Author Topic: RenderFarm - 3ds Max and Corona (rendering, animation, VR)  (Read 5876 times)

2019-05-28, 16:09:20

Oxygen

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Hello everyone,

We would like to have your help / feedback regarding the creation of a custom RenderFarm (CPU based) to work on 3ds Max and Corona (rendering, animation, VR).

Here is the ‘initial’ setup:

Case rack-mount
CoolBox Chasis rack 4U SRM-44500
Link: http://coolbox.es/cajas-pc-y-componentes/3542-chasis-para-servidores-srm-44500-8436556145841.html
Comment: any other good alternative?

CPU
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-core 3.0GHz c/ Turbo 4.2GHz 64MB SktTR4

Motherboard
MSI MEG X399 Creation
or
ATX MSI X399 SLI PLUS
Comment: Should we pick the MSI MEG X399 Creation or can we pick a cheaper motherboard such as MSI X399 SLI PLUS?

Graphics
Comment: Not required, correct? Even for the software installation?

RAM
Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4-2400MHz Black
or
Corsair Vengeance LPX 128GB (8x16GB) DDR4-3200MHz CL16 Black
Comment: 64GB is enough? Or should we have 128GB right away?

PSU
Seasonic PRIME Ultra 750W Gold Full Modular
or
Seasonic PRIME 1300W Gold Full Modular
Comment: 750W is enough or should be higher?

Cooling
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
or
Noctua NH-U12S TR4-SP3
Comment: both can be used (depending on the size), but we prefer the NH-U14S model.

SSD
SSD M.2 2280 Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250GB MLC V-NAND NVMe
Comment: any ‘better’ alternative?

Fans
Noctua NF-A8 FLX 2000RPM 80mm
and
Noctua Ventoinha 1500RPM 120mm

Gigabit Network
Comment: We need help here in this topic :) What equipment will be necessary to build a really fast and stable gigabit network?

Other advices that we should take into account?


Thank you!

2019-05-31, 11:04:43
Reply #1

1equals2

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Hi there,

Believe that there are people who can help You in regards to Motherboard and eventually the cooling. Both seem with similar capabilities and features, but the MEG is slightly bigger, which might be good if You bet on AIR cooling.
As far as I am concerned  TR4 processors are quite picky when it comes to RAM, especially the frequency.

Double/triple check if RAM you can get is supported by the motherboard. I would also personalyl go with a RAM  around 3000Mhz and for sure 128 GB.
Made the mistake to purchase a Socket 2011-3 machine with only 64GB, and not been able to find the very same RAM for almost 2 years now , but desperately need more in like 5% of the projects.

GPU- I would just get one - even cheap low budget one, to make sure that can easily plug in a monitor in case. It is not really necessary but everything happens. :)

PSU- on theory , with no GPU attached , even a 750 W will do the trick. I would again  bet on at least 1000W one or one in between. The dual Xeon I am working on  has a 1000W one, Nvidia 1070ti and uses power straight from  a 750W APC UPS. In the few cases  when there was electricity outage and machine was rendering fine for about 10 min  and  the 750W UPS did the trick and provided enough power.

Cooling - I would personalyl go with the NH-U14S TR4-SP3 and add additional fan in case of slight overclock. Believe there are other Air alternatives still capable of doing the job, but I am already biased and lean towards Noctua.

Gigabit network - depends on what would You like to get as speed. 1Gbit might be in the past soon, but 10Gbit  forces the use of SSDs at least and with all these data, big SSDs , at least 2-4 GB and several of them.  I personally have a small barebone server and bet on capacity than speed - due to cost reasons. 3ds max is equally slow whethere loading  a scene from 1gbit Nas with HDDs in Raid0  or 10 gbit Barebone with 4 HDDs 8GB in Raid 5. Even loading the whole scene locally from SSD does not make that big difference. I have encountered problems with copy/write speeds from Win 7 systems to Win10 one, but it could be due the Aquantia 10Gbit cards. In this regard am using them alongside   NetGear ProSafe XS708E 8 port swtich - that was the only avaiable in my country last year - stability overall is good and speeds copy/write speeds fine  - the 4x WD Gold in Raid sustain speeds of around 400 MB/s with big files. I have also a RAID card installed inside the Barebone with 1TB 970 for SSD cache - please do not  do this. It actually slows down the four HDDs - the cache slightly increases speed, but not straight away. Takes time the data to be cached so it results in initial drop of speed when the raid is accessed in network down to 100MB/s. Without the SSDcache, the 4 WD Gold sustain 400MB/s. SSD cache also does not help much with small-size files.   So if Your machines happen to have dual 1GB ports  maybe just use them with link-aggregation  and  fire couple of bigger SSDs in one machine.  Pretty sure there are much wiser solutions to the situation most of us appear to be in.

Good luck with build!
All
Other places to find the work of Angel Kostov
https://www.instagram.com/1equals2/
https://www.behance.net/ARCHO

2019-06-08, 15:08:27
Reply #2

Oxygen

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Thanks for your feedback 1equals2!
We’ll wait for some more comments regarding this custom RenderFarm ;)