| JOey wants a render farm ee i ee i oh! |
 Joey Parker Jr. |
I know Bolts mentioned something about using something to build a renderfarm. Can't remember what it was. Was it an intel thing? Can't find the thread.
Also looking at the boxx stuff.
Any ideas on building one are welcome
Thanks.
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9/8/2010 1:30:37 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 1:30:37 AM)
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| GluteusMaximus |
I've always thought that it would be more fun to make a render ranch. Rather than grow renders, you could lasso them. Plus you could have a cool arch and sign over the driveway.
As for the topic, I have no idea what the thread was, but I guess you need to do some research on what will give you the biggest bang for your buck processor wise. Personally I wouldn't go the pre packaged route, and would make one up from just the bare essentials myself.
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9/8/2010 1:34:31 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 1:35:32 AM)
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| Joey Parker Jr. |
Oooh! I could be the first!
"Joey's Render Ranch"
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9/8/2010 1:36:41 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 1:36:41 AM)
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| Bolteon |
well...
there's a million ways to do it.
alot of the decision making process will revolve around what you need one for?
client work? personal work? do you have a job coming in? etc etc.
-Marko Mandaric
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9/8/2010 2:00:11 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 2:00:11 AM)
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| Joey Parker Jr. |
Client work, one client will be keeping me busy for the next three months.
Probably 6-8 hrs of rendering every other day with my core i7 920.
Plus another client who is a very good client but is always in a hurry and the rendering
is always the issue with meeting their deadlines.
I'm worried the 2 clients will make it difficult to keep up, rendering wise.
I'd like to increase render speeds by a factor of 4 to 6 times.
So basically right now I have 8 cores.
I'd like 32 to 48 cores.
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9/8/2010 2:19:15 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 2:19:15 AM)
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| Bolteon |
personally, for projects coming in and upcoming projects i would roll into your bid cost to your client the cost of renting farm nodes.
bell labs here in southern california will rent you out a dual quad core xeon with 24gb of ram for 500 a month.
the nodes come as "blade" form factors (half a pizza box) and come prewired with everything. all you do is plug in the box of 5 of them, and connect an ethernet cord and your up and running.
places like bell labs will even take a hd image and plop it onto all the machines before delivery so that you litterally just plug them in and turn them on and your off and running.
so if you've got some stuff you know is gonna be render intensive, just roll into the bid a cost of 5 machines for 4 weeks ($2,500).
you get 40 cores for 4 weeks for cheap. you dont pay for it yourself and your overhead stays at 0 (outside the cost of electricty obviously and cooling [might be necessary]). and the best part? if a blade goes down, they'll come in with a new one asap. no need to figure out whats wrong; just hot swap it from the main enclousure and go.
as for buying a farm? i'm trying to stay away from it. let other people pay for your necessities, you'll be much happier down the road pulling in all the money you'd be spending on overhead otherwise.
-Marko Mandaric
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9/8/2010 2:30:12 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 2:30:12 AM)
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| Joey Parker Jr. |
Thanks Bolts.That looks like the way to go.
Plus I hate the idea of buying a farm and then it's out of date in a year.
And it's still a good tax write-off.
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9/8/2010 2:52:26 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 2:52:26 AM)
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| Bolteon |
yeah, equipment rental is a great writeoff... and there's nothing more annoying then buying hardware and then seeing it become worthless. (dont even get me started how many places invest MILLIONS in the start up of their studio's because they think it's a good idea to purchase dual quad apple mac pro's as work stations and dell render nodes as a farm)
you might want to consider registering a s-type corporation. it doesn't get taxed on the corpoarte level and you get up to 250k a year in write offs.
once the dividends have been passed on down to the stock holders (more then likely, just you) you get taxed between 5-15%.
i saved a car's worth (35k) last year in taxes thanks to it.
-Marko Mandaric
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9/8/2010 2:59:20 AM (last edit: 9/8/2010 3:00:58 AM)
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