Devin Johnston Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 It's that time again, I'm looking to build 10 new nodes around the i7-4470K chip over clocked to at least 4.5Ghz. I don't need GUP support on these machines but since it's going to be over clocked I'd like it to be liquid cooled. I'm not very experienced in cooling systems so I'd like some advice there, I also need a great motherboard and some fast memory and SSD. Any suggestions are welcomed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 10, 2013 Share Posted June 10, 2013 It's that time again, I'm looking to build 10 new nodes around the i7-4470K chip over clocked to at least 4.5Ghz. I don't need GUP support on these machines but since it's going to be over clocked I'd like it to be liquid cooled. I'm not very experienced in cooling systems so I'd like some advice there, I also need a great motherboard and some fast memory and SSD. Any suggestions are welcomed! Im in node buying mode also. But I am looking at blades, have you considered that? I'd like to share info if you do. Ive already got 7 PC nodes and getting more will be taking too much space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 10, 2013 Author Share Posted June 10, 2013 Unfortuantley blades cost more than regular towers so no I haven't really looked at them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 11, 2013 Share Posted June 11, 2013 (edited) These things appear to run hot. It is an inherit design thing, not a flaw, nor a cooler inefficiency. That said, I would go for a thick rad 120mm cooler (e.g. the Corsair H80i or others - all of them are based on the same 2x designs and are manufactured by 2 OEMs with similar performance). Go 120mm and not 240 so that you can fit it in mATX cases. mATX cases are affordable, offer decent air-flow and are considerably smaller if you want to stack a few. I like the Fractal Design Core 1000. I would stack them on their side, with some 1/2" "custom" foam pads in-between. mATX mobos offer almost 100% the O/C potential of larger boards - at least the high-end ASUS Gene models did. I have no experience from Z87 boards yet, but I would expect the usuall suspects (Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI) all to offer potent solutions. It is not that hard for a decent mobo to push an unlocked i7 to 4.5. Gigabyte had the most reliable mobo line in 2012 (the least RMA requests). RAM: same ol...Intel Core architecture doesn't seem to care about really fast RAM in real life performance. Any 1600-1866 is fast enough. SSD: Samsung 840. Not the Pro would be great, but I don't know if you care for 120GB drives. It is relatively cheap tho - competes with 64GB prices. It has TLC but for normal workloads you will not wear it out fast, in render nodes it will probably last "forever" Edited June 11, 2013 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 11, 2013 Share Posted June 11, 2013 (edited) 1 Blade Max Renderfarm 6U Rack 1 2 BladeMAX Render Farm - Quad Core CPU's 8 node Chassis with 3 8 CPU Blades, 4 8 - Intel 1155 Z77 Motherboards with Core i7-3770K CPU's 3.5GHz 5 8 - SATA 7200rpm Hard Drives, 6 8 - 32GB DDR3 7 8 - Blade plates w/ PS 8 8 - W7 pro $11,376.00 + tax + shipping. I think the above is the best deal Ive seen for new blades. Any comments Dimitris? Edited June 11, 2013 by Tommy L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 I've tried to be as laconic as I could... Lil words, some 30min of spreadsheetin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 Ok, and as soon as I did the table above, thought I could add the one below... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 (edited) Yes, but cubic feet is misleading. Anyone that has a bunch of PC nodes will tell you they take up more space than that. With the cable soup that exists behind the shelving you keep them on and the space you need between them to let the fans do their business they are greedy with space. Ugly too. And hot. Ive also moved studio 5 times in the last 5 years, they are a bitch to move and re-setup. By the way, a big thanks to you Dimitris for your contributions in this area. Youre the Lionel Messi of the tech discussion board. I'd also like to say that render node discussion is a much under-represented topic. Workstations are IMHO less important to a production artist than the in-house render power available to them. Edited June 12, 2013 by Tommy L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 True on the mATX nodes...will be a mess... But the 6U Blade (used specs from NEC blades, but most of them are just as deep, the face is common for all) is pretty deep, and ofc it will require a large cabinet or floor-to-ceiling rails to be bolted on permanently + allow for some reach on the cabling etc... Some custom cabinet work could go a loooong way making the custom nodes more compact. I believe you can fit 3x in a typical IKEA expedit shelf. Starts to look more appealing to me than the cute Helmer (find it pretty hard to fit mobos with 4x dimms in it - you actually have better chances finding ATX boards that fit, as almost all mATX are 9.6" x 9.6" - you have depth for more than 9.6", but you don't have width for it, so if you wish for 32GB or RAM in your nodes, be cautious). Moving any short of office is a B...ifficult task. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 Quick question, why is the 3770 better than the 3930 which has 6 cores and a similar clock speed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 (edited) Quick question, why is the 3770 better than the 3930 which has 6 cores and a similar clock speed? Quick answer: it is not - it is just cheaper You will be hard-pressed to find a board for s2011 @ less than $175-180 other than the EVGA one that was problematic. The 3930K is $500 (Microcenter) or north of $550 everywhere else - much more outside the US. Doesn't have a IGP so you need an external GPU - even if it is a $20 unit, its added cost. Power consumption is much higher, clocks @ default are slightly lower, and overclocked @ similar speeds is an energy hog. You will need a 550+ W PSU - the CPU itself will draw around 220W wall power @ stock, but overclocked it might be more than 350W. Extreme clocks (close to 5GHz) pull more than 450s, but that's another story. Deal is, probably the cheap mobos are hard pressed to stably push 350W + CPUs, while an overclocked 3770K might be in the 200W range - almost "twice as easy" for even cheap boards to support. Edited June 12, 2013 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 OK, now Ill throw you a curve ball.... Whats to stop me buying one of these puppies: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-PROLIANT-C7000-Chassis-16-x-BL460C-G6-Blade-SIX-CORE-L5639-48GB-RAM-HDD-TRAYS-/111088814651#vi-content Reconditioned is obviously a gamble. But Im a gambler. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 (edited) dunno...it is not that old, it is 5600 series nehalem. 2133MHz, but those are a lot of 2011 tech buckets! Take it with a grain of salt, but Nehalem is about 15% slower than Sandy Bridge, which is about 10% slower than Ivy Bridge. Clock for Clock. So 192 Nehalem Cores * 2 (hyperthreading) * 2.133 GHz = 819 GHz. That would be ~ 696 Sandy GHz or ~ 626 Ivy GHz. That's what you would roughly get if you would go all-in @ $15,500 or w/e the thing would cost you and get as many IB 3770K nodes you can. Saving some money leaving out SSDs etc could sum up to an extra node or so. Tough choice. Edited June 13, 2013 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 13, 2013 Author Share Posted June 13, 2013 Dimitris, do you have any idea when the extreme versions of the Haswell's will come out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 Dimitris, do you have any idea when the extreme versions of the Haswell's will come out? End of 2013 most likely. Unfortunately rumor has it we won't see 8 core ib-e. Will still be 4 and 6 cores. Would be happy to have that change, but... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 13, 2013 Author Share Posted June 13, 2013 So in your opinion do you think it's worth waiting for the extreme chips or just going with the overclocked 4770K's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 I don't know honestly. It is not a straight-forward answer. We don't know actual performance (we do know aprox. which IPC/clock we will get from the IB-E, will be that of the 3770K give or take) as we don't know the thermal performance of the IB-E chips, their power draw when overclocked, their stock clocks, their (edit: max) realistic o/c clocks etc. If there will be a mid-range hex-core to replace the 3930K, it will most likely be in the sub $600 but probably not below $550 for a some time. Together with the mobo being almost $100 more, and the need for a lil bit better PSU (if you need to OC, otherwise a gold 450-500 will do fine, real draw off the wall is in the 230s with my 3930K @ full load and stock speeds, and IB-E will be running on less juice), we are looking @ almost 50% performance gains for probably less than 50% more cost (less HDDs, OS etc $/per core), and ofc less bulk to deal with than multiple 4C nodes. In the OP you sounded in need of something "now", and there will be almost 6m before IB-E is a realistic option with enough stock etc readily available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 13, 2013 Author Share Posted June 13, 2013 My current nodes are 2.5 years old so it's time to upgrade but if I can get a 50% performance gain by waiting 6 more months then I'm ok with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 My current nodes are 2.5 years old so it's time to upgrade but if I can get a 50% performance gain by waiting 6 more months then I'm ok with that. Will be 50% gain per node, as you will have 50% more buckets per node. Each one will be more expensive though than the "50% slower" LGA1155/1150 4C i7. You don't get 50% more for the same price, you get 50% more per "volume" should you go with similar cases/mobos (i.e. mATX). The current s2011 hex-cores are also "close" to 50% better performance. I would guess around the turn of the year when IB-E will be out, SB-E will see some decent deals flushing out stock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 So I thought I'd let you guys know how I ended up... I got 6 x Shuttle XPC barebones systems from TigerDirect and put in 16G ram (room for another 16), i7 3930 @stock speed. Nodes prob ended up around $1250 each including all peripherals and OS. They are great. Very small and quiet too. I also got another KVM which daisychains to my existing one. My first frames are rendering now. Direct comparison to the i7 2600k (also non-overclocked) is 4m45s to 6m30s. Only issue is that one Shuttle is DOA and needs to be returned. Hope that helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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