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Hi, all. I have my old computer collecting dust in the corner. It has the following specs: MB: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz HyperX HX318C10FK2/16 Fury, DDR3, 16GB (Kit 2x 8GB), 1866MHz, CL10, DIMM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760, 4GB (MSi) Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB Seagate Desktop HDD.15 SATA III 4TB From the last upgrade of my Windows Desktop PC, i have left: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 6GB (ASUS) BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro 750W PSU With that, I want to create a server with two purposes: Backup/long term storage for (mostly) Media and Software Development files Renderfarm for Blender projects (well, with those GPUs, more like a Render-Backyard...) For the first task, I ordered two 16TB HDD (Seagate Exos X X16) which should arrive in a few days. For the second task, i intend to install both GPUs in the server and to use the old 4TB HDD as a temporary storage for the renderer. It is also less about performance; I want the system to run over night or in the background while I use my Desktop for more productive work (and gaming, of course). The 250GB SSD would serve as the system drive with the OS and all applications. I do neither have (the space for) a second display nor a second keyboard, so an ideal solution would be to set up the server to be controllable remotely via my local network. The files on the server need to be accessible (at least read and write) from both Windows (via File Explorer and WSL) and Linux (via OpenSSH). My questions are: What is the best operating system on the Server for those intended purposes? I'm most familiar with Debian and its derivates (Kubuntu), but i'm a bit afraid of the long update delays. Are OSes specificly designed for NAS (like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS) a valid or even the better option? Do I need GUI applications like Plex, Jellyfin, etc., for remote access, or is all that achievable with CLI tools and SSH access (on the server) only? The two 16TB HDDs should store the files redundantly. What RAID level is possible and recommended with this setup? As far as i understand, the main board only supports RAID Levels 0, 1, 5, and "10". Is it theoretically possible to use other levels (maybe software-controlled or something)? Does it make sense to encrypt the backup HDD(s)? Would that work with RAID? Would it be possble to use this machine also as a "recovery drive" for my main Windows PC (i thought of something like partitioning the 4TB HDD into two parts with one serving as Recovery Drive for Windows and the other one as temporary Blender storage)? Or, alternatively, would it be possible to "clone" the system drive of my Windows machine and store it on the server in such a way that i can use it to restore my Windows PC, if that should be necessary? This is because i'm still using Windows 10 on my Desktop and want a bullet-proof backup solution before I upgrade to Windows 11.

Budget (including currency): 700-1000 eur Country: Romania Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: It will be used for cloud / render farm in 3dsMax + Corona Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): No peripherals, will be a pc/server with remote acces Hello, At this point, the build is hypothetical because I do not have the budget ready, yet...estimating 3 to 4 weeks. I work as an architect and for the current workflow, clients require a lot of renders either exterior or interior, depending on the project. Either way, I use 3dsMax and Corona renderer for this, which is a CPU based rendering engine. The rendering engine is highly dependant or the number of cores/threads (and CPU speed also); It will require around 64 gigs of ram, 128 being the sweet spot; (I know that this alone will ramp up the price) It will not need a dedicated fancy GPU; Ideally, low power consumption . I wish to build a new or second hand PC / server that can be used to offload the rendering tasks from my current 4790K + 24 gigs of ram. Additional details can be provided if required, because as of now, I honestly do not know what else I can add up in this post. Thank you, Andrew M.

Alright so Im trying to plan a "budget build" in the sense that I am looking to buy used xeons to save some money. The total budget is around $6,000-8,000 USD and my original plan was to use 2 2-CPU E5 server boards, but after seeing the holy sh!t episode with the 4CPU build, I wanted to consider using a single E7 board with quad sockets. Im having a hard time finding a lot of information on the advantages/disadvantages of E7, and all Ive learned so far is that they are usually used for banking or large volumes of data. Ive seen that used E7's also seem to go for 40% cheaper than comparable used E5 xeons despite the E7 being nearly 2x as expensive when new. I also saw that one server/workstation company (Titan PC's I think it was) builds an 4 CPU E7 rig that they claim is good for 3D rendering, but I dont know how dependable that information is. Im completely new to the idea of a server build and have just been trying to learn what I can over the last few months, so I might be missing something "obvious" when it comes to E5's vs E7's. but Im basically asking if they would make a good 3D render farm since they do seem to sell for cheaper than the E5's when buying used. Renderer's I use: Vray for Maya, Renderman for Maya, Keyshot. All multi-core multi-CPU capable.

Hi! Thanks for the incredible content by the way! I own an animation studio called stratostorm, and we have a cpu renderfarm and each machine has 2x xeon 2680 v2 on a Z9PE-D8 WS. CPU rendering is a great solution and very reliable but gpu rendering is truly catching up! I was looking at the specs of the asus Z9PE-D8 WS and it has 7 pci-e slots and i was wondering, can we fit inside our nodes 7 RTX 4000 single slots graphic cards? https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/Z9PED8_WS/ https://www.amazon.com/PNY-NVIDIA-Quadro-RTX-4000/dp/B07P6CDHS5/ Best, Mario StratoStorm

I have been using my i9 9900k to render for a free online Blender render farm called SheepIt. I have heard that running on a 100 percent all core load for long periods of time can be bad for the long term health of the CPU, so I have under-clocked it 4.2ghz instead of the regular turbo of 4.7ghz. The package temp hovers around 65-67 C. I was wondering if running at these relatively low temperatures will shorten the life of the CPU noticeably?

I have been tasked at work to price-out/build a server. I have built a pc but have never had to deal with building a server, specially a rendering sever. Goal: Build a server people from out team can remote into and render their Blender/Unity projects. We want to start of small but want to be able to expand/upgrade in the future. We do currently have a server room and rack. We have been using a workstation (16GB ram, 2TB SSD, 2 Titan RTX) we are willing to move these parts over. Budget range (estimate) $5-10K USD Any help is appreciated thank you for your time.

Hey everyone, its been a while since I posted. This is more of an exploratory post that I tried to do some digging on and didn't see much on it, probably because I don't really know what I'm looking for. Basically, I'm an architecture student. I have multiple PCs that I work on but only one that's really able to render and work using Vray and Rhino 6. As a result, I've been lugging the bloody thing and both monitors and everything on the bus from the studio every break or when I have to work from home. I also cannot work on modeling or anything for hours at a time when I do render. My thought was, being as I'm a nerdy broke university student, building a server at home which can act as a render farm for Vray and maybe be used to store files. I know I can do one or the other, but I'm not sure if I can do both. I'm assuming I would have to run a virtualized server and divide the resources available but I'm not entirely sure. Not looking for a build guide or anything, more just asking is anyone can point me in the right direction and I can go from there. Thanks to anyone who has a shred of advice

i use flowbade to edit videos and i want to make a render farm from my spare servers. is there a way?? and whatkind of hardware would i need if i were to do so???

Hey all , I hope you guys will help me, I am now in the process of building a CPU based render farm 1 - which OS is the best to use. i am currently installing WIN10 on all my machines. I dont have Hardware and licenses problem , i got somewhere around 30 - HP ProLiant DL380 G6 and G7 Servers and each have DUAL X5670 or X5550 xeon processors installed. 2 - how much RAM do i need to install in each of them, also which hard disks are better to use. On my master machine - currently i am using Dual OCZ TR150 240GB in raid0.1 formation (yes its raid 0 and raid1 both - the raid controller on those require to use raid even if i have only 1 physical disk) On my slaves machines i plan on using only 1 physical 240 SSD drive on each (unless you guys tell me that its totally wrong) I am a techie , BUT i had absolutely no idea how servers work untill i started to install those things, i am sure that if i install WIN10PRO on each slave and WIN10ENTERPRISE on the main machine i am all set , and can use network render features of graphic programs. i have enthusiast experience with working with graphic software like Photoshop , after effects , Sony Vegas , premiere etc , but no real professional idea of what those programs are capable of. therefore 3 - which software do i need to use ? i mean do i have to have all those graphic programs installed to render different files? or is there some single program that will support all formats for rendering? or maybe do i have to use multiboot for different programs therefore have lets say 3 boot options of OS for 3 different render programs? (doesnt sound logical to me tho) 4 - Storage , do i need to have alot of storage space on all my slaves ?(doesnt make sense for me) or can i just use like couple of 6TB mechanical drives in raid 1 or 5 formation on my master machine to import starting files and export finished files to? i prefer to NOT work with Linux,MAC(OSX) since i dont really have experience using it besides installing and looking into the basic features of Ubuntu. Any help tips , suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Sup guys Ok I run VM on this server and it's rack mounted server with pretty good specs (2 CPUx4 8core, 16 Thread, 20GB Ram ). I want to use it for video rendering I tried installation Windows 10 on it and I didn't it But once sometime for no reason the server rebooted it self on multiple occasion not once. I's running Xen for VMs and works perfectly. I know some of you will say it doesn't have a Dedicated GPU.... but I want to use the CPU to render the videos I didn't had even one chance to render the videos... Sometime Adobe Premiere works perfectly but once it comes to rendering the server gives up and reboot. I also tired insatlling windows 10 VM with 14 thread and 16gb ram but still same issue. Thanks

Hey guys, My buddies and I all record video in some shape or form, and since we're always a 5-minute drive from one another, we want to build a NAS + Render Farm that we'd all connect to and share between. My ideal configuration goes something like this: Minimum 16GB ECC RAM to prevent any issues with reading/writing from memory.. Best GPU setup video rendering in Sony Vegas / Premiere Pro. RAID 6 array with 6 WD Black 1TB drives (Totaling in 4TB of storage with 2 possible drive failures before completely losing data). Hot-swap case for the drives. Ethernet + WiFi connectivity. My main concerns are this: I'd like to set it up to render more than one video at a time, and possibly be able to stream media or stream games to other computers. What GPU's to get for good concurrent rendering + streaming. I currently plan of setting up two GTX 980 TI's OR a single GTX Titan X. Do I go with server-grade CPU's and OS or desktop-grade CPU's and OS? In terms of desktop CPU and OS, I was planning on using an i7-4790K overclocked with Windows 7 Ultimate, I don't know what I'd do for the server config. I still need a RAID controller and Mobo that support RAID 6. Is 16GB of ECC RAM good enough for this machine? Should I go for 32GB? Are there rack-mounted full cases I should be looking at? Thank you in advance for any help!

Greetings! I'm currently looking at purchasing a refurbished server, and Server Monkey seems to be about what I'm looking for. My plan is to use the server as a NAS, Renderfarm and game server (but certainly not the last two at the same time) I also plan on sourcing my own hard drives (4TB 7200RPM WD Reds in RAID) However, because this is a large purchase, I want to make sure that my money is well-spent, considering how important this server will be. I also plan on doing a low-cost backup of the server using a raspberry pi and another hard drive (not in RAID), with just a weekly backup for extra safety. Also, before you scold me for trying to keep volatile system files on a RAID array, I'll have an SSD in there for the OS and software. So my question is: Is Server Monkey a good place to order my server from, sans storage? Any extra buying tips? Anything I should know before I pull the trigger?

Hello everyone A few months ago i bought a Supermicro x8dtt-f-sc007 rev2.0 motherboard and 2x xeon x5650 cpus on ebay. Everything seemed to work w/out any problem so far. But then i pluged everything into the right places and fired it up for the first time... the fans started to spin and an activity-led lit up but no display output... so i turned it off and checked all jumpers, switched to a different monitor and even bought a xeon e5504 to try it w/ an other cpu nothing worked So now i need your help i have no idea what i could try next, any ideas how i could solve this problem? Thanks for your time -N

Hello everyone A few months ago i bought a Supermicro x8dtt-f-sc007 rev2.0 motherboard and 2x xeon x5650 cpus on ebay. Everything seemed to work w/out any problem so far. But then i pluged everything into the right places and fired it up for the first time... the fans started to spin and an activity-led lit up but no display output... so i turned it off and checked all jumpers, switched to a different monitor and even bought a xeon e5504 to try it w/ an other cpu, nothing worked So now i need your help i have no idea what i could try next, any ideas how i could solve this problem? Thanks for your time -N