FORMULA5 Ikea Renderfarm

[artmaknev]

This is just awesome, I'll be building this same thing soon with a couple changes. Do you have to buy a license of windows for every node though? Or does cloning the HD take care of that?

 

I used Acronis to clone the first node, but I ran into some problems with the cloned versions of windows, had to change username but some settings didn't change from the original node. Just make sure you have all the same components and drives before cloning.

[branskyj]

Art Maknev, my friend, you are a true inspiration to many, many people. I love what you've done with the render farm, in fact every time I hear render farm something snaps in my brain and I just HAVE to check online prices of components again and again.

I am about to do something similar soon ( provided I am made permanent at my work this Monday) and even though it will be on a lower scale I needed your advise:

1. Why didn't you go for a mini-ITX motherboard with integrated wi-fi? Would using Ethernet cables instead of wi-fi increase speed when transferring scenes between the workstation and the nodes? Which 3D software and rendering engin do you use?

2. Are your CPU fans blowing towards the CPU or away from it? Did you try both ways and what were the differences? In most online threads people advise for "towards the CPU" blow but then again this is not any PC case, is it?

3. Why did you decide to go with the i7-3770S and not the normal i7-3770? I now the standard i7-3770 consumes more energy and gets a little hotter but do you think 5X 3770S would outperform say 4(or even 3)X3770? Or was your case the determent factor what CPUs to use?

 

Again- incredible stuff, Art.

Thanks for sharing and happy rendering

[artmaknev]

Art Maknev, my friend, you are a true inspiration to many, many people. I love what you've done with the render farm, in fact every time I hear render farm something snaps in my brain and I just HAVE to check online prices of components again and again.

I am about to do something similar soon ( provided I am made permanent at my work this Monday) and even though it will be on a lower scale I needed your advise:

1. Why didn't you go for a mini-ITX motherboard with integrated wi-fi? Would using Ethernet cables instead of wi-fi increase speed when transferring scenes between the workstation and the nodes? Which 3D software and rendering engin do you use?

2. Are your CPU fans blowing towards the CPU or away from it? Did you try both ways and what were the differences? In most online threads people advise for "towards the CPU" blow but then again this is not any PC case, is it?

3. Why did you decide to go with the i7-3770S and not the normal i7-3770? I now the standard i7-3770 consumes more energy and gets a little hotter but do you think 5X 3770S would outperform say 4(or even 3)X3770? Or was your case the determent factor what CPUs to use?

 

Again- incredible stuff, Art.

Thanks for sharing and happy rendering

 

Thank you sir for kind words!

 

1) You got it right, wired connection is definitely faster than wireless, but it is a very good idea to make your renderfarm wireless and very portable. Actually, you can do that with any motherboard, just need to buy usb-wifi dongle, I believe I've see some for under $10, so no need to spend extra $50 on wifi-built in board.

 

2) I used the intel CPU fan that came with the CPU, it is blowing away from CPU, therefore sucking the hot air out instead of in, I believe this is the most appropriate way, because why would you want to blast your CPU with hot air?

 

3) The reason I chose i7-3770s is because I could use pico-PSU instead of traditional PSU this allowed me enough room to place motherboard at the back of the drawer with all the ports accessable from the back. As you can see with other helmer renderfarms, the PSU is blocking access to the motherboard in the back, you have to open the drawer to access the motherboard ports. The i7-3770S only needs 65W of power, and pico-PSU can only provide 190W, if I chose regular 3770 chip the pico-PSU would not be able to provide enough power, therefore the system would not turn ON. The performance of 3770S might be a bit slower than 3770, but by only a fraction, unless you want to overclock it, I wouldn't recommend that anyway, you will need better cpu fan and its just too risky for such small form factor.

 

Hope that helps explain a few things!

 

Have fun building your farm, it is very rewarding at the end!

Art

Edited March 2, 2013 by artmaknev

[rhodesy]

This is sweet and im sure very satisfying. Looks great in-situ. I was thinking about doing this sort of thing just the other week as I was going round Ikea so its great to see what's possible. My farm is a real miss match and ugly and messy. One thing that might stop me doing this build though is the restriction to 16GB of RAM rather than 32GB to futureproof a bit more. Im leaning towards just getting a few shuttles and stacking them which isnt as cool or neat or im sure as quiet but at least I know they should last me a while. But if your not pushing 16GB then there would be no point. Cheers

[Dimitris Tolios]

mATX boards fit the helmer drawer just fine, as long as you don't want the I/O ports at the rear of it. You lay it along the drawer, with the ports facing the side and there is still room to plug the Ethernet cable.

With the drawer out of the Helmer, or with it open + the board tilted up, you can plug w/e, complete your setup and then put it back in.

most mATX boards have 4x dimm slots and you can do 32GB of RAM without crazy expensive 16GB sticks.

 

Actually a full ATX PSU + a mATX can be fitted without too much hassle. Things are cramped, yes, but it is doable, and "almost" clean if you have a modular PSU, or if you cut the excessive cables from one that is not.

 

A good idea to make things look cleaner and have better airflow is to use one SFF PSU (SFF/mITX sized/mATX sized etc).

Those can be found easily in the 300-400W range for $40-50.

[kevinolsen]

Looks awesome, great job!

 

Did u buy 5 copies of windows for these? That would get expensive...

 

Wish there was a way to do Linux nodes without headaches.

[artmaknev]

I used acronis to clone the first node, so 1 copy of win, they advertise it so I bought it for that purpose only, it worked perfectly. Yeah I was thinking Linux too, but way too much headache!