Off-The-Shelf Render Node Recommendations

[Francisco Penaloza]

Never heard of PerForce, but if it works for you no need to break it.

I have two HP Z600 and I put some SSD everything works fine but YMMV of course.

I still would recommend to put a bigger HHD and maybe talk to your builder and see if he could do a RAID system, it can help with speed or failure.

Best luck.

[RyderSK]

It was smartly suggested above to use cloud services, and imho it's quite worth to consider. I have 80 cores (160 threads if we count multi-threading) in office, but it rarely suffices as I often need to create few 8k finals in matter of few days or high quality previews in matter of minutes to save time and this is where I really use Rebus ( https://de.rebusfarm.net/en/ ). It became so convenient I repurposed my dual-xeon rendering nodes as workstations instead.

 

Of course, even cloud rendering doesn't diminish the need for separate workstation or node at office.

 

Regarding the above spec:

 

The last 5perc. of Xeon models (2697, 2690, 2699,etc.) have very diminishing ratio of price/performance, i.e they're super expensive but only slightly better than the upper mid-level models (2670/2680/etc..). If you want to make the absolute performance out of single box, they are of course the way to go, just putting it up here so you know. The price sky-rockets when you take these.

 

SSDs are must. There is not a single issue in modern PCs with mixing hard-drives (of couse,outside of putting them in RAID, which you shouldn't need to use at all even within identical drives within workstation).

The current crop of them are extremely reliable, and so much that traditional HDDs, even the best and most expensive server based ones pale in comparison with longevity. The tests have time and time proven this.

They speed up not only your workflow by huge margin (opening 3dsMax scenes up to 5-6 times faster), but the overall comfort level of using PC rises tremendeously. The difference is such a night and day I use them everywhere.

 

Even the pricing is very good, there are expensive but ultra-fast models (like Samsung 850 Pro with reading speeds up to 2500 MB/s, which is 15 times faster than traditional HDD, 500GB costs 350 dollars) and reliable cheap models where high capacity is more than affordable ( like Samsung 850 Evo, where 2 TB can be bought for as little as 700 dollars currently, that is price so good actually I use them in file-server for projects and assets and only use tradditional HDDs for backup).

 

Regarding ram, it simply meant not to go above 128GB. You will never need more (at least within next 4 years) for rendering and that is what matters. Everything above is waste money that should go elsewhere.

 

I use PerForce for merging code with my brother, it's collaborative tool. But I don't see much need for rendering, simply put your projects on file-server (or NAS, etc..) and load them from there directly. But even that is no longer needed since both Distributed render and Backburner can pack associated files with scene, so if you prefer storing files locally you can.

Edited December 1, 2015 by RyderSK

[David Turner]

Thanks Juraj / Francisco et al for the replies.

This is the kind of information that I was looking for.

I do use Rebus when I am in a bind or a client needs a short turnaround. I just would like to not rely on out-sourcing my rendering needs so much.

I will go for an SSD, the 2TB Samsung EVO.

The Information regarding RAM is very helpful. I'll go with 128GB.

I used PerForce when I was working in the video game industry. It was helpful in keeping track of the latest versions of files and provided a back up once things were checked into the server. I don't know if I'll ever get around to setting it up. I'll probably just copy over files manually.

Thanks again!

-DT

[RyderSK]

Thanks Juraj / Francisco et al for the replies.

I'll probably just copy over files manually.

-DT

 

No need to do so anymore though:

 

Vray: Settings next to Distributed, check "Transfer missing assets". Vray will collect all files and send it automatically for you.

 

Backburner: Submit to network rendering and check "Include maps". Backburner will collect all files as well.

 

 

I will go for an SSD, the 2TB Samsung EVO.

-DT

 

Just to make sure, this was just an example :- ) Such large capacity is great for file storage, but for system drive you need around 512-1024GB for workstation, and around 256GB for node. Little redundancy never hurts but it might be unnecessary high.

[David Turner]

Juraj,

Again, more great advice.

Thanks!

-DT