Render Nodes

[tct70]

Question for the hardware guru's.

I want to be able to send renders to be done while working on other scenes.

My first thought would be to purchase a lap-top and use my current desktop as a rendering only machine.

What are you're thoughts about dedicated render nodes like these:

http://www.boxxtech.com/products/ren...renderboxx.asp

My understanding is that these can be expanded at any time (although I probably wouldn't buy them from Boxx).

Any thoughts and/or pointers would be much appreciated.

Trev

[DanielBrew]

Hi Trev,

That's the route we took. We bought 2 Supermicro 1U servers so that they could be hidden away on one of our racks downstairs. Ours are a bit out of date now (dual Opteron 275s) but the productivity increase was huge. We use them with Backburner mainly for test renders so we never have to stop work to see how a job is progressing. I can't imagine working without them now.

The only problem with this sort of hardware is the drivers are not common and are not generally included on OS CDs so it can be quite a long process to install a new OS.

Dan

[tct70]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the reply. By rendering on these nodes you presumable don't have to spend a fortune on your workstations as they are mainly for modelling only.

Cheers,


Trev

[unknown]

thought i would chip in here.....
we are using dell poweredge servers, get the dual quads, and if you buy in bulk the price goes down. without rendering machines its a real pain, and if you got for rack options you can scale easily. beware that dell dont support 64bit on PE servers, and its a pain to install, but if you stick to intel network cards, and find the right SAS driver its easy.

our next problem is with increased machines is an aircon room.

as for cheaper workstations, i dont think thats cost efective, you need the best tools you can afford, a meaty machine will help test renders, poly counts, multiple apps running etc. remember that your rendernodes need to equal the power of you workstations otherwise on rendering you will get some nasty results!

[tct70]

Thanks,

My desktop is a couple of years old so any nodes would probably be better now anyway. Does this mean that if I replace the desktop in a year or so the nodes will not be good enough and produce those "nasty results"?

[Blitterswitch]

I am curious as to what these 'nasty results' are...

My renderfarm is comprised of 4x AMD X2 4600+ (all with 2gb) and my workstation is a Q6600 Intel C2Quad 2.44ghz oc'ed to 3.06ghz (with 8 gb) which is faster by a larrrrge margin.

They render fine together, whether it is in DR or Backburner.

[unknown]

not rendering.....

if you work to 8gb of ram on your workstations then its best to have that on your nodes too.

also look to replace backburner with deadline, its way more versitile, and free for 2 nodes, much better for managing larger volumes of render machines, plus you can render maya, xsi and after effects though it