Helmer Renderfarm update

[Morbid Angel]

no actually its a dual x5650 2.66 ghz 6 core. It runs hot so it needs to be in a cold space ideally to stay quiet, but it can operate in ambient of about 45C. But then the fans are LOUD!

[JezUK]

About online renderfarm, its good service, and I used it couple of times when I just had my laptop, but as long as I remember, the upload speed can take longer time then the actual rendering... if your file is like 200MB it can take an hour to upload, maybe its faster nowdays...

Dmitry - it can get noisy when at full load, at idle its pretty quiet.

Great thread and always a hot topic, i.e. which way to turn

For me (I just do stills, and no animation) a single workstation is enough with Rebusfarm behind me to attend to my large production renders - as you rightly wonder artmaknev, nowadays, upload times are just a few minutes and it costs just a few $s to do a high-res production render (over 100 nodes) and then download back again.

What would take my machine several hours to render, is now around 30mins with Rebus (including upload/download times).

The benefits of doing that, for me, currently far outweigh spending $3-5K on a better machine or small renderfarm. And the convenience always makes me smile.

Price of 2696 v3 on eBay really would tempt me to go that route today (space, power, noise, heat etc would all be in the Xeon's favour) - not to mention the ease and convenience of rendering and licences.

I think the future of rendering has never been more exciting, and personally, my money is on the cloud as being the best solution.

For test renders etc, a good solid, fast single machine cuts it enough