New Workstation

[glorybound]

I have been thinking about upgrading my PC, and I have a question. It has been 5 years on my current machine, so I assume a lot has changed. Back then, 12GB of RAM was outrageous, but today it is pretty weak. Can you build an affordable machine now-a-days with 128GB of RAM, and a lot of cores? It seems to me that 5 machines with 24GB wouldn't be as efficient as 1 with 128GB. Now, for cores, how high can you go?

[tricky]

I doubt you will need 128GB ram any time soon. It depends what you class as affordable I guess. For about £1000 I reckon you could build an i7 4/8 core machine with 64GB RAM and a reasonable gaming card. For around £1400 maybe an extreme i7 6/12 core with 64GB. More cores than that and I believe you are looking at dual XEON configurations, but that will be £2k+ I imagine.

[glorybound]

that's about 3225.80 US Dollar, which isn't to bad.

[glorybound]

So, these are crazy overpriced, right?

http://www.boxxtech.com/Products/3dboxx-8980-xtreme - yes, that's over 10 grand!

[glorybound]

What about a renderbox? http://www.boxxtech.com/Products/renderpro

[tricky]

The prices I quoted are very rough, and they are based on me building it. BOXX etc will be more resilient machines that have had lots of testing to ensure stability. The problem when you build your own is that if it crashes, there is only you to sort it out.

[glorybound]

I used to build my own boxes, but it has been a decade. Here, I built my dream machine! Maybe I'll start some crowdfunding

[tricky]

What about a renderbox? http://www.boxxtech.com/Products/renderpro

Yes - I looked at something similar from Workstation Specialists over here. They look great.

[Donald2B]

I build all the workstations for my office. Just much more cost effective. I can build a $14k Boxx workstation for about $7k, two for the price of one!

I would build a nice workstation with the fastest iCore 7 you can fit into your budget. 64GB Ram, 256GB SSD, Titan / GTX 780 GPU. It will run about $1600 ish. Then build the same workstation only with the cheapest video card you can find and get that machine down to almost $1k for some nice render slaves.

Build computers then profit! ;P

[Donald2B]

For our rendernodes, I went with high density 2U server chassis from Supermicro. It fits 4 - dual Xeon procs with 64GB RAM for each node sharing a 1400W PS. Allows me to have a LOT more rendering power without taking up a lot of space. Space and power were an issue and this gives me the best balance between cost, space, power and rendering capacity.

[glorybound]

I would build a nice workstation with the fastest iCore 7 you can fit into your budget. 64GB Ram, 256GB SSD, Titan / GTX 780 GPU. It will run about $1600 ish. Then build the same workstation only with the cheapest video card you can find and get that machine down to almost $1k for some nice render slaves.

Build computers then profit! ;P

That's what I did the last time. I have my main workstation, which is an Intel Core i7 @3.20Ghz, 24 GB Ram, and a NVIIDA Quadro FX 3700. And then I have 5 - Intel Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, with 12GB of RAM.

[Donald2B]

My biggest rule is to never have less RAM in your render nodes than your main workstation. We got into situations that rendered just fine on our workstations, but then we couldn't render them on the farm. With RAM being incredibly cheap now, it's work that little bit extra to make sure those big, burly, gnarly scenes will render on the farm without worries.

[glorybound]

I found that out

My biggest rule is to never have less RAM in your render nodes than your main workstation. We got into situations that rendered just fine on our workstations, but then we couldn't render them on the farm. With RAM being incredibly cheap now, it's work that little bit extra to make sure those big, burly, gnarly scenes will render on the farm without worries.

[voltron7]

I have a BOXX and am very pleased with it. It's a little customized 4050XT. Nice, small, quiet, warrantied, supported...yes, more expensive. I made a call or two, and within 10 days it was here, ready to go, no issues from first start-up. I am also tempted to make one, but as a small company, I find the added small monthly payment much more user-friendly than coming up with a big wad of cash, all at once. Have wanted one for many years, but always scared by price. Now I wish I had gone this way from the start, lol.

[Donald2B]

I too have several Boxx computers. They are getting up in their years, almost 7 yrs old now! Still going strong. They are great machines, if you can afford them.