mymachine.txt (3.3 KB, 251 views)
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
#
7
18-05-2008
, 06:18 AM
Subscriber
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Haha Rage, I hope to get enough cash one of these days to build me a system like that. Instead I am usually forced to upgrade a part at a time as my machine needs it.
I know my system was buitla dn optimized for XP, but after working on that for what seems like ever without any problems I somehow crafted up a virus. So I figured I'd format and start clean. I couldn't get XP back to the way it was. So I figured why not optimize and move to Vista? It worked great and I was thrilled. Just recent issues plagued the situation.
As it stands I am looking into upgrading or building a new machine for Vista 64. 64 Bit software has been made available to me (thank god!) and it is looking like I may need it. Plus if I can find financing for a new machine then I can configure this pc into a renderslave along with a few older machines I am getting in the next few weeks. At this point the difference between upgrading my machine and building a bigger better one is only about 700$. So it kinda seems like a logical thing for me to build a new rig all together. If I strip out my hard drives, and dvd burner I can save myself another ~$200 on the new rig.
As for your render slaves, they are simply OS, Ram(how much), video card? network card and a hard drive right?
I haven't found much info on creating render farms for personal use, I found a good article on building one but it doesn't seem to detail those parts in great detail.
Anyways all-in-all if I build a brand new machine it looks like it'll set me back about $1500 for parts with a quad core cpu and 8 gigs of ram. I'll probably also add in $160 for 2 500gb hard drives for raid.
#
8
18-05-2008
, 06:45 AM
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Minnesota, USA
Haha Rage, I hope to get enough cash one of these days to build me a system like that. Instead I am usually forced to upgrade a part at a time as my machine needs it.
If you get a chance to read my attachment to my last post, you will see why I made the decision not to ever upgrade piece by piece because, well, as folks find out the hard way, it only breeds trouble.
I used to have to wait a VERY long time to save up enough cash but, in the long run, it was WELL worth the wait
All it takes is one year of saving $125 bucks from every check, A LOT OF PATIENCE, and you'll have $3000
Timing is good too because where I work I "usually" get a yearly raise, and a bonus AND my tax refund all in the same month, so I tend to use that as my year-mark.
As for your render slaves, they are simply OS, Ram(how much), video card? network card and a hard drive right?
Yeah, like I said, I'm NOT a hardware guy so do not take my word for gospel
But my farm boxes are setup like so:
- Simple Xp sp2 install
- Cheap Intel DualCore procs
- 2-4 gigs of cheap Corsair or Gskill ram
- A cheap Seagate 120gig SATA boot drive
- Gigabit network built on the mobo.
- I used to do no video at all, but now I've begun adding cheap GeForce 8500GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCIE @ $67 from Newegg, of corse
If you use a remote terminal to access your slaves, such as VNC or RDP (remote desktop connection), the machine you are using to access your slaves is providing the video to see the desktop of each slave.
NOTE: I have since added videocards to my slaves to handle hardware particle rendering.
So, whenever I got about $300-460 bucks or so, I try and add a new slave
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
#
9
18-05-2008
, 09:39 AM
Subscriber
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Originally posted by ragecgi
If you get a chance to read my attachment to my last post
Read it three times now
Originally posted by ragecgi
you will see why I made the decision not to ever upgrade piece by piece because, well, as folks find out the hard way, it only breeds trouble.
In the past things have been pretty smooth for me. Though I spent a lot more time buying a proper replacement that was an upgrade.
I can clearly see at this point how waiting to build a new machine is a much better idea as to get a proper performance incrase via upgrades would cost about $800. Where as building a new machine that would be that much better than my "upgrade" would only cost about $600 more.
I'd love to have a main system like yours, but then again if I ever get into particles or effects I might have to.
Also having a job would help me out, but school first then a job, and then money for a new machine to screw around with in my free-time.
The one annoying thing now is that Vista had such awesome workflow tools built in for Tablet use, and XP doesn't. So I have to drop the pen, type in what I want to type and then pick the pen up again. But hey, I guess I'll have to make it work for now.
Originally posted by ragecgi
If you use a remote terminal to access your slaves, such as VNC or RDP (remote desktop connection), the machine you are using to access your slaves is providing the video to see the desktop of each slave.
NOTE: I have since added videocards to my slaves to handle hardware particle rendering.
So, whenever I got about $300-460 bucks or so, I try and add a new slave
Roger that, I figured I had just about all the info I needed but then I find someone with some handy advice! Thanks a bunch rage. Always some helpful stuff seems to spew out of your posts.
Cheers,
Alexander
#
10
18-05-2008
, 10:25 AM
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Minnesota, USA
hehe, yeah, I try to at least drop a nugget or two if I tend to write at least a paragraph, but sometimes its good, and sometimes not
Good luck!
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
#
11
18-05-2008
, 07:59 PM
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: /dev/null
Originally posted by ragecgi
-6 500GB SATA Seagate cuda's @ 7200rpm
----2 drives for my 1 Terabyte raid 0 boot array
----4 drives raid 10 for my redundant superfast working array.
I loves me my realtime 2k playback in Fusion, hehe.
Can I ask why you didn't use 10K or 15K rpm drives? Since I would have used them if I was to build a superfast array...
C. P. U. Its not a big processor... Its a series of pipes!
#
12
18-05-2008
, 11:32 PM
Moderator
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Manchester Uk
Just read your txt file, its so so true, I've not had any problems, the crashes I get are when I try to do something stupid, so I deserve it! LOL.
Yeah thers a lot of PC building other than slapping components in a box, they need to be matched to get the best performance.
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
#
13
19-05-2008
, 12:03 AM
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Minnesota, USA
Originally posted by The Architect
Can I ask why you didn't use 10K or 15K rpm drives? Since I would have used them if I was to build a superfast array...
I was aiming at more redundant storage space than spindle-speed back then, but I currently I do have an external fiber raid 10 that is made up of 4 10k Seagate Cheetahs as well.
Sadly Newegg has stopped selling the Cheetah, so I had to order them from Pricegrabber, and I got the Fiber card and enclosure from a friend. Luckily I was able to find 4 74gig 10k cheetahs @ pricegrabber for 70 bucks a piece brand new
Originally posted by gster123
Just read your txt file, its so so true, I've not had any problems, the crashes I get are when I try to do something stupid, so I deserve it! LOL.
Yeah, same here. The only crashes I have now, if at all, are due to the problems with the software I use, never the OS itself
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
#
14
19-05-2008
, 02:01 PM
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: /dev/null
Originally posted by ragecgi
I was aiming at more redundant storage space than spindle-speed back then, but I currently I do have an external fiber raid 10 that is made up of 4 10k Seagate Cheetahs as well.
Sadly Newegg has stopped selling the Cheetah, so I had to order them from Pricegrabber, and I got the Fiber card and enclosure from a friend. Luckily I was able to find 4 74gig 10k cheetahs @ pricegrabber for 70 bucks a piece brand new
Nice!
How fast is the fiber channel?
C. P. U. Its not a big processor... Its a series of pipes!
#
15
19-05-2008
, 02:13 PM
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Minnesota, USA
I first had a 2gig, but my friend sold me a 4gig about 3 months ago.
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
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