3k plus time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Yes...but you would also need windows server...right ?...which is thousands of dollars... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Well it's really just a bunch of quad-core PCs in an interesting rackmount. He did it using Linux and a cluster management program, but you can also install XP on it, you don't need to install Server on a rackmount. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaneis Posted April 25, 2008 Author Share Posted April 25, 2008 I found this site through an Australian mailing list, one of the resident Linux experts added his ideas on the set-up which addresses the OS issues quite nicely... "...1) He could have saved more money, power and time by using PXE or Etherbooting: http://www.etherboot.org/ http://linux.duke.edu/~cegeddin/pxebooting.html The immediate upside being that there's no power wasted on local hard disks. The long term upside being that any changes only need to be made once to the master image, and then simply rebooting every node will propagate the changes automatically (rather than having to re-image every hard disk or reconfigure every copy of the data). The money saved on hard disks on the render nodes could be re-invested into his NAS and network switch for more/faster storage. I use PXE/Etherboot for thin client setups for a few retail clients of mine. Cheap sub-$200 diskless desktops booting from a single cheap server (or two, if you want high availability) to provide a low-management SOE for all workstations. Extending this to render nodes is a trivial task. 2) He also uses "plexiglass" (ie: the lay term for polycarbonate or acrylic) to put between the motherboards. This is a rather bad idea, as it is notorious for static buildup. I would recommend either anti-static sheeting (say, the bags the motherboards came in), or wood (cheap thin plywood sheets would do fine). In this day and age, CPU cores are cheap. Multi-core desktop CPUs is the single best thing that ever happened to the small business / one man studio in the 3D biz. As I write this post, I see Intel Quad Core Q6600 2.4GHz CPUs down at $270. That's less than $70 a core. Wonderful stuff." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fq400 Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Your right on the price drop on the quad cores: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9924121-7.html Well I guess I know where my tax return will be going to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfienoakes Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 That is absolutely awesome... Especially if it really is only about $3000 dollars to build.. In the UK it would be double that of course.... but still a pretty amazing piece of kit for the price of a Dell precision..!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaneis Posted April 25, 2008 Author Share Posted April 25, 2008 Your right on the price drop on the quad cores... Wasn't me that said it, the whole message was quoting someone else (who actually knows what they're talking about - unlike myself), but yes, the prices for the Intel range are being slashed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Buchhofer Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 the PXE idea is neat, i've seen that in the past but never understood what it was for.. looks like a good idea if we can apply it to some windows Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted April 26, 2008 Share Posted April 26, 2008 Very nice set-up for a farm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now