Looking to setup network rendering at home- what are my options in terms of hardware? Would like to keep it under a grand.
I built my own PC but I am a bit of a noob at this hardware stuff and have been out of the loop for a little while
I'm trying to research this too. I bought the network rendering option, and would like to build a system, or two systems that can use all 32 cores (since that is the smallest amount of KS network cores you can buy).
Any direction would be appreciated. Is a 32 core AMD system going to give me similar speeds to an Intel system (all newer processors)?
For all i'ts worth:
I've found this CPU benchmark list (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php)) to be a fairly accurate guideline to evaluate KeyShot performance of a given CPU. It's not perfect, but it's a good starting point.
You can make a ranking with descending Passmark CPU Mark. The list contains every CPU released by Intel and AMD since 2000 or so.
For most CPUs list prices are mentioned as well. So you can make a quick-and-dirty assessment of performancce/dollar.
greetings,
Dries
Personally, I'd take the money you'd apply to network rendering and invest that in a faster processor. By the time you build a new system with the current "best value" components, you're likely $750 to $1250 for a decent entry level rendering PC. Take the $480 you'd spend on just a year's worth of network rendering and upgrade to an overclocked 3930 Intel processer (or as big a processor as you can afford) instead! In the end, you'll likely be much faster than trying to string together slower and/or outdated processors through the network rendering. Unless you've already topped out processor speed on a couple machines built within last year's technology, your best value would be building a faster single machine first.
Ditto on the DriesV's cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list --> Very helpful resource that's constantly kept up to date!
br3ttj, Thanks for the input.
I'm actually running a BOXX 4920 Extreme with i7-3960x @ 4.5Ghz so I'm pretty maxed out on that system. I'm looking to build a system (or two) that I can throw a whole queue of jobs at and not bog down the BOXX while I'm working on other projects.
I've got a two year old Alienware Aurora with a 17-920 chip in it. I don't know if there is an upgrade path for that machine that would make more sense than building a complete system?
The most cost effective way is to build a machine yourself, if you have the know-how.
i too want a separate machine so i can still work away setting up renders or composting finished ones.
what all is needed on the 'slave' machine even?
cpu, motherboard, ram, cpu fan... does it need a HD or a OS?
(noob)
yes - you will need to add a hard drive and an OS.
ok so baasically a whole other computer.
hmmm decisions decisions lol
keyshot doesnt need to installed on it though right?
as far as i can tell from googling online render farms, there is not one available for keyshot yet?
No KeyShot doesn't have to be installed. And no, there is no online render farm yet that is available for KeyShot.