Jakakadave
05-04-2008, 04:08 PM
I'm replacing my workstation as it just cant hack heavy models and complex Maxwell renders any more.
So I was going to basically build a new pc with the best components I could find, with a budget of about $6k.
Then... I stumbled across that IKEA HELMER Render farm project, and it occurred to me that I'd be able to build a much more useful render farm AND a decent workstation for that money.
So, I've done quite a few web searches and found a few ways to build a render farm cheaply - i.e. in an IKEA cabinet or By hooking up a million old, redundant pcs.
What I want to do though is to build one that's as simple, neat and self contained as possible - using new components. I need it to be neat as I work in a shared office and people wont take kindly to a sprawling mess.
Ideally, I would like be able to have the whole shebang in one enclosure - workstation and render farm. Are 8u rackable server cases capable of holding 8 mother boards?
Another idea is - is there a way of just allowing the workstation of accessing the CPU and RAM from the other motherboards? I think i saw something about Render Clusters somewhere but dont really understand what that is.
I'm thinking of going with 6-8x Core 2 Quad Q6600, because they run cool and are eminently overclockable along with 8gb ram per node.
So... The moon on a stick please!
So I was going to basically build a new pc with the best components I could find, with a budget of about $6k.
Then... I stumbled across that IKEA HELMER Render farm project, and it occurred to me that I'd be able to build a much more useful render farm AND a decent workstation for that money.
So, I've done quite a few web searches and found a few ways to build a render farm cheaply - i.e. in an IKEA cabinet or By hooking up a million old, redundant pcs.
What I want to do though is to build one that's as simple, neat and self contained as possible - using new components. I need it to be neat as I work in a shared office and people wont take kindly to a sprawling mess.
Ideally, I would like be able to have the whole shebang in one enclosure - workstation and render farm. Are 8u rackable server cases capable of holding 8 mother boards?
Another idea is - is there a way of just allowing the workstation of accessing the CPU and RAM from the other motherboards? I think i saw something about Render Clusters somewhere but dont really understand what that is.
I'm thinking of going with 6-8x Core 2 Quad Q6600, because they run cool and are eminently overclockable along with 8gb ram per node.
So... The moon on a stick please!