corona renderfarm

[lef]

Hello everyone !
I just found out the IKEA Helmer renderfarm (http://www.helmer-air.com/)
and I am really interested to make something similar too !

Now days in ebay you can find some outdated (but well worth) lg 2011 xeons
with 30-50 euros and I think it will be VFM renderfarm .

My first idea is to achieve an ultra budget  ''350 euros per drawer'' combo (although the best idea is to double the price and pick a Ryzen 1600 or 1700)

PLAN A,
cpu : xeon E5 2680 v2 10c/20t 2.80-3.60 _ 150 euros
mobo: X79 3.5A LGA-2011, Micro-ATX Motherboard _  110 euros (https://tinyurl.com/yca5zkeo)
ram : 4x8gb ddr3 ECC ram 1333 _ 68 euros (https://tinyurl.com/ya8mder9)
psu: Powertech PS450W-T _ 18 euros
cpu cooler : Arctic Alpine 20 Plus CO _ 14 euros
case fans: 3x Arctic F8 80mm _ 8 euros
ssd : Corsair Force Series LS B 60GB SSD _ 42 euros (almost the same price with WD 500gb / 2.5)
gpu : MSI GeForce GT710 1GB _ 25 euros

Tot 435 euros !

435 x 6 = 2610 euros for all the 6 drawers !

and now the one million dollar question , is it worth it ? single xeon's cinebench score is about 1300pts (x6 = 7800)

Plan B,
is to make a 2x 18c ES xeon workstation with the same money but with a cinebench score around 5000 pts (but obviously less adventurous build overall)

please let me know what you think !

cheers,

Lef

ps. ultra budget alternate to plan A is to use Xeon E5 2650 (8c/16t 2.00 - 2.80) and 16gb of ram / Tot 290 euros (x6 = 1740 euros)

 

[romullus]

Hi,
i don't know if you already did search on forum for this topic, but in case you didn't, you may want to take a look here: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=6156.0

[lef]

hi Romullus ,
yes I already saw that post but nothing new was posted since 2015,
and all this acrylic laser cuttings looks amazing but pricey , I am talking about
something '' cheap and dirty '' ! :)

[Jann]

You farm idea falls short in that it only supports 32Gb ram. Even 64Gb is too low for many, so it's not a future proof solution in any way. And software + DR management troubles.
Dual 18core V3 Xeons with unlocked bios should get you over 5k cinebench, and depending on the board you get, you can get very high ram amounts, or at least have that option for future.

If you want some sort of backup, just build 2 systems with a single V3 Xeon each, so you always have one while the other is rendering or out of order. This might get over that budget though.