Budget render farm idea

[YouTookMyJob]

Hi, I'm planning on making a small render farm, 4 to 10 nodes but I don't have a big budget, The server i'm looking at is Dell PowerEdge 2950. Do you think that it will be good for a render farm? I plan to start with 4 and if they're good I plan to increase it to 10 or even more.

 

I plan to do use them for Blender Cycles rendering, video rendering, 3ds Max and Maya Mantel Ray rendering.

 

Thanks

[Pugs501]

Why not make a build with a Intel Xeon-E3 1231 V3?

[kwljunky]

Hi, I'm planning on making a small render farm, 4 to 10 nodes but I don't have a big budget, The server i'm looking at is Dell PowerEdge 2950. Do you think that it will be good for a render farm? I plan to start with 4 and if they're good I plan to increase it to 10 or even more.

 

I plan to do use them for Blender Cycles rendering, video rendering, 3ds Max and Maya Mantel Ray rendering.

 

Thanks

Have a look at this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/render-farm-node,2340.html

[YouTookMyJob]

Why not make a build with a Intel Xeon-E3 1231 V3?

I was looking at taking that route.

Have a look at this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/render-farm-node,2340.html

I already looked at that post and that lead me to just buy a pre-made server.

[kwljunky]

I was looking at taking that route.

I already looked at that post and that lead me to just buy a pre-made server.

For blender I was personally thinking about Just getting one of the extreme edition intel for the PCI express lanes and then filling up the gpu's with 980's or something. 

 

Since the render only uses single precision atm it would be pointless to use Titans. 

 

I was going to have it running linux, then set cycles to GPU compute on the separate machine, and then maybe buy more of the same thing and have your main editing pc then spread the rendering to the individual pc's around making a mini farm. 

[LtStaffel]

For blender I was personally thinking about Just getting one of the extreme edition intel for the PCI express lanes and then filling up the gpu's with 980's or something. 

 

Since the render only uses single precision atm it would be pointless to use Titans. 

 

I was going to have it running linux, then set cycles to GPU compute on the separate machine, and then maybe buy more of the same thing and have your main editing pc then spread the rendering to the individual pc's around making a mini farm. 

Some effects in Cycles do not render on GPU.  Things like volumetrics and fire.  So make sure your CPU is good.