Render Farm Overhead

[glorybound]

I am testing a cloud service (DAAS), and the machines they have me on are pretty beefy. If I were to build them, they would cost around $3200 per machine. I don't know what their cost is yet, so I am punching my numbers. What does it cost to power a few machines? I am talking electricity.

i did find this: http://www.overclockers.com/how-much...o-run-your-pc/

[Morbid Angel]

I think it depends on the efficiency of the devices, they do use less power when idle. Also where you are located and what your power cost is. For me, 10 machines farm running 24/7 under load costs about $150 per month.

You also need to factor in the software costs, like windows for each machine, whatever else you are using.

[cheerioboy]

that cost seems about right, I run 5 nodes for about half that, depending on the work load for the month.

[glorybound]

The machines I have cost me $5000, and that was 7 years ago. I spec'd out the machines they have me in and it would cost about $3500 per machine. I would have to assume that they would last at least 4 years, so $7000/48 would be $145 per month. Let's say it cost $100 for electricity, which is on the high end, it wouldn't make much sense to pay more that $250 a month, unless of course, I am missing something.

[glorybound]

this is what they have me using:

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 4/23/2014, 13:08:55
Machine name: A2KDEMOWS322002
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Advance2000, Inc
System Model: ADV996T
BIOS: Advanc2000, Inc. BIOS Date: 02/23/11 17:16:15 Ver 2.0b
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5680 @ 3.33GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.3GHz
Memory: 32768MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 32760MB RAM
Page File: 5244MB used, 60272MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 670
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1189&SUBSYS_28401462&REV_A1
Display Memory: 4038 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1990 MB
Shared Memory: 2048 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Model: VS248
Monitor Id: ACI2498
Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)

[Morbid Angel]

The machines I have cost me $5000, and that was 7 years ago. I spec'd out the machines they have me in and it would cost about $3500 per machine. I would have to assume that they would last at least 4 years, so $7000/48 would be $145 per month. Let's say it cost $100 for electricity, which is on the high end, it wouldn't make much sense to pay more that $250 a month, unless of course, I am missing something.

I just bought x2 2U servers with x5650 xeons 2.66 (not as fast as the ones you spec out) but pretty fast with 32 gb of ram for $4000 of of ebay. Which gives me total of 8 xeon machines, 16 cpus x6 cores each.

Pretty good for this kind of price I think!

[glorybound]

Now, how they make their money isn't my problem, but I can only assume they are building the machines for less then I could. These are standalone machines, and not virtual. They are not per Ghz hour, they are per month.

[glorybound]

these have 12 cores each. I am running a benchmark scene, and my 6 machines are about as fast as their 2; it's almost apples-to-apples.

[glorybound]

theirs: 2 - Intel Xeon CPU X5680 @ 3.33GHz, 32.0GB, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 (Advance2000 Cloud)


1h 29m 32.7s

mine: 1 - intel(R) Core i7 CPU 965 @ 3.20GHz (8 CPUs), 24.0GB, NVIDIA Quadro K5000 4095 MB (local farm) 4 - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz (8 CPUs), 12.0GB, Stock video card (local farm) - 7 year old machines


1h 7m 58.9s

[glorybound]

The question is, what would you pay per month to lease these machines? To me, anything more that $150 a month makes no sense.

[Morbid Angel]

The question is, what would you pay per month to lease these machines? To me, anything more that $150 a month makes no sense.

Yeah it all depends on how much you plan to use them. For me, during a project I must re-render each shot 10-20-30 times, frame times can be 1-5 hours per frame with thousands of frames. So, renting a cloud = too expensive, though I did resort to using one on the last project but only for finals. Having local farm in your own space is a good +.

[glorybound]

they lease these per month, so it doesn't matter how much you use them.

[glorybound]

I don't have solid numbers yet, but they have implied $200 per machine, per month. So, the setup they had me on would fetch $400 a month.

[wyszolmirski]

Hey,

I've recently build small farm. I wanted heat output and power consumption at the lowest. Also small form... So I went for six ITX based PCs, with LGA1150 board, i7 3770K with 16GB and underclocked the CPUs a bit. At full load, one of them takes 75-80W of power. I did get them at around $850 each (including 23% VAT so should be cheaper in US), custom build, got the parts from different shop.

Power wise they take maximum of 480W all together at full load. That's 12 kWh of energy per day or 360 kWh per Month. You can calculate the cost based on the prices in your region. In Poland it's around $70 / month if used at full load.

Performance wise, single node gets 7.5 pts in Cinebench 11.5. 45 pts for all six of them.

Pros:
Cheap and easily salable.
It's small - http://media.bestofmicro.com/U/W/389...-130-award.jpg . This works great in small office / home office.
Low power consumption.
Better performance/price compared to Xeons.
Could be overclocked if needed to 9.5 pts in Cinebench
Easy to sell after 2-3 years of use... It can actually be quite good gaming station if equipped with good GPU.
If one of nodes fails. There are still 5 other to help.

Cons:
Only 16GB of ram (2 slots x 8GB)... Could get to 32GB with 16GB sticks (they're a bit expensive atm).
Requires some networking knowledge.
Rack based renderfarm is much sexier ... But much more expensive.

Anyway I'm happy with it at the moment. I can run benchmark on it if you want with DR.

Best,
Tomasz

[voltron7]

Hey,

I've recently build small farm. I wanted heat output and power consumption at the lowest. Also small form... So I went for six ITX based PCs, with LGA1150 board, i7 3770K with 16GB and underclocked the CPUs a bit. At full load, one of them takes 75-80W of power. I did get them at around $850 each (including 23% VAT so should be cheaper in US), custom build, got the parts from different shop.

Power wise they take maximum of 480W all together at full load. That's 12 kWh of energy per day or 360 kWh per Month. You can calculate the cost based on the prices in your region. In Poland it's around $70 / month if used at full load.

Performance wise, single node gets 7.5 pts in Cinebench 11.5. 45 pts for all six of them.

Pros:
Cheap and easily salable.
It's small - http://media.bestofmicro.com/U/W/389...-130-award.jpg . This works great in small office / home office.
Low power consumption.
Better performance/price compared to Xeons.
Could be overclocked if needed to 9.5 pts in Cinebench
Easy to sell after 2-3 years of use... It can actually be quite good gaming station if equipped with good GPU.
If one of nodes fails. There are still 5 other to help.

Cons:
Only 16GB of ram (2 slots x 8GB)... Could get to 32GB with 16GB sticks (they're a bit expensive atm).
Requires some networking knowledge.
Rack based renderfarm is much sexier ... But much more expensive.

Anyway I'm happy with it at the moment. I can run benchmark on it if you want with DR.

Best,
Tomasz

sounds cool, thanks for sharing those specs...