Home Render farm

[Cjmcphail]

Hi Guys,

 

Im just wondering what everyone is using for home render farms. Im looking into building another workstation to use as a slave. In terms of a cpu im looking at either a :

 

Core i7 3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Six-Core

 

or

 

Xeon E5 2620 2.0GHz (2.5GHz Turbo), Six Core

 

Not really sure whats going to be the best CPU or if another workstation is the best/most cost effective way to go. Any advice on what your all using as a render node/s would be great

 

Cheers

Chris

 

Ive been looking around all afternoon and did find this setup http://digitaltimmay.com/2011/03/16/how-to-build-an-inexpensive-render-farm/

Edited June 10, 2012 by Cjmcphail

[johnharrison]

Hello,

 

because you are only building one additional workstation, I would definitely go for the i7. Not because the Xeon one is bad, but because you can easily add extra cooling to the i7 and overclock it by a lot (4-5ghz), making it really powerful for rendering. Depending on the size of the case, a Noctua NH-D14 fan is very effective.

[Cjmcphail]

I did come across this blog yesterday http://digitaltimmay.com/2011/03/16/how-to-build-an-inexpensive-render-farm/

and for the price of one i7 workstation I could possibly build 3 of these using AMD8150 8Core CPUs, which would add up to 24 extra cores.

[Scott Schroeder]

You may want to spread the CPU's around, and go with the 3 stations for the cost of one i7. As long as the AMD is somewhat close to the i7 in terms of speed, you'll be able to put out more frames per render cycle. For every 1 i7 frame, you'll be having 3 frames being rendered. Even if the i7 is 2:1, you'll still have 3 frames for every 2 from the i7.

 

Though, adding extra cooling to the i7 is a snap and relatively cheap. I just bought an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for around 30 bucks for my i7 and dropped my render temp 20 degrees over the stock intel cooler.

[Cjmcphail]

You may want to spread the CPU's around, and go with the 3 stations for the cost of one i7. As long as the AMD is somewhat close to the i7 in terms of speed, you'll be able to put out more frames per render cycle. For every 1 i7 frame, you'll be having 3 frames being rendered. Even if the i7 is 2:1, you'll still have 3 frames for every 2 from the i7.

 

Though, adding extra cooling to the i7 is a snap and relatively cheap. I just bought an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for around 30 bucks for my i7 and dropped my render temp 20 degrees over the stock intel cooler.

 

So The 2 Processors om looking at are the i7 2600 @ 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) or the AMD FX-8150 Processor - Eight Core, 3.6GHz (4.2GHz Max Turbo).

 

The AMD is about $100 (aus) cheaper per processor than the i7 which means I will be able to possibly get a third node if I do go with the AMD, but all the benchmarks are showing the i7 is best bang for the buck. Just having had no experience with AMD Im tending to lean more toward the i7.

 

Any thoughts?

Edited June 12, 2012 by Cjmcphail

[lucifer150]

I am going to watch this closely, as i am very interested in this.

[Scott Schroeder]

How close are the benchmarks in terms of speed? Does the i7 destroy the AMD or is it fairly close? From what I've seen, the AMD is close to the i7 when it comes to gaming, but when they benchmarked After Effects, PS4, and Cinebench the i7 was clearly superior.

 

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/AMD-FX-8150-vs-Core-i5-2500K-and-Core-i7-2600K-CPU-Review/1402/11

 

However, it goes back to the original concept of more is better than one when it comes to render farms. How long will it take the i7 to render 100 frames and how long will it take three AMD's to render 100 frames? That's the performance you want to really think about. One on one, the i7 is better. But tag-teaming or triple teaming an AMD to an i7, well, that adds extra support. For my render farm, I'd rather have 3 very good boxes over one extremely good box.

 

If you do get the i7, you really want to look into upgrading your stock cooling system. As I said, my stock i7 cooler ran quite hot when rendering. Around 90c, with is after after the 70c throttle back mark and near the 100c getting really hot warning. Now that I have better cooling, I'm around 60-70c at full bore. Cooling your CPU keeps it around longer, so really look into a very good cooling solution since this box is dedicated render box.

[branskyj]

Hi Chris,

my workstation is 3930k and I love it. I would not buy another one as a slave though (due the the hefty premium price of the CPU). I would choose i7 2600k instead (almost twice as cheap in UK) and in 3DS Max (that is the software I use anyway) the i7 2600k is about 10% slower than the i7 3930k. Just check AnandTech's bench page (it gives you direct comparison). As for AMD- better have the faster and relatively cheap i7 2600k. Yes, you could have 2-3 FX 8150s now instead of 1-2 i7 2600k but the truth is that you will be also stuck with 10-25% slower hardware for a long time. Besides the i7 is a great overclocker (I don't overclock anyway but still) and if I am not mistaking it consumes far less electricity than the FX 8150 (I could be wrong though).

Get the i7s now and once you save some more money get another i7 2600k. I used to have a Phenom before, it was a good CPU but with CPU rendering you can never have enough CPU power and at the moment AMD is lagging badly.

I myself will be buying two i7 2600k for the same purpose in a month and a half.

Whatever you choose- good luck and happy rendering.

[Cjmcphail]

Thanks for all you help guys. After having a look around for the week im thinking ill go with the i7 2600k. Power consumption ( 90w vs 111w @idle) and speed difference is enough to justify the. Ill keep you posted on the performance of the setup