Cheaper version of BoXX?

[Tommy L]

I have to upgrade my farm, mines a bunch of Q6600's and Id like to get something a bit nicer. I cant justify Boxx's prices to SWMBO and tell her she cant buy a new car at the same time..... so does anyone know of a similar product to the 10400 '5-pack' (I think its around $30k) but cheaper?

Thanks,

Tom.

[AJLynn]

One RenderBoxx has 2 MBs with 2 CPUs each, and $30k for 5 means the standard config, so your $30k gets you:

 

10 MBs

20 E5620 CPUs (quad i7 class 2.4GHz) = 192GHz, or roughly 85 Cinebench points

60GB RAM (6GB per MB)

 

So what you're asking is how cheaply you can get 80-90 Cinebench points, with the associated amenities.

 

You could get that from 6 of the 3DATS Render Node (24-core Opteron) config for about $21k, which is about 88 Cinebench points. You could find the parts to make that a rackmount.

 

How many Q6600's are you replacing? An un-overclocked Q6600 is about 2.7 Cinebench points, so the Boxx 5-pack or the 6 Opteron nodes would replace about 32 Q6600's. You could also do it with consumer grade hardware, using 9 i7-970's, which I figure you can pull off for about $18k. (Start with the 3DATS high end but with a 970, ditch the expensive video card, kbd and mouse, Windows Ultimate and SSD and figure the rackmounting costs about what the expensive case and PSU cost.)

[Tommy L]

Very informative AJ.

I have 8 x un-overclocked Q6600 boxes.

[AJLynn]

Yeah, so you can fairly easily beat the snot out of that. Even if you decided to keep the old stuff, get half the new capacity now, and the other half after the next set of fee checks, you could still triple your power immediately for about $10k.

[ihabkal]

LOL

2. SWMBO = She Who Must Be Obeyed

other half, wife, girl friend, 'er in doors, woman etc

 

Sounds like SWMBOs are everywhere. I usually do whatever I need to without her knowing. Hope she doesn't read this