cheapest / best value way to build a mini render farm

[ZFact]

hi all, just wondering what the best value to processing power way to build

a mini farm... Need about 50 - 60 ghz of power along with 8gigs ram per machine..no need for fancy graphics cards or storage space / harddrive space.

 

 

I know it's like asking how long a piece of sting is but anyone come up with

A good solution to this before?

 

Cheers

[STRAT]

i'd be curious about pricing and where this thread ends up

 

we've thought it through a few times here, but considered that unless you're prepaired to system upgrade every year, pay a highly bolstered electricity bill, it wouldn't be worth our while spending all that cash (and it would be a considerable out lay whichever way you cut it) even if we utilised it 24/7. at the moment for us, also considering the financial climate, we deemed it more profitable to budget external render farm times into our quotes.

[Sketchrender]

I would ring a few big Dublin offices or small ones for that matter.

Alot of them are struggleing , or going to the wall.

They will have a lot of spare machines now, so might be worth a ring.

 

phil

[ZFact]

climate, we deemed it more profitable to budget external render farm times into our quotes.

 

I have been looking at dan stubbs render king setup and the options do look attractive. I have never used a render farm before and was just wondering how they work.. if for example you have to setup a Light cache and IR maps before rendering the final frames how is everything put together - does the render farm control everything and you just forwrd the files and textures or do you create the LC and Ir maps inhouse then forward to the render farm and they setup the file paths etc.

 

Any advice on this would be great.

Cheers

z

[STRAT]

your a c4d man are you not?

[Jackal]

I'm also interested in a small render farm. I would think that using mATX boards with onboard video would be helpful. But you need a board that can give you the amount of RAM that you require. I guess you'll use a networked storage system, too.

 

Take this board for example, Gigabyte GA-EG41M-S2H (I would post a link but I'm not allowed)

 

It's a micro ATX board that can hold 8gb of RAM. Has onboard video which shares the RAM but you can set it for the lowest amount. Onboard network adaptor, too. Throw them into a cheap case and they should work just fine. Just an idea.

[ZFact]

your a c4d man are you not?

yes - a c4d man + Vray + fr2

[ZFact]

got a price from a pc company for the following

 

Processor - intel quad core 2.33ghz 8200 model

Ram - 4Gig ddr2

hard drive - 640Gig

op sys - win vista

 

Price for 6 of these = £2K

[STRAT]

as you probably know, Dann is optimized for C4D+Vray

 

as far as pre-caching the irr or lc maps go, you pre-cache them on your machine as home (or in your office), then upload the gi files with the rest of the upload files when you use him. it's all quite straight forward. we use dann for c4d vray animating frequently.

 

if you need any further info then email him - he's a great guy to talk to, and we here can give you set up tips

[ihabkal]

got a price from a pc company for the following

 

Processor - intel quad core 2.33ghz 8200 model

Ram - 4Gig ddr2

hard drive - 640Gig

op sys - win vista

 

Price for 6 of these = £2K

 

don't forget adding a big ups system to protect the systems, I think 5KVA for 6 machines, and the price of softwre.

[ZFact]

yeah... It all adds up. 2 oct cores might be cheaper when you factor in electric, software

KVM switches and monitors plus networking... A rock and a hard place!

[BrianKitts]

just in case you're feeling adventurous for your build....

 

http://helmer.sfe.se/

[STRAT]

yeah... It all adds up. 2 oct cores might be cheaper when you factor in electric, software

KVM switches and monitors plus networking... A rock and a hard place!

 

i'd personally not make the effort for a render farm just for 2 oct cores. considering the average commercial farm has multiple times that amount, i think you'll find you'll really want as many cores as possible, that why we rely on a farm like Dann's for our C4D rendering. Genrally, if we stuck to our office octs we'd never submit the deadlines in time. All costs. Again, the major reason we cant afford our own. I'd like atleast 10 oct cores in a mini farm before i slashed the cash.

[Jackal]

I really like that Helmer project. I'd been thinking about some way to have multiple (4) systems in one setup. This gives me ideas and let's me know that it's possible. But he is much more hand that I with his Dremel. :-)

 

I'll bookmark that page and use it for reference as I research. I don't really need that type of power right now, but I do like building PCs. This is a new challenge. :-)