moodie Posted December 10, 2012 Share Posted December 10, 2012 (edited) hi guys, Im considering picking up a few mac minis to build a farm with. Does anybody have any experience with this? im getting mixed info on the actual performance of a mac mini farm. I know its possible, but im wondering if its worth it, and if so, how to actually build one. Any help / ideas? Edited December 10, 2012 by moodie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonel Posted December 10, 2012 Share Posted December 10, 2012 It's all in the CPU that is to be used in the node. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 11, 2012 Author Share Posted December 11, 2012 (edited) true, so im looking at picking up 3 or 4 mac minis: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini I use primarily 3dmax and Vray on Windows, so technically, i dont need to get the Mac Mini with osx server right? correct me if im wrong here. That could save me some money. Anybody with experience on this here? Edited December 11, 2012 by moodie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 It will be a bit counter-productive for the money invested, as the mac-mini uses low-voltage CPUs that do not clock as high as the full-speced desktop models. Plus mac-minis are a tad overpriced for the provided hardware anyways, so if you were to build your own nodes, you could get full-speced i7s for less than you would pay for the basic i5 mini. Depending on your renderer, you might be able to use Linux for the nodes, getting OS out of the way as far as expense goes. It can definitely work. Instructions for distributed rendering setup can be "googled" in both forums, blogs, youtube and official help guides for most popular OSs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 I agree with Dimitris, spend money on Mac's consumer server is not worth, get i7s or xeon computers, longer investment way better performance. Why to buy apple product when you will use Windows based software??, don't take me work I do have an Imac, but I use MODO and Cinema 4D, although my render nodes are custom build PC's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 13, 2012 Author Share Posted December 13, 2012 You guys are correct for the most part. And that is the common wisdom about pc's vs macs. HOWEVER, after alot of my own research, i've come to the conclusion that the mac minis are still a great and viable option. Ive researched Dells, HP's, ASUS and LENOVOS compact workstations vs the MAC MINIS, and the Minis beat out all of them in terms of cost and power and portability, with the exception of the LENOVOS. If you do your research you will find the same. Im looking for something portable, so im looking at their compact workstations, thats why i was attracted to the minis in the first place. The biggest RIP OFF here are the DELLS. They are straight up RIP OFFS when you compare them to the minis or any other compact workstation. I was pretty surprised. The ONLY exception here are the LENOVOS. There proccessor offerings are way better, and they definitely beat the minis when it comes to raw power for the same price. Ill probably be getting three Thinkstation E31 small form factors with I7's. A few of those babys on a farm would be pretty beastly and enough for my purposes. My one question though is that, im planning on only getting 4gbs of ram for each thinkstation, i dont think i need any more ram since they'll just be running max, vray and nothing else really, am i wrong here? Any more thoughts on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fooch Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 stick more ram --> you wouldnt regret it (make sure its 64 bit) mac mini = bad idea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 13, 2012 Author Share Posted December 13, 2012 (edited) For all you guys saying that building a Mac mini render farm is a bad idea, you simply don't know what your talking about. Again, If you actually do the research you'll find that they are comparable in power and price to the PCs (except lenovo) and actually beat out many PC manufacturers when you actually look at the numbers! Plus, their portable, sleek and hassle free. Especially if you're rendering in an OSX environment. Although I'm probably not going with the minis (lenovos are the only pcs to beat them out) I'd challenge anybody to dispute this, Edited December 13, 2012 by moodie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthewspencer Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Although I'm probably not going with the minis, I'd challenge anybody to dispute this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 13, 2012 Author Share Posted December 13, 2012 Colbert is my hero, but please read my post before this devolves into a meme circus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Rendering is a tough task for any computer, CPU works at the maximum, ram fill up to the top, power supply run like crazy, hard drives read and write all this equal Heat, your Mac mini will do great the first year or less depending how much you render, after that you'll have to replace, power supply, video chip, maybe fan, why? because they are not design or build for that kind of stress, if you love Mac, get macpros dual xeon, Mac data center and fill of those not Mac minis why, because minis are design for home use, video stream, kaynotes, word processing, they barely hit the CPU, you may run out of memory before you burn the CPU That being said, if you want real rendering machine small factor, look for Boxx renderpro, expensive, but they are 3 or 4 time faster than a desktop lenovo. If you want low budget rendering, yes Lenovo will do fine, 4 gigs of ram will do fine until you start to work on large scenes, multi scatter, car proxies and so on, 8 will do better, 16 or 32 optimum. Dell, HP, IBM "works station" are more expensive because the components are made for hard stress processing, at the end you get what you pay for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 13, 2012 Author Share Posted December 13, 2012 Boxxes are overpriced. You can get the same power in Lenovo for a third of the cost. I'm not gonna compare out systems here, just go for yourself and see. It makes almost no sense to me to buy a boxx when I can get three, more powerful, compact Lenovo workstations for cheaper: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?sb=:00000025:0000342A:#.UMoZs7e9Kc1 As far as the Mac mini vs pcs, in terms of long term reliability and heavy usage argument. You may have a point, but what do you base that on? How do you know that minis aren't solid workhorses that can take on heavy constant rendering tasks? As far as I know, apple makes solid systems and great products. Again, do the research Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 The title "workstation" can be loosely used for anything that makes the wheels spin...soon you will be running stuff on Win8 tablets that you could classify as such. Would you call your "pro" tablet a workstation? I do agree that the Mac Mini has nothing to fear from other "book-sized" devices - all of them are based on roughly the same hardware, but Francisco and others are right: book sized machines are aimed more towards compact office related applications and/or HTPC applications. None of them are "workstation" PCs, no-mater how the manufacturer tries to push them. Mac-Mini might be slick and efficient, but it is based on low voltage components. It is technically a laptop with a low voltage desktop CPU, just like iMacs are. Yes, 3rd gen i5s and i7s do make them faster than Q6600 generation quad-core desktops were for 1/3 the wattage, but that's doable with a laptop too...nothing "special" about it or unique to macs for what is worth. If you want 3-4 machines to through in a briefcase and render with while on the run, sure. You should have specified it ofc, but as I've told you above, sure it is doable with mac-minis, or laptops, or w/e. I doubt it will see enough action to wear it down that fast (cause otherwise it will, those things are not meant to work @ 100% load as Francisco writes). Doable =/= most efficient, best performing, best value for money, best reliability etc. It is an extreme niche role, and off-the-shelf options are limited. You could build custom itx based fully-fledged PCs with top of the line i7s, 80+ Gold SFF PSUs and 16-32GB of RAM + a small SSD for less than a basic mac-mini, but it takes certain patience and will to do so, and ofc it won't be as compact. It cannot be, that's the reason for using low-voltage (aka less powerful) hardware in mini form factors to begin with: less heat = smaller heatsinks and PSUs etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Boxxes are overpriced. You can get the same power in Lenovo for a third of the cost. I'm not gonna compare out systems here, just go for yourself and see. It makes almost no sense to me to buy a boxx when I can get three, more powerful, compact Lenovo workstations for cheaper: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?sb=:00000025:0000342A:#.UMoZs7e9Kc1 As far as the Mac mini vs pcs, in terms of long term reliability and heavy usage argument. You may have a point, but what do you base that on? How do you know that minis aren't solid workhorses that can take on heavy constant rendering tasks? As far as I know, apple makes solid systems and great products. Again, do the research Well my friend I think you already made your choice that's good, you know your needs and your budget, hopefully you'll post some updates, so with time we can see how your mac mini or Lenovo farm work out, hopefully it work for you. I won't add anymore, but just to clarify, when I say something here or any other forum I do not speculate or try to guess, if so I rather do not give my opinion, at the beginning of your thread you as, what we think about it, I been giving you my opinion all based on experience, over 10 years of ArchViz, some extras of Multimedia designer and several years of pc building and small company IT support, I also worked at a big Credit card transaction company, as a graphic artist, they did base all their hardware on Macs, but hey all use macpro and secretaries imac why, well I already said that. best luck. Fco. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthewspencer Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 I been giving you my opinion all based on experience This is what OP doesn't understand. Sort of silly to imply that we haven't done research or don't have experience. On another note, I wouldn't call Boxxes overpriced. Like Dimitris said, you get what you pay for. Our studio owns many Boxxes and I can't even begin to explain how invaluable their tech support has been. A (pro-level) custom PC supplier would do the same. That is another major difference between consumer and true pro workstations. But then, you'd know that if: Again, do the research Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 13, 2012 Author Share Posted December 13, 2012 I've made my choice and am pretty confident about the Lenovos, and thanks everybody for the help and input. I didnt consider the low power cpus on the macs thats true. Anyway, I'm gonna be building a custom farm and throw it in a pelican case. Ill update you guys with photos later. Matthew, if you are a small to midsize studio then yes, boxxes may be a good choice considering their tech support ect, and the fact that they are turn key, But I'm my own entity and am not willing to shell out an extra 5k for that. I'm fine with my research and ill take my cheaper, more powerful custom Lenovos thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Which lenovos are you after? Can you post a link ? Just curious - thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moodie Posted December 14, 2012 Author Share Posted December 14, 2012 http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?sb=:00000025:0000342A:#.UMpu-nd2gSa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 have fun with your 'mac mini' farm its going to be really really bad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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