Can anyone recommend a place to buy an expandable Renderfarm?

[casparagus]

If you happen to be in the US, you can pick up a Dell C6100 (model XS23-TY3) for really cheap.

It includes 4 nodes, each with dual processor. If you search on ebay for 'XS23-TY3' you should be able to find one (with 4 nodes, so 8x Hexa core xeon processors) for $1500-$3000. Unbeatable value at the moment. I just wish I had a couple of grand.

[tomislavn]

If you happen to be in the US, you can pick up a Dell C6100 (model XS23-TY3) for really cheap.

It includes 4 nodes, each with dual processor. If you search on ebay for 'XS23-TY3' you should be able to find one (with 4 nodes, so 8x Hexa core xeon processors) for $1500-$3000. Unbeatable value at the moment. I just wish I had a couple of grand.

Actually, I was searching ebay.de (Germany) over last few days for the exact same thing :) - They go for like 1200-2000 euros here (around 1.6k-2.6k $) so it is definitely something to think about! Should be amazing performance for like 2 grand - even cheaper if you happen to live in the US. Not to mention there are some with like 128 or 96 GB of ram and SSD-s also inside..

[casparagus]

Yeah its pretty good value.

From what I understand, thousands of these machines are leased to big companies (facebook, bing etc). When the lease is over, the computers are returned to Dell, who sells them off cheap in batches of 500+. So now the market has been flooded with these beasts for cheap.

I'm hoping the same thing will happen soon with the Dell C6220s (the more recent version) - that will be sweeeet!

[Juraj]

Not to mention there are some with like 128 or 96 GB of ram and SSD-s also inside..

That's not how it works though most time. When a whole node-pack is listed in this fashion, you need to divide it per node, and on average the nodes come with 24GB, or 48 in more expensive variants.

Do your calculations precisely though, because from what I observed, you often get only notch higher performance compared to conventional contemporary builds. After all, you are buying core-2 generations xeons or early westmere ones. The higher-specced C6100 often go up to 4000 dollars on Ebay (8x X5670, which actually is quite serious performance) but even than you save about 40perc. of price (ok, that can be a lot to some) to performance of contemporary custom build.
It looks like amazing budget deal if you only count "cores" on paper, but if you take into account their architecture family, frequency, and power draw...well, it's not that amazing anymore. It has quite too many drawbacks imho.

Not that it can't be good deal, but I see a lot of stary-eyed guys on internet forums thinking like it's amazing deal. Then I look at it...and, not really. Be cautious.

[tomislavn]

Not to mention there are some with like 128 or 96 GB of ram and SSD-s also inside..

That's not how it works though most time. When a whole node-pack is listed in this fashion, you need to divide it per node, and on average the nodes come with 24GB, or 48 in more expensive variants.

Do your calculations precisely though, because from what I observed, you often get only notch higher performance compared to conventional contemporary builds. After all, you are buying core-2 generations xeons or early westmere ones. The higher-specced C6100 often go up to 4000 dollars on Ebay (8x X5670, which actually is quite serious performance) but even than you save about 40perc. of price (ok, that can be a lot to some) to performance of contemporary custom build.
It looks like amazing budget deal if you only count "cores" on paper, but if you take into account their architecture family, frequency, and power draw...well, it's not that amazing anymore. It has quite too many drawbacks imho.

Not that it can't be good deal, but I see a lot of stary-eyed guys on internet forums thinking like it's amazing deal. Then I look at it...and, not really. Be cautious.

That's true, I agree with you completely. But still, even though they are quite some generations behind, my dual Xeon X5650 @ 3.4Ghz (12 cores/24 threads) running on EVGA SR-2 with 24GB ram (I think I've spent like 500 bucks for both processors, mobo and ram together, on ebay) still obliterate my main modelling machine (i7 4770K @ 4.4Ghz, 32gb ram) while rendering. And we are talking around 50% of rendering speed increase at least.