Will these work as Net clients

[LucentDreams]

not much of one if it would work. They only have a gig of flash storage, no HD, so your projects and the render have to be smaller than a gig and your ram need would have to be under 512 mb. For the price you'd be better off buying cheap laptops like
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8967335&type=product&id=1216425209738. It s a much better processor (1.8ghz Atom n270, which has hyperthreading so you'll see substantial boost in rendering compared to the semperon 2100+), double the ram and 120 gig storage.

Or even this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8933005&type=product&id=1215216329460
Dual core 2 gigs of ram and again a big HD.

Laptops can be power efficient, built in wireless networking overall low power and small size, and super cheap. its a great option for building the cheap small renderfarm.

[Srek]

>AMD Sempron™ 2100 + processor 1.0GHz
This would make for the slowest renderfarm ever.

For small formfactor and low noise i would use compact barebones with a Q6600

Cheers
Björn

[Ryonosuke11]

I'm in the process of building a new little C4d render setup.. my first one used 6 Shuttle SFF barebones and p4's but thats too slow now...

Here's what I'm going with.... 4 of these to start...

MicroATX case w/PSU $60 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108073)

Q9300 Quad 2.5ghz $260 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115043)

8 gb RAM $140 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122)

Microatx Mainboard supports OC'ing $94 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128085)

80gb HD $40 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148231)

So thats a little under $600 per node for approx 9500 Cinebench points...

You can save about $80 if you go with a Q6600 instead of the Q9300 but the Q9300 uses less power and is faster per clock.... I think these will make for decent budget C4d render nodes under XP64.

[RandyLeeBlain]

I was going to put together a render farm of Mac Minis. Small form factor, cheap and preassembled. Is there any reason I shouldn't?

Best
Randy

[Srek]

Is there any reason I shouldn't?
I think €600 (excl. Vat) for a 2 GHz Dual Core with 1 GB is a good reason why you shouldn't.
It will give you a CB of roughly 3800

Cheers
Björn

[imashination]

Its a $450 thin client, it would suck monkey balls. For render clients on the cheap, grab whatever quad core 2gig ram box dell is giving away cheap this month.

[kvb]

it would suck monkey balls.

Love it:beer:

While we're on the subject. If I use a mac pro for my net server, and all windows pc's for my clients, that shouldn't cause any issues, should it?

Also, this has always kind of confused me and been a bit of a vague bit of info, but; how similar do the processors have to be to ensure there aren't any calculation issues across clients in a net farm. Same brand? Same processor family (core2/xeons)? Number of cores? Same model number?!? Hope NET isn't THAT particular:scream:

For instance, I currently have a mac pro octo and a macbook pro core2 duo. Would they conflict?

kvb

[Srek]

While we're on the subject. If I use a mac pro for my net server, and all windows pc's for my clients, that shouldn't cause any issues, should it?
The main issue would be the underutilization of the Mac Pro. A Net Server does not need to be a very powerfull system, since it is usualy not rendering. It just needs sufficent space to hold all results and temporary files and enough network throughput to service the clients.

The only CPU mix you should realy avoid is PPC/x86, that is asking for trouble.

Cheers
Björn

[dann_stubbs]

The main issue would be the underutilization of the Mac Pro. A Net Server does not need to be a very powerfull system, since it is usualy not rendering. It just needs sufficent space to hold all results and temporary files and enough network throughput to service the clients.

The only CPU mix you should realy avoid is PPC/x86, that is asking for trouble.

Cheers
Björn


well with huge multi-layer images (which can be amazingly huge and processor intensive when converting the b3d to final output) and large frames in general i found that i had to upgrade the NET server to keep up - i have a quad core macintel OSX with 9GB ram for a NET Server and it works very nice

and i also have all XP render client and no problems - the only gotcha is plugins that are PC only like RPC

dann

[dann_stubbs]

Love it:beer:

While we're on the subject. If I use a mac pro for my net server, and all windows pc's for my clients, that shouldn't cause any issues, should it?

Also, this has always kind of confused me and been a bit of a vague bit of info, but; how similar do the processors have to be to ensure there aren't any calculation issues across clients in a net farm. Same brand? Same processor family (core2/xeons)? Number of cores? Same model number?!? Hope NET isn't THAT particular:scream:

For instance, I currently have a mac pro octo and a macbook pro core2 duo. Would they conflict?

kvb

oops meant to address the types question - with TP i've seen issues where different types of processor can cause issues - and that includes even a single processor with a dual or quad etc - can make differnences - even if they are the same brand etc.

for most general purpose rendering things are fine - but i think with GI and other highly math intensive stuff mixing processors is just an issue waiting to happen. farms with half one processor and half another is something i would be careful with.

dann

[danb]

Why do you guys go with a mac server instead of a pc server? PC servers are pretty inexpensive compared to the macs, right? I mean, i've seen dual processor, quad core servers for under the price of a quad core Mac. Or does this have something to do with cross platform compatibilities?

[benmillion]

---that's a bad mix for NET RENDER?

so, basically if i have a render garden of a couple g4's, a g5, a centrino, and a new intel mac... that would be worse in performance than just using one machine?

:(

[dann_stubbs]

Why do you guys go with a mac server instead of a pc server? PC servers are pretty inexpensive compared to the macs, right? I mean, i've seen dual processor, quad core servers for under the price of a quad core Mac. Or does this have something to do with cross platform compatibilities?


OSX is very responsive under heavy load

PC's can only handle 10 share points unless you opt for the very expensive Microsoft Server software which is charged by how many shares it can handle.

the last thing you really want is a cheap server handling your data - when you compare a similar PC server to a mac/mac server the prices are much more even - a very good quality power supply i buy for my PC's etc is nearly half the cost of some of these "cheap" PC's being mentioned. cheap power supplies can cause general flakiness, crashes etc - just not worth it. also macs use parity ram which for a server is nice - not crucial in all cases but nice to have for a server.

unix is also much easier to manage for me then pc's - terminal windows and ssh into the server is great

just my opinions of course

dann

[dann_stubbs]

---that's a bad mix for NET RENDER?

so, basically if i have a render garden of a couple g4's, a g5, a centrino, and a new intel mac... that would be worse in performance than just using one machine?

:(

the g4's may not be worth adding to the farm unless it is very light rendering

the other stuff as long as it has decent ram could help your throughput - but you could see variations in the result images or some types of calculations like particles, GI calcs, procedural stuff possibly etc.

you could have them on and just do checks on the ranges the clients are running to see if all is well - if they are causing problems in certain renders you could just quit the NET client on the "problem" computers and let NET continue on the others...

it is not quite as "plug and play" as most make it seem to be... there are always some types of issues rearing their head whether hardware, network, or software related

dann

[danb]

OSX is very responsive under heavy load

PC's can only handle 10 share points unless you opt for the very expensive Microsoft Server software which is charged by how many shares it can handle.



I didn't know that. Thanks Dann.

[RandyLeeBlain]

I think €600 (excl. Vat) for a 2 GHz Dual Core with 1 GB is a good reason why you shouldn't.
It will give you a CB of roughly 3800

Cheers
Björn


599 USD here. (341.1257GBP) There is something cheaper and faster? That won't break or need an air-conditioned room once several dozen are collected?? I had NEW Dell's given me by clients that refused to boot for no reason. I thought TCAStudios used a Mac Mini renderfarm.

Best Regards
Randy

[dann_stubbs]

599 USD here. (341.1257GBP) There is something cheaper and faster? That won't break or need an air-conditioned room once several dozen are collected?? I had NEW Dell's given me by clients that refused to boot for no reason. I thought TCAStudios used a Mac Mini renderfarm.

Best Regards
Randy

actually nearly all variations of them will need more cooling then your standard room once you get more then a couple and also your wiring will need it.

the amperage of a standard US wall socket is 15A - run too much on it and the insulation on the wire may not be able to handle it and break down too fast and that can cause a fire. i have special 10 gauge outlets run for my farm - 6 lines at $250 each for a very short run and the very high grade wire and outlets. for a test i ran a few on a standard outlet and the electrician left a hole in the drywall for me so i could touch the wires insulation and see the heat generated - the standard gauge wire was too hot to touch after just a short time - now imagine that inside the wall on wood or running through an area with lots of dust that could eventually start a fire. the 10 gauge lines stay cool and the temperature at the panel is cool too. also when upgrading the farm the previous electrician i used did something (not sure what exactly) but it was not right and the wires were a little loose in the main panel and they were getting black and charred and would eventually have caused an electrical fire. the lesson is get a good electrician - don't skimp and pay them well for their work and keep their card handy....

oh and my electric bill for my relatively small farm is what many people pay for a mortgage payment... keep that expense in mind too.

dann

[Srek]

CPU power always comes at the prize of energy consumption and heat dissipation.
The trick is to even things out as good as possible.
Current Quadcores (45nm Wolfdale in Core2Quad and 45nm Harpertown in Xeon system) are extremely efficent and will give you a lot of bang for the heat they generate and the energy they consume. Also they are very good in price/performance.
So sometimes it makes sense to get just a few higher powered systems that need a bit of cooling instead of numerous smaller ones that don't.

Currently i'm setting up an own small renderfarm for QA purposes. I'm using Tyan 19" 1u rachmount systems that hold effectively two complete systems with one Quadcore Xeon each. One of those dual systems draws 150W when ideling and less than 250 when running at full speed. Effectively i get a farm of eight 4 Core systems that usualy consumes below 1 KW and gives a combined CB of about 70.000. That would be about 20 Mac Minis which consume 100 Watt each at full throttle adding up to 2 KW.
Since practicaly all energy put in a computer is converted to heat this makes the equivalent Mac Minis create TWICE the amount of heat.

Cheers
Björn

[Shademaster]

CPU power always comes at the prize of energy consumption and heat dissipation.
The trick is to even things out as good as possible.
Current Quadcores (45nm Wolfdale in Core2Quad and 45nm Harpertown in Xeon system) are extremely efficent and will give you a lot of bang for the heat they generate and the energy they consume. Also they are very good in price/performance.
So sometimes it makes sense to get just a few higher powered systems that need a bit of cooling instead of numerous smaller ones that don't.

Currently i'm setting up an own small renderfarm for QA purposes. I'm using Tyan 19" 1u rachmount systems that hold effectively two complete systems with one Quadcore Xeon each. One of those dual systems draws 150W when ideling and less than 250 when running at full speed. Effectively i get a farm of eight 4 Core systems that usualy consumes below 1 KW and gives a combined CB of about 70.000. That would be about 20 Mac Minis which consume 100 Watt each at full throttle adding up to 2 KW.
Since practicaly all energy put in a computer is converted to heat this makes the equivalent Mac Minis create TWICE the amount of heat.

Cheers
Björn

Very interesting read :). You can do all kinds of interesting power consumption calculations to see when a more expensive but less energy consuming system is cheaper to run than a cheaper to buy but more expensive to run system.

[imashination]

A number of people use macs for the workstations, but buy a load of cheap windows boxes as render nodes. they use the mac as the server largely so they can just have all the render results sent straight back to their workstation.

[RandyLeeBlain]

A number of people use macs for the workstations, but buy a load of cheap windows boxes as render nodes. they use the mac as the server largely so they can just have all the render results sent straight back to their workstation.


Could someone point out the best deal as far as CB to money ratio is concerned on Windows boxes? i.e. Where to buy and what to buy..

Best Regards
Randy

[imashination]

Wait for the next dell sale on something with 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram, the rest of the specs are meaningless.

[dann_stubbs]

Wait for the next dell sale on something with 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram, the rest of the specs are meaningless.

the only problem i have with dell's are they use non-standard components for things like power supplies etc - if one burns out you are at their service mercy and may need to keep a service contract with them for parts etc.

i prefer the ability to keep a supply of parts on hand for usually minutes of downtime should something happen.

dann

[RandyLeeBlain]

Wait for the next dell sale on something with 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram, the rest of the specs are meaningless.

I am probably going to need 20 or so render clients. I looked through the Dell site and it was _confusing_ to say the least. In that I mean that it was quite a task to distinguish a price point versus performance ratio with 4GB RAM and two DualCore processors/Vista vs XP installed etc.. Also I read somewhere certain CPU's will not work with R11 So I did a few google searches and came up just as baffled about what would be a proper machine that would be a good investment as far as a price versus performance ratio is concerned. I could see that the purchase of few machines would not be a stickler but as the number of clients is expanded then the small differences in price or performance add up. There is also an issue of RAM and what type and brand to use as this varies the cost considerably, or so to seemed from my quick excursion into parsing this market.

Best Regards
Randy

[RandyLeeBlain]

the only problem i have with dell's are they use non-standard components for things like power supplies etc - if one burns out you are at their service mercy and may need to keep a service contract with them for parts etc.

i prefer the ability to keep a supply of parts on hand for usually minutes of downtime should something happen.

dann


As I said earlier. I have had experience with Dell's. They didn't want to boot for me. I gave them back to the client. The box felt cheap and wobbly. My son's bandmate has been building PC's for years. Would it be a good solution to buy the parts and have him assemble them?

Best
Randy

[LucentDreams]

I don't think there is any processor still for sale that we don't support. The processors that CINEMA 4D doesn't support are older processors that don't have SSE2 extensions. just look for that and you will have your answer as to what is supported. That said any multicore CPU is going to be supported to the best of my knowledge

[Navstar]

One thing missing from most DIY PC projects is the cost of a Windows license.

[danb]

My son's bandmate has been building PC's for years. Would it be a good solution to buy the parts and have him assemble them?


The best way to save money on hardware is to build them yourself. Although this will not guarantee reliability.

I would have him get a list of parts he intends to use. Take that list and research each part on the net to see if they are good.

[mnu]

Interesting thread indeed.

What we use is about 40 Standard MacPro Intel Octa Workstation Systems. It's possible to get the same render power cheaper, that's true, but these preassembled systems never caused any problems so far, are easy to setup and easily accessible. Furthermore it's a homogeneous environment. Additionally for a studio like ours it's a good thing to be able to fetch one machine from the farm to make it a workstation for a freelancer for example. Nevertheless we're facing the situation that our server room get's too hot, especially in summer although we have a 6500KW air conditioning system installed. We're thinking of switching to XServers because of this and because of the smaller form factor, etc. As a server we use another MacPro Intel Quad that has 6 trunked Gigabit Ethernet Ports to cope with the bandwidth usage within the network.

cheers mnu

[marcorabellini]

I've built Shuttles with AMD processors for the last 4 years or so. The original 6 machines are still going strong. I did have to replace the PS's on them last year but that was significantly cheaper than building new machines and they still render away quite nicely. One thing that I've noticed is that the more farm machines you add the less power per machine you need. So I don't usually buy the most powerful processor. I'll get mid-speed processors. I've got about 30 "cores" on my farm now, so a 4 second a frame difference on a CPU that cost $100 more isn't really that much of a performance/cost benefit. I do like to spend a bit more on quality RAM however, since most of the C4D processing is done in RAM.

I put this together on Newegg for about $400. This is about my basic recipe. I run these on Gigabit ethernet and last year built a new quad-core server that is just used to serve the render farm. I run the farm blind (no video). If I need to see them I just log in via Remote Desktop. These run on XP 64. (oh yeah, add about another $140 for the OS, grrrr). I use a CD drive during build but unplug it after it's all set up.

$195: Shuttle SN68SG2 barebone (has PS, MB, SATA II, and Gig ethernet built in)
$ 38: WD 80G SATA II drive
$105: Corsair 2x2G RAM
$ 66: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ CPU

[sketchbook]

good info here.

makes me feel better that i don't pay for an electric bill at my office.

we don't have much of a farm, but will get up to 7-8 render clients all going at the same time for weeks straight and i can imagine the cost to be pretty high. the heat given off is immense. we blew fuses almost every day until we realized we should not run the second AC unit + the microwave at the same time :)

Boxx was selling render nodes of some sort a while ago. like closeouts or something. they called called it a "farm". like 20 machines for 10k or something. i can't recall the specs or the price, but it seamed like a pretty good deal at the time.

[Navstar]

$195: Shuttle SN68SG2 barebone (has PS, MB, SATA II, and Gig ethernet built in)
$ 38: WD 80G SATA II drive
$105: Corsair 2x2G RAM
$ 66: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ CPU

How much for the Windows license? Do you use XP Pro? Vista Business?

[marcorabellini]

Yes, I did not include the OS in the cost, although I did mention it. I use Windows XP Pro x64 which goes for about $135.

The other nice things about the Shuttles is that they are relatively quiet and cool. They come with their own "heat pipe" CPU heat exchanger system, which is a liquid cooled/fan combo thing. My electric bill only increases a modest amount during a farm-heavy month.

Western Digital also has come out with "green" drives that spin at variable rates depending on load and will sleep or hybernate when unused for a certain amount of time. I'm trying a couple of them out now and they seem to be working okay so far.

m

[dann_stubbs]

Yes, I did not include the OS in the cost, although I did mention it. I use Windows XP Pro x64 which goes for about $135.

The other nice things about the Shuttles is that they are relatively quiet and cool. They come with their own "heat pipe" CPU heat exchanger system, which is a liquid cooled/fan combo thing. My electric bill only increases a modest amount during a farm-heavy month.

Western Digital also has come out with "green" drives that spin at variable rates depending on load and will sleep or hybernate when unused for a certain amount of time. I'm trying a couple of them out now and they seem to be working okay so far.

m

be careful of the "green" devices - they usually are not meant for heavy duty use - i bought a few "green" power supplies from antec that supposedly were 80%+ efficient vs the standard 70% percent and i think the longest one lasted was three months - the shortest was less then a month - expensive mistake by me trying to conserve little electricity

dann

[Sycar]

Interesting thread indeed.

What we use is about 40 Standard MacPro Intel Octa Workstation Systems. It's possible to get the same render power cheaper, that's true, but these preassembled systems never caused any problems so far, are easy to setup and easily accessible. Furthermore it's a homogeneous environment. Additionally for a studio like ours it's a good thing to be able to fetch one machine from the farm to make it a workstation for a freelancer for example. Nevertheless we're facing the situation that our server room get's too hot, especially in summer although we have a 6500KW air conditioning system installed. We're thinking of switching to XServers because of this and because of the smaller form factor, etc. As a server we use another MacPro Intel Quad that has 6 trunked Gigabit Ethernet Ports to cope with the bandwidth usage within the network.

cheers mnu

Instead of the huge cost of changing to Xservers may I recommend a program called SMCfancontrol.
MacPros have a amazing cooling sysytem but to save power OSX runs the fans at bare minimum. With this program you can increase the fans RPM. I use it on all my macs. Currently my macpro is 86 F at the cpu and inside the case its a chilly 67 F :) It is overclocked and rendering at max capasity.

http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/software/smcfancontrol2/index.html

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