Selling old renderslaves, no idea about price

[suurland]

I'm about to sell some old rendernodes, but i don't really know what to charge for them as I'm not that into hardware prices, and especially not old used hardware.

There are a total of 10 computers, all with these specs:

Case: 1U server case, rack mountable
Cpu: DUAL Intel Xeon HT 3068MHz, L2 512kb
Ram: 1024 MB DDR-SDRAM
chipset: Intel E7501
Harddrive: 80gb, ATA Maxtor 6Y080M0 (2 hot-swap drive bays)
netværk1: 1gbit, Intel PRO/1000 MT Network connection
netværk2: 100mbit, Intel PRO/100 S Server Adapter
graphic: ATI RAGE XL PCI onboard

Official specs here http://www.supermicro.com/products/s...YS-6013A-T.cfm

So, any idea about a price?

/Thomas

[duke2]

Unfortunately you're probably looking at around $150-200 USD tops. You can get a similar system with twice the ram and atleast a dual core for around $300-400.

[jonahhawk]

You might be better off donating them to a nonprofit for the tax breaks. If you give them to a school or something as an In Kind Donation you can claim a much higher value (depending on how long you've had them, depreciation etc.). I'm sure the original prices were in the thousands.

A lot of youth centers would be totally happy to receive such a donation and would gladly give you letter stating the amount you feel the donation is worth.

[Preisler]

Hi Thomas!

I am just curious to know what hardware are you getting instead of these nodes? ...maybe Apple hardware?

Preisler

[jonahhawk]

For the last couple months we have testing one of these and it works flawlessly. We have four more on the way. Five units will fill one 4U Rack space and hold 80 cores across ten render nodes. These are a real space and, I think, power saver.

http://www.boxxtech.com/Products/ren...m_Overview.asp

I really don't know why a 3ds Max user would complicate things with Apple hardware. Flame all you want but why mix platforms?

[meanadam]

And how much $ for one of those boxx render blade systems?

[dlparisi]

You can price them online. They start at $5825, I'd rather get a few more of these though since the same config somes in at roughly $4200 (after adding OS)...
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i954...win-server.php

They're not quite as compact (you can fit only 4 in 4U) but still pretty dense. I imagine they'd be pretty noisy though - not sure how loud the boxx ones are.

[tom182]

For the safe of a few quid and no hassle I would just donate to a charity
Karma man Karma

[jonahhawk]

Those are definitely cheaper. I'm sure we could fill in the OS with our corporate licensing and put XP64 on them. I wonder what their support and replacement is like...

I do have to say that the Boxx support is excellent. If we need a part we just call then and they ship it with no questions asked. We have had bad video card memory in a couple workstations (quadro fx 3500). We had new cards before we shipped the old ones back. About 15 minutes of down time. The same goes for the render nodes.

[Giovanni]

You can price them online. They start at $5825, I'd rather get a few more of these though since the same config somes in at roughly $4200 (after adding OS)...
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i954...win-server.php

They're not quite as compact (you can fit only 4 in 4U) but still pretty dense. I imagine they'd be pretty noisy though - not sure how loud the boxx ones are.

Six grant? for one xeon quad system (8 cores)?

You can get about 6 off the shelf computers, quad 9300, 4 gig ram, 64bit vista pre-installed for that money...

That is 24 cores, with 24 gigs RAM....

I mean, beside the physical space, is it a matter of reliability?

regards

[jonahhawk]

Six grant? for one xeon quad system (8 cores)?

You can get about 6 off the shelf computers, quad 9300, 4 gig ram, 64bit vista pre-installed for that money...

That is 24 cores, with 24 gigs RAM....

I mean, beside the physical space, is it a matter of reliability?

regards

Nope. 16 cores for that price. there are two nodes per box; two quad xeon proc per node.

can you send a link to those sub $1000 8 core machines you are talking about?

Physical space and power usage are a big concern. Also with Boxx we have the best service and support you could ask for. They are very responsive and never pester us when we need parts.

[dlparisi]

Six grant? for one xeon quad system (8 cores)?

You can get about 6 off the shelf computers, quad 9300, 4 gig ram, 64bit vista pre-installed for that money...

That is 24 cores, with 24 gigs RAM....

I mean, beside the physical space, is it a matter of reliability?

regards

I believe you'll have to build them yourself to get it below $1000 and I wouldn't want to assemble 20 computers to get 80 cores. Additionally, you'll be limited to only 10 of those machines (40 cores) per vray license for DR whereas all of the xeons will be available (80 cores) so you'll need to buy another vray license. You also may run into problems having 20 machines accessing the server unless you're running a server OS. Administering 20 computers is also double the work of admin. 10 (not that you're doing much but it all adds up).

The xeons will also be twice as fast (in general) at computing IR and LC passes since those can't easily be distributed across the network. Don't get me wrong, the 9300's are great machines - it's just that the xeons do have there place. The boxx's are more than the ones I suggested and I can even see some advantage in getting the boxx's over mine in certain situations.

[jonahhawk]

Well put.

For us (all 550 of us!) performance, reliability and support are the most important factors. I would like to say that it is in that order but it is probably reversed.

If you could assemble your own machines but then have some excellent support and replacement policy with the reseller like we have with Boxx...

Try buying a ton of parts from NewEgg or Tiger Direct or where ever. Then when something breaks (and it will) have them ship you a new replacement part overnight without you sending the old part back. No RMA. No waiting for them to verify that the part is faulty. Just good faith that you know what you are doing. Then take your time to return the old one just in case the new one doesn't work either.

An you are right on about the Server OS. Having a network with 5-10 machines plugged into a hub is one thing. Especially with VRay. Once the scenes are distributed and opened on each node, the real fun begins. Each node starts to pull a ton of info from the server; bitmaps, proxies, point cache files. Take your scene and all associated files and multiply it times the number of nodes then shove it all down the throat of your wee little hub and find out what happens.

OK, I'm being rather dramatic. I'll stop now.

[dlparisi]

For us (all 550 of us!)

This is precisely the situation I'd go for Boxx over the supermicros... Looking at it for 550 employees the cost of one over the other is relatively minor for a large company such as yours. You have a LOT of people depending on those systems so support is key, and the fewer systems the better. For a small shop like me (1 person) the supermicros represented a better price/performance ratio - plus I'm pretty good at fixing systems and diagnosing problems so I felt comfortable taking a certain amount of addditional risk to fix failed hard drives, bad memory, etc. I still don't want to build 20 systems though.

[Giovanni]

Nope. 16 cores for that price. there are two nodes per box; two quad xeon proc per node.

can you send a link to those sub $1000 8 core machines you are talking about?

Physical space and power usage are a big concern. Also with Boxx we have the best service and support you could ask for. They are very responsive and never pester us when we need parts.

Not 8 cores, but 4. And not sub, but just about a grant. These are 4 cores Quad9300.

Link? They are everywhere, here in the USA....CompUSA, BestBuy, Costco...
Check out the Gateway systems...

I know, these are not professional 3D machines, but again, to render, you need cores, RAM and GigBit...It takes me two hours total, from going to the store, get a box, go home, install MAX + Vray, and render. If it does not work, you just take it back and get a new one. (Well, within the warranty period).

I am pretty sure for serious renderfarms you want to go with professional nodes, but still, I was curious...

Thanks for the infos.

regards

gio