Render Farms

[UrbanFuturistic]

Originally posted by nojius
I Was thinking of spending a couple of grand on a small render farm and was wondering if anybody could tell me

A) is it worth building a small render farm (ie 5 computers)?

Depends on how much time it's currently taking to render your work, if it's taking considerably too long then yes.

B) considering expenses what kind of processors should i use?

The fastest you can get; if your renderer is optimised for a P4 then get a P4, otherwise go for Athlon XP/MP as they're cheaper and just as fast on non-chip-specific software.

C)because of the lack of screen will i need expensive graphics cards?

Again, this depends on your renderer, newer versions of renderers such as V-Ray take advantage of modern graphics cards to accelerate scanline rendering but if this is not available then you might as well use any old junk.

D)should i run linux or win 2k?

This depends on your level of technical expertise and whether your software runs with all features under any given OS. If all features are available and you have a reasonable level of experience with Linux or a recent UNIX type operating system then go for it as getting rid of all the junk you don't need (sound-servers, graphics drivers, USB-core, X servers even) will boost performance measurably.

However, if you're using Brazil (for example) you'll have no choice but to stick with windows and if you've never used Linux before... well, that all depends on how much time and effort (and a lot will be required) you're willing to put into learning a new system.

E) do the computers need a lot of ram to function

That depends on how much RAM is required by your scene files. Check how much RAM is used for a render on your main box and double it just to be sure (and for a little future-proofing).

Any advice you guys could give me would be much apreaciated.

Hope this is of use to you.

regards, Paul

[dvornik]

Dual athlons would probably be most cost-effective. Which software are you going to use? Here's a good thread on the subject:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46236

[elvis]

about a year ago i built a small renderfarm for this office, which is mentioned in detail in the link dvornik posted.

renderfarms are all about mass CPU grunt. as they are nodal, you don't have to worry too much about super-quality SCSI hard disks, pro video cards and such. keep your costs down as much as possible per machine and you might even have cash to spare for extra nodes.

dual athlonMPs are certainly a cheap option at the moment. i know here in australia dual Xeon systems are just too much to consider as a farm alternative right now.

for ram, you'll want AT LEAST 512MB per CPU. if your scenes are quite large (and face it, if you have a farm, they probably are) you might want to try and sqeeze more in. most boards these days will happily hold 1.5GB of non-ecc ram. remembering again that it's not a workstation, so expensive ECC ram is probably something you could forego for the sake of budget. if a node fails on a frame for any reason, the frame will be restarted by another node. no huge dramas there.

just remember the power of a render farm is power in numbers, not individual grunt. five 2GHz machines will outperform a single dual 3GHz machine, given the right circumstances. and with careful budgeting and parts selection, it could well even cost the same.

also, a farm continues to work on a job even when workstations crash or are offline. workstations can be added to farms after hours, and a farm is available to a whole office to use, whereas a single workstation is really only designed for a single user.

renderfarms aren't the solution to everyone's problems, so consider carefully where you need to invest your money to get the best performance from the machines you have. our render guys are all on 3dsmax, and tend to use the farm only for their large animations, and not their single-frame work. it really depends on what our workload is and what the client demands, but when animations need to be done in a hurry, it can be a godsend.

[dmeyer]

Another thing to consider, especially when talking about OS's...is what sort of render management system you're going to use and what platform(s) it runs on.
Also, whether you can repurpose your nodes to batch render from several apps, and spec the machines accordingly.

Our situation is such that it's unusual to have a need for both 3D and Composites to be farmed at the same time, so the same nodes are set up to be able to accept scenes from both 3D and post packages.

[Joel Hooks]

those little Shuttles make kickass render nodes. They already have lan/video so you slap in some ram/cpu and a small harddrive and you are good to go. About $600 a pop, with a tiny footprint.

I personally buy render nodes on a job to job basis.

[elvis]

very true, i'd forgotten about the shuttle systems.

there are plenty of clones out now. soltek have the Qbic systems that run P4 chipsets if that's your thing.

very space friendly, but remember to have a well ventilated and/or air-conditioned room!!!

[dmeyer]

http://www.slickdeals.net/#p3577

Normally I wouldnt touch a Dell with a 10 foot pole...but $498 for the chip alone is a steal. :eek:

Obligatory Shuttle farm pic:

http://space-simulator.lanl.gov/photos/ss1.jpg

[j00ey]

have a look here or do a search on google for linux xbox. when i get time i'm going to look into this. perhaps its not far enough advanced yet, but looks like it could be a promising way of low-cost farming in the near future.

http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/

j00ey

[s2a-adamk]

Read what Elvis has to say carefully....

Then go find the best used cpus you can. I got 10 dual p3 800 HP Kayaks for $500 ea last year. $70 wire shelf from super target, KVM 8 port switch from ebay ($150) and cables from cableclub.com (if they are still in biz) - $6 ea vs $20+ at Office whatever. Oh - of course you already have a network? Watch out for that 10 connection limit with win2k.

Graphics cards don't matter. Those Kayaks all came with matrox G4xx - dual head. My previous 2 render machines are dual 933s with a $20 bestbuy card.

Render away.
a

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