What are my considerations for embarking on this? I’ve built many machines before and I’m reasonably competent, but I’ve never built a rack system before. Our server is in a rack, though its on a table (!) as we don’t have a closet at the moment, but I figured it might be a good way forward.
Is it simply a matter of pick a case and then choose a normal ATX motherboard/hard disk/processor etc but just have longer cables on everything so that they can be fitted alongside the MB? Or, do I need to look for special components - in which case it would obviously raise the cost and make it uneconomical?
Hi Tricky,
we are slowly building up our rack mounted render farm.
I managed to find some 2U chasis that will fit a tyan tomcat mobo that will fit a AMD 4400 x2 proc. Some mods had to be done to the stock heatsink as it wouldnt fit. We had to use a xeon heatsink with a side fan.
The heatsick is the only problem you will face when putting one of these units together.
Let me know if you need any more information
I’ve priced it out a few times in the past. It can be tricky finding slim-format components (particularily heatsinks) when trying to squeeze into a 1U or 2U case. (1U is sooo much sexier, but deffinitely pricier). What I’ve found is that once you factor in the cost of your time in speccing/ordering parts/ assembling/ and then the support, you end up spending the same amount or more as a vendor solution. And there really is something to be said for the peace of mind in knowing that if a component fails, it’s the vendor’s responsibility to replace/fix it.
Can add 2 Opterons in there and and get it up and running for a farm for arounf $1,500 per computer. So 10 of them would give you 20 CPUs for $15,000. That is a pretty good deal. Just thowing it out there. You can pretty much stack them like bricks as well.
Armari build these Iwill small form factor machines in the UK, but it looks like they work out a lot more expensive than building them yourself in the US. The Armari spec is probably over the top in terms of graphics card, HDD, DVD, etc for a render box though.
why build a rack system in a 1u or 2u case? why not just have a cabinate where you can roll out the entire motherboard and have tonnes of them in there hehe. and buy a small A/C unit for the cabinate. kinda like the blades at www.rackserver.com hehe
Can add 2 Opterons in there and and get it up and running for a farm for arounf $1,500 per computer. So 10 of them would give you 20 CPUs for $15,000. That is a pretty good deal. Just thowing it out there. You can pretty much stack them like bricks as well.
So how would you compare - speedwise - this setup to one of the Shuttle SN25P machines with an AMD X2 processor in it? I assume the X2 machine would be better, no? Maybe not - I should do some research.