danb4026 Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 I am either going to build my own renderslaves or purchase 3 RenderPro's. Anyone have any experience with these? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted February 8, 2012 Author Share Posted February 8, 2012 No one?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 Everytime I look at Boxx I come back to the same thing, its just more expensive than buying regular hotrod pc's. If space is an issue and you are swamped with work, go ahead and buy. Im at peak efficiency with 10 pc's under my fingers, more machines would have to be more cost efficient than Boxx to make me buy. Unless I landed a big budget job that justified the purchase. Or unless I hired someone and needed to power more people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 We recently bought some machines from http://www.lantechpc.com/ I have always liked Boxx, but after shopping around we ended up going with lantech. Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted February 8, 2012 Author Share Posted February 8, 2012 (edited) Tom, I agree on their expense, but space is limited in my home office. Nils, tell me about Lantech.....what did you buy exactly and what kind of result are you seeing? The reason I am looking into this is because I have gotten very busy, with 3 large jobs on the horizon and only myself to do them. I am now looking into hiring someone for the first time and upgrading my hardware. I recently ran into a huge problem outsourcing to a renderfarm, because of my plugins, and it was a disaster. I won't go thru that again. In order to accomplish this, I am looking into small business loans and credit lines. Edited February 8, 2012 by danb4026 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted February 8, 2012 Author Share Posted February 8, 2012 Tom, do you have a pic of what your renderfarm looks like? i'd love to see how much space it takes up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkitec Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 I have several renderboxx's here in the office. 3 desktops, a renderboxx blade (server rack mount) older, and purchased one of the newer Renderboxx Pro about a year ago. Not sure Id suggest it again. Probably get something cheaper and just as fast... Arkitec Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 [ATTACH=CONFIG]47130[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]47131[/ATTACH]Tom, do you have a pic of what your renderfarm looks like? i'd love to see how much space it takes up. Sure, and here's a cost breakdown of my setup: well I have 7 nodes, 2 x workstations and 1 server. Server: 1350 WS: 2 x 2800 Nodes: 7 x 1100 (an estimate as they are 5 years old but have been upgraded from Q6600 to i7 2600k) I have 6 of the nodes on the rack under the Epson next to my standing up workstation, the other is in hospital having an MRI as it keeps passing out due to an un-diagnosed condition... Edit: my farm is kind of like the Millenium Falcon, junk made to go fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Nils, tell me about Lantech.....what did you buy exactly and what kind of result are you seeing? Lantech was very reasonable about cost. They are willing to do discounts if buying #s. Here are the specs for our newest additions to the farm: Render 6200 series Intel X8 5500 Render System Board DUAL Intel Quad core Xeon E5620 2.40 GHz L3 12 MB 5.86 GT/s QPI x/HT &TB Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64 bit 48 GB DDR-3 PC3-10600 1333MHz ECC Unbuffered (12x4GB) Embedded SATA II 2 Channel RAID storage controller with RAID 0,1 support 500GB SATA II HD 7200RPM 60GB Solid State HD Dual 10/100/1000 Gig Ethernet Adapter Integrated Rail Kit 3 year Parts and labor We didn't need the RAID controller (it was integrated on the MB) and the Solid State HD was thrown in at the last second (It is too small to be much use). We have not finished an image for the new machines yet, but they are using them down in our NYC office, they are screaming fast. One very important note, they take significant amounts of power and they are loud! we have a dedicated room here at the main office, but down there they have them out in the office, and they are looking to build some sort of noise baffle or part wall to block some of the noise. It is also important to think about power and cooling if you are going to put any number of these together in a small space. When they are rendering the power draw goes way up. I will post a picture when we get the new machines in the Racks. -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted February 9, 2012 Author Share Posted February 9, 2012 Nils....how many 6200's did you purchase? In your research, did you ever find a comparison of the rendering speed of a 6200 compared to the a single Boxx RenderPro 12? I guess those are my 2 choices and the most important things for me are: 1) Being able to continue work in Max while rendering is taking place, which I cannot do now 2) Increased rendering speed. 3) Small footprint I could only afford 1 or 2, probably more like 1. Your Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Spend wisely Dan, These are just the same chips you'll get in a regular PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted February 9, 2012 Author Share Posted February 9, 2012 I know Tom and I totally agree....but because of my homes layout , my office space is somewhat visible to other parts of my home, so space and appearance is pretty important. It's just a consideration I have to take into account and give its proper due. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil poppleton Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Our in house farm, again is pc's linked. We just buy another one as and when budgets allow. We have used scan.co.uk in the UK. The last couple of additions were Quad core i7's, 8gb ram around £600 + vat each from memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danb4026 Posted February 9, 2012 Author Share Posted February 9, 2012 Another question regarding an in house farm is (and this has to do with using DR and Vray): If you are working in a single file, how do you start a render on your slaves but continue to work in the file on other things? Right now, when I start a render, I cannot do anything else because the file is in rendering mode and nothing else can be done. I should probably post that on the Chaos board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil poppleton Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Use backburner and send the render to one of you farm machines, alternatively pull in the processor power of your render farm and get 16, 32 , 64 upwards buckets on your pc. I think you can pull in ten pc's into your scene render. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil poppleton Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 One other point to remember once you have half a dozen pc's you can turn off your house heating system. The pc's will take care of heating your house.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Nils....how many 6200's did you purchase? We bought 27 this go-around, adding 20 to our main farm, 7 went down to our satellite office. We didn't do any comparisons this go-around, this is the second time we have bought Lantech, last time we spec'ed identical machines from both vendors and we made a cost decision. Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dustinleifheit Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Hi Daniel, It's Dustin at Boxx Technologies. I feel the need to jump in and offer my two cents on this topic. Boxx builds for quality & performance, not price. Sure you can find hardware for cheaper out there, but is it older hardware? (Lantech is using old Xeon 5500 series processors on their render nodes according to their web site - Boxx is using the latest Xeon 5600 series processors on ours) What is their support like? Boxx is widely known for our excellent service & support. How long has Lantech been in business and serving this market? Boxx has been in business 15+ years now. We understand the hardware and the software workflows very well. Some of the new Sandy Bridge i7 processors are out-performing the Xeon's, but that is only because Intel started refreshing their procs from the consumer-level up this time. The new Xeon's should be launched by April. The higher frequency dual Xeon's will still out-perform a single i7. Plus, rendering loves cores - the more the merrier. The renderPRO is designed to sit at your desk side and be cool and quiet. The renderBoxx is meant to be rack-mounted and stored in a server room or server closet since they can be loud when cranking out a render job. Our renderBoxx setup is one of the densest around. You can get 120 physical cores in a 4U rack space using 6-core processors. 240 cores with hyper-threading turned on! Many, many customers feel that Boxx is worth it since they are getting a quality-built product made in the USA, using enterprise-class components(high MTBF), fully tested by BoxxLabs with the visual content creation applications on the market. Here is a partial list of our customers: http://www.boxxtech.com/customers/customers.asp Check out the recent Case Study for Tryba Architects: http://www.boxxtech.com/customers/tryba_customer_stories.asp I could go on, but hopefully this has helped some. Please let me know if I can be of service. Thank you for your interest in Boxx! Best, Dustin dleifheit@boxxtech.com 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