Student demo reel rendering approaches, hardware upgrade advice needed

[imashination]

Theres nothing wrong with your current computer, and the video card wont affect render speeds. At the most, stick a bit more ram in it and switch to a 64bit os, but its actually pretty unlikely youre using it all when rendering.

[olson]

Agreed, that's a decent setup still. You could go as far as a 3.4 GHz quad core (Phenom II 965) if your motherboard has a BIOS update to support that processor. How much are you looking to spend? It might be worth making a few render nodes based on micro ATX hardware to help with the rendering. Cheers!

[meleseDESIGN]

Another good option would be http://www.rebusfarm.com (or something similar) if you have a lot high quality frames.

;)

[Tb0ne]

Thankyou for taking the time to respond,

imashination - Would you suggest Windows 7 or Vista 64bit editions? and as far as ram goes how much could I add and still benefit or is it just more is better as long as the hardware and OS supports it?

olson - I don't know whether my motherboard supports that but I'll email ASUS. My price range is $500-850 Canadian dollars but I might be able to go higher if the need arises.
With the micro ATX motherboards could I add them to the existing case with a fair amount of ram each, two decent CPU's, and better power supply? would they also need a hard drive each?

meleseDESIGN - A friend of mine suggested renderfarms but from what I understand they could end up being quite expensive unless I'm able to get some people from my graduating class to render pool together.

[olson]

olson - I don't know whether my motherboard supports that but I'll email ASUS. My price range is $500-850 Canadian dollars but I might be able to go higher if the need arises.
With the micro ATX motherboards could I add them to the existing case with a fair amount of ram each, two decent CPU's, and better power supply? would they also need a hard drive each?

Negative on the CPU upgrade, I guess ASUS neglected that board.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M3A&product=1&os=25

In theory it can support the Phenom II processors if ASUS updates the BIOS to support it, which they likely won't if they haven't yet.

If you went the path of making a few render nodes they would each need their own power supply, hard disk, etc. The case is debatable, if it were me I'd just setup a few Phenom II systems on a wood shelf and call it good. To be clear I would never do this for a production but as a student, hell yeah! :buttrock:

[olson]

Here be thy render node, cometh from Newegg.ca.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3320418AS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822148469
$50.99

MSI 785GM-E51 AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Item #: N82E16813130247
$84.99

SILVERSTONE ST40F-ES 400W ATX 12V 2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
Item #: N82E16817256060
$59.99

OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G10664GK - Retail
Item #: N82E16820227346
$78.99

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ965FBGMBOX - Retail
Item #: N82E16819103727
$188.00

Subtotal: $462.96

If you really want to get cheap, you could knock $100 off by getting generic power supply, a crappy hard disk like 40GB, older generation Phenom, etc. Anyway, just to give you an idea of what you can get for the money. I'd rather have two of these for rendering school projects than anything else the same money could get. Cheers!

EDIT: Zip tie the nodes down to one of these, or similar.

http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?D=940368&Ntt=940368&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&storeId=10051&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntx=mode+matchall&recN=0&N=0&Ntk=P_PartNumber

Its plastic so each node would be insulated and its open air so they could keep cool. Wish I would have done this in college...

[Tb0ne]

Olson, thank you!

I just copied your suggested setup to notepad. Assuming these nodes weren't connected to monitors would I access them from my main machine through a router?

[olson]

Olson, thank you!

I just copied your suggested setup to notepad. Assuming these nodes weren't connected to monitors would I access them from my main machine through a router?

That's correct. A monitor would be required for initial setup, but after that machines could be accessed by Remote Desktop or VNC (or ssh for Linux). Double check that the motherboard I linked to supports that processor to be on the safe side, I just assumed it did but it might not. Cheers!

[The4thAggie]

Another option, although not the most popular, is to go get a bunch of abandoned/dirt cheap computers, and make a renderfarm.

I went out the other day and got a dual 3.2GHZ Xeon 1U HP DL360 G3 server for $27 on ebay. Granted it only has 0.83 Cinebench 11.5 points (my i7 920 system runs 2.63), it was dirt cheap, and it is fully functional. If you had the location and power hookups I have, it would be viable as long as you had the cash to buy them.

You need to calculate the concurrent time it would take to render x frames on your current hardware. If one frame takes 1 hour (being very lax here) then:

-24 frames/1second = 24 hours for one second of render.
-60 x 24hours = 60 days per minute of animation = 2 months per minute
-A three minute reel would take 6 months to render at 24/7

If it were me this is what I would do:

Get an i7 920 + cheap motherboard, 12GB of ram (not the fastest or the best because the cost isn't worth it to use name brand or uber fast ram), el cheapo hdd, no case/mount on open platform, get a good CPU cooler, then get a fan that can blast air all over the board. You don't need good graphics if you only need CPU rendering. Overclock that i7 as far as you can go. Render.......

[tecton3d]

Here be thy render node, cometh from Newegg.ca.

If you really want to get cheap, you could knock $100 off by getting generic power supply, a crappy hard disk like 40GB, older generation Phenom, etc. Anyway, just to give you an idea of what you can get for the money. I'd rather have two of these for rendering school projects than anything else the same money could get. Cheers!

EDIT: Zip tie the nodes down to one of these, or similar.

http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?D=940368&Ntt=940368&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&storeId=10051&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntx=mode+matchall&recN=0&N=0&Ntk=P_PartNumber

Its plastic so each node would be insulated and its open air so they could keep cool. Wish I would have done this in college...

awesome! Olson, reminds me of one of my school projects overclocking 4 dual xeon 1.6lv's on Asus PC-DL's (process shot below). I only spent around $450 for each machine and was able to overclock to 3.2, which was great return on investment at the time! I eventually put the machines into the cases at the left but you could easily save money per machine by not casing the systems. Just be sure to suck the dust out of the motherboards.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i64/tecton3d/Untitled-2.jpg

[olson]

awesome! Olson, reminds me of one of my school projects overclocking 4 dual xeon 1.6lv's on Asus PC-DL's (process shot below). I only spent around $450 for each machine and was able to overclock to 3.2, which was great return on investment at the time! I eventually put the machines into the cases at the left but you could easily save money per machine by not casing the systems. Just be sure to suck the dust out of the motherboards.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i64/tecton3d/Untitled-2.jpg

Hahaha, yes! That's what I'm talking about. Thanks for sharing the image, it really brings the idea home. :thumbsup:

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