What you use for Renderfarm

[3dform]

Hi,

we just expanding our renderfarm and I would like to know what computer do you use for that.
We currently use AMD MP's, because they are real cheap, but I haven't found a board that fits into a small case.
You are the AMD64 or the Xeon's in compare, or is a P4 cheaper?

regards,

robert

[richard_rosenman]

We bought 20 P4 2.0 GHZ when they were relatively new, with 512 GIG RAM, 30 GIG DRIVES, and cheap 8 meg ATI card. They have worked flawlessly for job after job, although we are beginning to require more ram.

The video card and drive don't matter whatsoever, if you are using them for purely rendering. If you intend to possibly adapt them afterwards into workstations (when they are no longer good enough to be used for rendering) then this should be a consideration before you buy.

Previous to that, we had bought 5 AMD Athlons 1.4 GHZ but they were useless as they overheated repeatedly thus locking up (and effectively delaying) all our renders. We now have them throughout the studio as Photoshop stations with the entire side of the computer case off because that seems to be about all they can handle. I've been told the overheating issue has been somewhat resolved in newer AMD's.

We would have liked to go with XEONs because VRay as well as Mental Ray can take full advantage of both processors but they are very expensive. Now newer machines have this thing "hyperthreading" which I'm not sure entirely what it's about, but it fools renderers into thinking there are 2 processors and apparently renders are in fact somewhat faster.

Someone else could probably explain this topic better than I could.

-Richard

[cocolas]

I've been using a dual 1.6GHZ Athlon workstation w/ 2 GBs of ram for a year and a half now.....sometimes rendering at 100% for 48 hours straight, and I haven't exterience no overheating at all.......I really like Athlons, without saying that they are also much cheaper then Pentiums and (as far as my experience goes) peroform as well, if not faster then XEONs....
at work I got a dual XEON at 2.0 GHZ each w/ 1 GB of ram, and my older home Athlon (above) seems faster at rendering then the newer dual XEON....
I would definatly go w/ Athlons...


paul.

[3dform]

One thing I noticed to is, that the Xeon is not much faster then the AMD on rendering. But working on a Xeon is total different, and 100 times better.
Next I noticed that the Athlon is runing very load. The always heating up at maximum while the Xeon is totaly different. Anyhow on hot days my Xeon renders like a starting jetplane, way to load then.
Anybody using racks? Any distributer for cheap Atlon racks?

robert

[Da_elf]

to the 1st comment about the case i know what you mean. ive got a server motherboard thats huge. a friend of mine though made his own little render farm and cut down on alot of things like cases etc. hehe. basically he built a little cabinate and has 10 motherboards just stacked in there. The case has a switch box for scwitching the keyboard/mouse and single LCD monitor between the different motherboards and the whole case is cooled with a tiny AC unit. Needless to say i was impressed when i saw it. all homemade..and didnt cost much. way less than 10cases he said and alot more fun to do as a hobby.