Messages

16

Hardware / Re: Best option for budget rendering

« on: 2019-04-09, 13:25:13 »

Would this be a good option? My budget is less than £1000 ideally less than £700 I just want the fastest for the money.

Refurbished Lenovo IdeaCentre 720 Ryzen 7 1700 8GB 2TB RX 550 Windows 10 Desktop PC

It has the Ryzen CPU.

What is the latest Xeon processor available? E7? Maybe I can get a more modern second hand Xeon machine.

17

Hardware / Re: Best option for budget rendering

« on: 2019-04-08, 21:14:01 »

Ok thanks on the listing it just looks like a regular hp z600  what exactly is the difference with a rack mount?

18

Hardware / Best option for budget rendering

« on: 2019-04-08, 20:28:35 »

I'm looking to get a system that can render 1080 frames for animation in a reasonable time frame. I currently have an i5 8gb PC and that is very slow for rendering.

I have a limited budget to upgrade. I'm looking to buy a workstation to add to my existing one and use distributed rendering.  I have a choice of either buying two older units such as this below

Rackmounted HP Z600 Workstation, Dual Xeon E5530 2.40Ghz, 8GB DDR3 Ram, 1TB WD SATA HDD, ATI FirePro W7000 4GB Graphics Card, DVD Multi Player, Win 7 COA with Windows 10 Pro 1809 installed with all drivers and updates

Or one system that's more expensive such as this one below

Dual (two) Intel Xeon X5680 3.7GHz Turbo Processors - with 12 physical / 24 logical cores.
Huge 96gb (ninety six gigabytes) Samsung RAM (12 x 8GB).

120GB SSD for Operating System (Windows 7 installed) + Two High Speed (15K) 300GB SAS Drives in raid 1 (duplicates and distributes data evenly to both SAS drives

 Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6gb (Factory Over Clocked) 'Windforce' triple fan Graphics Card complete as new

I don't know much about computers outside of the software so Which would b better?

 2x HP Z600 Workstation, Dual Xeon E5530 for £250 each

Or

This one with dual Xeon X5680 3.7GHz Turbo Processors and 96Gb of RAM for £950

What do you think would be the fastest rendering?
Cheers

 

19

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-04-08, 16:47:00 »

*Update*

Finished the project and have more so I need to get a more powerful system. Is this a good one?

Dual (two) Intel Xeon X5680 3.7GHz Turbo Processors - with 12 physical / 24 logical cores.
Huge 96gb (ninety six gigabytes) Samsung RAM (12 x 8GB).

120GB SSD for Operating System (Windows 7 installed) + Two High Speed (15K) 300GB SAS Drives in raid 1 (duplicates and distributes data evenly to both SAS drives for ultimate file security).

Asus Strix ROG (Republic of Gamers) Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6gb (Factory Over Clocked) 'Windforce' triple fan Graphics Card complete as new

Seen on eaby my budget isn't huge as I only do 3d part time. I just need to increase my rendering capabilities.

Would one system like be better than buying 2 old hp z600-800 with Xeon E55s?

20

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-27, 14:57:08 »

Ok Fair enough, but that is not a good situation to be in.
Is the client being charged for the changes, if not, then the company need to set a standard form of contract or even an email, saying  2 changes and then charged per hour after the fact.
It's not good for you either, the stress will have a bad effect over time, and it's not your fault.

Seriously , your all being screwed when this happens, and it happens to us all.
get set up by all means , but you should not be paying for it, financially or stress wise.

True but the business isn't going to want to tell the client stuff they don't wanna hear they are the ones paying the bill at the end of the day  the client seems to of the opinion that they can keep swapping and changing things left right and centre with no problem they don't se m to realise there work and cost involved.

21

Hardware / Re: How to set up 2 computer for distributed rendering

« on: 2019-03-27, 10:44:07 »

Thanks for the info I'm looking into backburner I think it is backwards compatible as I have max 2015 definitely don't want to buy a new max license.

22

Hardware / How to set up 2 computer for distributed rendering

« on: 2019-03-27, 08:50:53 »

How do you set up 2 computers for disturbing the rendering? Is it a simple case of connecting them with a LAN cable and downloading some software (backburner, DR server) and installing Corona? Do both computers need to be running the exact same version of Windows?  I'm not much of a computer tech so any help is appreciated. Thanks

23

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-27, 08:46:25 »

I have used a render farm the problem is that I'm working for a company who is dealing directly with the client, the client has repeatedly asked for major changes AFTER we have already spent considerable money to render the job.

 This is despite Bieng provided a preview and them OKing it only to then change their minds. We no longer have any budget left to use a render farm.

I'm thinking of buying a couple of these cheap workstations to make a budget farm.

24

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-27, 08:26:02 »

If you have exactly i5 4460, then 2x xeon 5650 will be roughly 4.5x faster, and your frame times will drops from 20min to 4.5min. and you will be waiting 225 hours for 3000 frames. If you will be rendering on both machines, it will be less :) .
As you mention, your scene is simple, so 24GB RAM in triple channel will not make rendering significantly faster.

EDIT: roughly math, 184hours (i5 + xeons)

How about this system I've just spotted is a better one than the dual x5650 it's about £30 more expensive?

HP Z600 Workstation 4 x Xeon X5672  3.20Ghz 12 GB RAM

25

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-26, 17:28:23 »

Just checked I've actually got an i5 4570 running the benchmark took 11min 53 seconds. The eBay seller is going to run it and I'll see what the difference is.

26

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-26, 16:40:00 »

I thought with simple textures and no complex models it wouldn't be too much an issue. I've much less than 3k frames left now more like 1200 I can always keep buying old machines and adding them to build a somewhat ramshackle render farm. Again I'm not going to justify spending even £600 in this unless my client base trippled

27

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-26, 15:57:32 »

The thing with this site is many on here are probably full time or have access to a studio with up to date and very high spec equipment so to those users these old workstation look crap but to someone like me coming from a very low spec borderline non feasible computer they are probably still very capable machines.

I'd certainly be happy if adding this old workstation halved my render times considering it has more the double my current RAM

28

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-26, 15:16:33 »

At the moment I'm using an intel i5 4series with 8gb ram. I'm hoping this Xeon will be a big step up from that. I'm aware it's not the best by any means but if it is a big improvement then I'm happy for the time Bieng. It's also cheap and accessible quickly

29

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-26, 14:15:11 »

Thanks I'm on a tight time frame and there is one nearby on eBay for sub £300

30

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Too slow to render for animation

« on: 2019-03-26, 13:41:47 »

Thanks I'm going to run it when I get chance and compare that to the eBay machine. I think it Will definitely be a quicker machine question is how much