Hello everybody, yet another render farm thread, I guess.
I am looking to build a small render farm for Architectural visualization and other 3D rendering jobs. I have done my share of reading and research, including articles and forum posts here at Tom's Hardware, but I'd like some advice from you folks before I commit to choosing a build.
First off: The budget is between $10k and $12k USD . I understand in most cases, it is better to have quantity rather than quality(within reason!), so the aim here is to maximize the number of render nodes in that range. I am hoping to reserve some $2k in racks, UPS, switches and whatever simple additions(such as a basic server) are needed.
Specific questions:
CPU: I am probably aiming for a quad core Xeon. I heard quad cores are the middle ground in performance vs price ratio. Something that is no more than $450usd. Newegg has a Xeon E3-1230 at around $250.00. Am I aiming right?
Motherboard: I was just aiming for whatever supports my processor. Should I absolutely go for something that supports ECC memory, or does the price shoot up unreasonably?
PSU: Since I am aiming this for commercial purposes, it is critical that my farm runs 24/7, but I also don't want a build that sucks half the city's power. What wattage should I be aiming for? 250w? 400w?
Memory: I am aiming for something like 16GB per node, since RAM is quite cheap these days, if I end up getting an ECC MoBo, the obviously ECC memory. Two questions here: is there a performance difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600? and what's better: less sticks with more memory, or more sticks with less? I assume less sticks is better since it allows for expansion.
The rest of the components would be whatever fits the budget. I'll probably go for small capacity SSD's for the nodes and high capacity HDD's for backup storage. I will obviously not purchase any GPU's to keep the costs down.
I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to be as concise as possible. As a final note, I am aiming for this render farm to pay for itself within a year's cycle, and from there on expand it with more nodes.
Thank you for your time.
I am looking to build a small render farm for Architectural visualization and other 3D rendering jobs. I have done my share of reading and research, including articles and forum posts here at Tom's Hardware, but I'd like some advice from you folks before I commit to choosing a build.
First off: The budget is between $10k and $12k USD . I understand in most cases, it is better to have quantity rather than quality(within reason!), so the aim here is to maximize the number of render nodes in that range. I am hoping to reserve some $2k in racks, UPS, switches and whatever simple additions(such as a basic server) are needed.
Specific questions:
CPU: I am probably aiming for a quad core Xeon. I heard quad cores are the middle ground in performance vs price ratio. Something that is no more than $450usd. Newegg has a Xeon E3-1230 at around $250.00. Am I aiming right?
Motherboard: I was just aiming for whatever supports my processor. Should I absolutely go for something that supports ECC memory, or does the price shoot up unreasonably?
PSU: Since I am aiming this for commercial purposes, it is critical that my farm runs 24/7, but I also don't want a build that sucks half the city's power. What wattage should I be aiming for? 250w? 400w?
Memory: I am aiming for something like 16GB per node, since RAM is quite cheap these days, if I end up getting an ECC MoBo, the obviously ECC memory. Two questions here: is there a performance difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600? and what's better: less sticks with more memory, or more sticks with less? I assume less sticks is better since it allows for expansion.
The rest of the components would be whatever fits the budget. I'll probably go for small capacity SSD's for the nodes and high capacity HDD's for backup storage. I will obviously not purchase any GPU's to keep the costs down.
I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to be as concise as possible. As a final note, I am aiming for this render farm to pay for itself within a year's cycle, and from there on expand it with more nodes.
Thank you for your time.