render farm

# 1 16-09-2010 , 10:19 AM

Head of 3d Admedia
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Location: nairobi , ken-ya

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Hey all got together with some friends and decided to start a company
Now our budget for hardware is 30k usd and im incharge of building the render farm
My thoughts were to have pc with each to have 4gb ram and atleast a core2quad 8400 and to have the main master with 16gb and a 980x and a geforce 460gtx
For the modelling pc i was thinking of intel e5300 and 4gb of ram about 4pc
I only do intel hardware and i know i could probably get amd hardware for cheaper prices but its next to impossible to get amd hardware in my country
Your advice would be greatly appreciated

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# 2 16-09-2010 , 10:46 AM

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wow...aspirations!! jeez mate good luck with the venture!!

cheers bullet

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"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 3 16-09-2010 , 01:25 PM

Head of 3d Admedia
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Location: nairobi , ken-ya

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i know we are five and we are each bringing along with our own clients to the business so hopefully things will be easier tired of this free lance business i think it has its own people

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# 4 16-09-2010 , 04:37 PM

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Ived always wanted to start a render farm but never had the money for it. Goodluck and i hope things work out well user added image

Take pictures once the whole setup is installed haha

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# 5 16-09-2010 , 05:09 PM

The Nurb Herd
Join Date: Oct 2007

Location: London

Posts: 2,381

why don't you outsource your work to a render farm company to start with, this will give you a good idea of how much power you will need for the type of jobs you get.

are you using an open source dispatcher?

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# 6 16-09-2010 , 05:10 PM

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Good luck let us know how it goes.

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# 7 16-09-2010 , 08:23 PM

Head of 3d Admedia
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are you using an open source dispatcher

Originally Posted by

i am willing to pay for tech support but `i once heard that smedge is really good

been reading on renderfarms and most say that its better to have more actual cpus than to have to have few powerful processors for example its better to have 6 dual core processors @3.6 than to have one intel i7 980x

Last edited by murambi; 16-09-2010 at 08:28 PM.

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# 8 16-09-2010 , 09:41 PM

EduSciVis-er
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Location: Toronto

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Your comparison doesn't quite follow... yes it is better to have that, but you're comparing 12 cores at a higher speed than 6 cores at a lower speed. I'm not sure if there is an advantage of having 2 dual cores vs. 1 quad core. It would be more expensive to have the 2, since you'd need 2 motherboards, even though you have the same number of threads.

I'd be interested to hear what material you're reading, I've looked for info, but I haven't found that much on setting them up (in terms of hardware). I think I read somewhere that you want to have as close to the same specs for each machine as possible, but I don't know if that has to do with the distribution software or what.

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# 9 16-09-2010 , 10:46 PM

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Wow, quite the venture. I really hope that works out. As far as processors go, yes you can get AMD for cheaper but then you're more likely to run into heat issues quicker, and heat issues = performance hit. I hope you guys have your cooling options and electricity bills figured out.

As Stwert mentioned, you want your render nodes to be very similar if not identical in hardware because not all processors handle information the same so you may end up with inconsistencies in your images.

When you said "main master" I'm guessing you mean the main server? If so, then it doesn't need that powerful of a video card, what it needs is a lot of space, a lot RAM and a lot of processing power.

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# 10 17-09-2010 , 08:37 AM

Head of 3d Admedia
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I'd be interested to hear what material you're reading, I've looked for info, but I haven't found that much on setting them up (in terms of hardware)

Originally Posted by

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...de,2340-3.html

I'm not sure if there is an advantage of having 2 dual cores vs. 1 quad core

Originally Posted by

performance doesnt always scale 100% with quad cores hence you get abit more juice out the two dual cores

It would be more expensive to have the 2, since you'd need 2 motherboards, even though you have the same number of threads.

Originally Posted by

ddr2 motherboards plus processors would cost about 90-100 while a quad core processor ALONE would cost 180usd here back at home

https://www.starcomss.co.ke/products/processors.html

oh 1usd=80 shillings

When you said "main master" I'm guessing you mean the main server? If so, then it doesn't need that powerful of a video card, what it needs is a lot of space, a lot RAM and a lot of processing power.

Originally Posted by

already purchased this (it used to be my rendering pc)

Last edited by murambi; 17-09-2010 at 08:43 AM.

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# 11 17-09-2010 , 02:54 PM

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Hey man good luck with the company!

To bad Sony took the other OS option away from the PS3, a few of those and you would be more than set.

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# 12 17-09-2010 , 04:32 PM

EduSciVis-er
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I've heard of people using PS3's as render farms, but I've also heard that they're not so great, considering the price, but this might be different now. Same with mac minis... they look super sharp, but the price/performance doesn't quite cut it.

Are you planning on putting a bunch of boxes together, or are you planning on getting a rackmount setup, or building your own cabinet. I like the idea of the last option, my co-worker showed me how you could stack mobos in a simple frame.

You could check this out too... it's fairly interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJXiOF9MGM

-stwert

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# 13 19-09-2010 , 02:45 PM

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What type of OS do you plan on running murambi?

Also love the video stwert.

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# 14 19-09-2010 , 05:51 PM

Head of 3d Admedia
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What type of OS do you plan on running murambi

Originally Posted by

i was thinking about windows 2008 server its about 180 usd i initially wanted 2003 but its almost double the price so its a no brainer but linux does have the beowulf option so im still contemplating

using a ps3 as a render node would be way too expensive as im thinking of a budget of 170usd per node i have a bunch of cheap thermal take 430watt psu

as for cooling that seems to be the biggest problem dont know how to get around that but first its to het the hardware

Last edited by murambi; 19-09-2010 at 05:55 PM.

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