If I Had It To Do All Over Again...

[Michael J. Brown]

... The more difficult part comes when you have to do a fresh install of windows, hooking up 2 hdd so they work in raid, and programming all the other elements. That takes some know-how, and trust me, something almost always goes wrong during this process which means you have to have troubleshooting know-how also.

 

DISCO!

 

I knew there was a catch. You've said enough. I'm gonna stick to the waters I'm used to and just have it done for me. Heck, maybe I'll win the drawing for the free 3D BOXX being held today.

[Devin Johnston]

I know those circumstances all too well. I'm currently in the same boat as you were in - but i've been running the 3Gig switch, so Max got to use 3GB instead of just 2.

 

But, the job I just completed is going to finance a dual six-core 3D BOXX 8520 series with 16GB RAM (my first BOXX is 6 years old and practically useless now). I should be able to order it just in time for Christmas - assuming my client processes that invoice in time.

 

I'm begging you to reconsider going with a Boxx system, they are so overpriced for what you get they really aren't worth it. I've had 6 Boxx systems the last one I purchased a year ago and becides the nice case I haven't seen any difference in the quality or performance. Infact with all the Boxx systems I've owned I've had problems with all of them strait out of the box, with every other system we've used including self built systems I've had virtually no issues. Do yourself a favor and use that extra 25% to buy more powerful hardware instead of a name.

[Michael J. Brown]

I'm begging you to reconsider going with a Boxx system, they are so overpriced for what you get they really aren't worth it. I've had 6 Boxx systems the last one I purchased a year ago and becides the nice case I haven't seen any difference in the quality or performance. Infact with all the Boxx systems I've owned I've had problems with all of them strait out of the box, with every other system we've used including self built systems I've had virtually no issues. Do yourself a favor and use that extra 25% to buy more powerful hardware instead of a name.

 

Well, I haven't closed the door to that option just yet. I am still going to try and find somebody I can trust locally to build a system.

 

I never experienced a single problem with my last BOXX though.

[Tommy L]

I thoroughly recommend http://www.computerlx.com and their ebay front 'allpczone' (they are based in Cleveland). Ive had 9 machines from them and theyve all been super cheap and reliable. Over the past 5 years Ive replaced 4 PSU's and upgraded from 4 to 8 gigs of RAM in the oldest machines. Other than that all are fully operational.

Oh, actually, my workstation MB died, out of warranty. They said ship it back and we'll fix it for free anyway. Now thats good service.

Another good thing about them is the machine builder on their ebay auctions is quick and easy.

[Ricky Doherty]

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[Michael J. Brown]

I thoroughly recommend http://www.computerlx.com and their ebay front 'allpczone' ....

 

Thanks, Tommy. I'll look into them right away.

[Michael J. Brown]

Well, I looked into computerlx.com. I also got a very highly rated personal reference to a local computer builder (sole proprietor). The system BOXX had priced out at $6,500 came in at $5,800 through computerlx.com, but only $4,300 (plus $300 to assemble it) through my reference - so I'm going with him.

 

As much as I like saving cash, I figured that since I was originally fully prepared to lay down $6,500, why stop at $4,300. I may as well go all out and upgrade the dual six-core 2.66GHz Xeons BOXX had spec'd on up to 3.33GHz and bump my drives up to 10,000rpm + a couple other things.

 

Thanks fellas - if it weren't for your prodding I would have settled for another BOXX system and gotten taken to the cleaners in the process.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

holy moly... that's gonna be a HELL of a system. You are gonna need an AC just for the room with that PC lol. Hope you enjoy man. What video card r u getting?

[Devin Johnston]

I'd recommend going with solid state instead of the 10,000 rpm drives, there a little more expensive but the speed is incredible.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

I'd recommend going with solid state instead of the 10,000 rpm drives, there a little more expensive but the speed is incredible.

 

agreed.. maybe you can have one SSD just for your OS and essential programs.. the the other 10,000 drives for storage.

[Tommy L]

Well I think you are a bit crazy. It seems an inefficient spend. If I had $6300 tpo spend right now....

I would get a $3k machine to work on, at most. Then Id get myself a couple of really good render nodes with the change out of $5k. Then I'd put the rest into software.

I say his because....I had a hardware crisis in the last month where my two workstations both went daown. I had to work on one of my render nodes as a workstation.

It has a Q6600 processor, Nvidia GS 8400 (yes thats a $15 graphics card) and an 80g 7200rpm hard drive and 8g ram. It was fine. No drama. No crashes, viewport speed was ok. That machine you could buy now for around $400.

When you have a super duper PC, you tie its hands when you hit render. You want that process off your workstation and onto a farm. Tap the power when you need it and have workflow speed at all times.

If you have a great farm already, then sure, spend away, but remember the old adage: that $6k PC will be less powerful than your phone in a few years.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Well I think you are a bit crazy. It seems an inefficient spend. If I had $6300 tpo spend right now....

I would get a $3k machine to work on, at most. Then Id get myself a couple of really good render nodes with the change out of $5k. Then I'd put the rest into software.

I say his because....I had a hardware crisis in the last month where my two workstations both went daown. I had to work on one of my render nodes as a workstation.

It has a Q6600 processor, Nvidia GS 8400 (yes thats a $15 graphics card) and an 80g 7200rpm hard drive and 8g ram. It was fine. No drama. No crashes, viewport speed was ok. That machine you could buy now for around $400.

When you have a super duper PC, you tie its hands when you hit render. You want that process off your workstation and onto a farm. Tap the power when you need it and have workflow speed at all times.

If you have a great farm already, then sure, spend away, but remember the old adage: that $6k PC will be less powerful than your phone in a few years.

 

U r right Tom and I had thought about that. Michael, it might be wiser to get a nice 2~3 grand computer, and spend the rest on creating/updating a render farm.

[Tommy L]

BTW, I am currently working on a $2k machine at home (I have 2 workstations at the studio, 1 at home, 8 machines on the farm and a laptop. All are custom, but I have not built them myself)

My home machine has a i7 940, 12g ram, Radeon 57~? and Im working on it now. I have a 8million poly expolded boiler assembly (in Max design 2010) PolyTrans import from SolidEdge, so its not even modeled in max. It animates/spins flawlessly in realtime on a 32" high res Dell monitor (now there's a good investment) and realtime camera clipping is slick also. Render times are good, but thats not the point. Work on the workstation, render on the farm.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Video cards are a money vacuum too.... it's why I went with a Geforce instead of a Quadro. I got the gtx 480 (i think now there is a 580 available even faster), it ran me 500 bucks and does the job quite fine with 3ds and I get awesome gaming performance as an added bonus.

What do we need for the most simple render node? I got a couple of my old computers that I use as a farm, but say I wanted to create an actual farm consisting of just render nodes. I guess all I would need would be a mb, processor, mem, power supply and a simple hard drive right? With processors being as cheap as they are now, one can probably make a decent quad core render node for ~500 bucks.

[Devin Johnston]

Now I guess it depends on whether you want to use the render node for GPU computing, in the past all of my render nodes just had on board video cards but as GPU rendering begins to take off that's going to change.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

It's true Devin, but at this point it still would would be more efficient price wise to concentrate on CPU nodes then GPU nodes right?

[Michael J. Brown]

I just posted this query over in the Hardware and Tech thread, but I need some good direction sooner rather than later.

 

All other things being equal (and not considering price at all), which setup will render the quickest, and will the difference be significant or only negligible?

 

single i7 980X 3.33GHz -or- dual Xeon X5680 3.33GHz

[Devin Johnston]

It's true Devin, but at this point it still would would be more efficient price wise to concentrate on CPU nodes then GPU nodes right?

Yes the price will be lower going only with CPU's.

[Devin Johnston]

I just posted this query over in the Hardware and Tech thread, but I need some good direction sooner rather than later.

 

All other things being equal (and not considering price at all), which setup will render the quickest, and will the difference be significant or only negligible?

 

single i7 980X 3.33GHz -or- dual Xeon X5680 3.33GHz

I beleave a dual Xeon will have 12 cores verses the 6 cores of the i7 so the Xeon will be faster.