Matt Sugden Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Hi I have about 6 render nodes which I built myself about 24 months ago, all 2u racks with i5 2500 3.3Ghz chips with 16Gb ram. They're okay, and generally rendering a frame takes around 20-40 minutes. I have a client who is pushing me to turn around animations quicker, so I was wondering about perhaps adding a new machine to this stack to give myself a performance boost. I'm assuming performance has moved on again since I last purchased my renders nodes. I could probably spare about £1,500. I've often wanted to go with a dual core machines, but there always seems to be a hefty price premium for this, but I'd prefer to have less infrastructure to take care of. So I was wondering what might be good options with this budget. I reckon the case/psu would cost me about £130. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Here is an example. PCPartPicker part list It would be more than 3 times faster in rendering compared to the old nodes you have. If you overclock the processor slightly, then you could easily add a lot of rendering power to an already great cpu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted March 7, 2016 Author Share Posted March 7, 2016 Thanks for that, could the i7 5960 be used with something like this https://www.scan.co.uk/products/supermicro-mbd-x10dai-o-server-board-intel-c612-s-2011-3-x2-ddr4-sata-iii-6gb-s-pcie-30-gb-lan-e-atx it's the same socket, but the motherboard is marketed as a xeon proc? Also when you say overclock a great CPU are you referring to my current i5s or the i7 you sent the link to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 When I talk about oc I'm reffering to the 5960X. The 2500 can't be oc'ed, only the 2500k could be but with the right mobo. Dual socket motherboards, like the one you mentioned, can only be used with Xeon cpus and the scpecific ones with E5 2600 v3 series. Your budget isn't big enough for a dual xeon node. The 5960X could easily surpass cheap dual xeon nodes in rendering performance, especially if it's oc'ed. A dual xeon system that would perform in rendering better than the 5960 would cost more than 2.5-3K£. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
numerobis Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 (edited) I'm assuming performance has moved on again since I last purchased my renders nodes. The i5 2500 was only mid range at its time and already outdated 24 months ago, so yes, there is much room for improvement. An i7 5820K would be more than twice as fast as a i5 2500 and still has the best price/performance ratio. The mentioned 5960X would also be a good option if you want to spend a bit more. Depending on the components of your nodes (PSU, case, HDD/SSD) you could upgrade 2 nodes to 5820K (cpu, board, RAM, cooler, cheap GPU) for maybe ~£1200. Edited March 8, 2016 by numerobis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted March 8, 2016 Author Share Posted March 8, 2016 Yes a good point, and something which I was considering as more infrastructure means more headaches. At the time the 2500 was a good bet for me regarding price performance and when you're buying 6 price matters right! I'll check out the 5820k thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Numerobis's idea about partly replacing the old nodes seems great. Could you mention the rest of the old nodes's parts, like psu, case etc.? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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