daniohayon

I've priced few options for a render farm units and came up with all but the CPU to cost $900 per dual 771 unit.

Now with the dual CPUs:

- E5420/2.5GHz $1587
- X5355/2.66Ghz $2500
- X5450/3GHz $2640
- X5460/3.16GHz $3350

It just looks clear to me that I should go with four units of 2.5GHZ than two unit of 3.16GHz if my budget was $7K, getting 32 cores at the speed of 2.5 than 16 cores at 3.16. Now does that make sense or am I missing something?

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AJLynn

You're making sense. The X is a newer series that has advantages but there's still no way it can compete with that price. It's the usual price curve that gets steeper at the high end.

daniohayon

That's good news! thanks Andrew.

Would you have an idea where I could find a MOBO and case that can take dual 771 and be small in size? maybe vertical so I can stack them? I've looked in Newegg with no clear option.

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Macer

Not to sure about the size/case thing, but (as I posted elsewhere recently) its worth considering paying extra to get a motherboard based on the 5400 chipset (designed for the xeon 54xx series).

They can support faster ram (FB DDR2 800) and a faster FSB (1600). Not only will this provide you with better upgrade options in the future, with a speck of electrical tape and the faster memory, a E5420 should overclock from 2.50G at 1333fsb to 3.0G at 1600fsb. More power for less! You'll have to do you research first to make sure you get the right components (and case with good ventilation), but its worth the effort.

AJLynn

Rackmounting these is tough, because of cooling, and don't even try to get a small form factor motherboard. You'll almost certainly end up with an EATX case. You could choose units, you'd probably end up with 3U or 4U, from this list or look for regular EATX cases (usually marketed as server cases). Of course, there's always the opportunity to screw yourself, so verify the form factor of the motherboard and case before ordering and make sure you end up with the right power supply.

For how to set these things up, look at how major vendors do it. Be conservative and redundant, have extra room and good circulation. Don't try to be like BOXX with the 1U Renderboxxes.

daniohayon

Thanks again. U3/U4 looks good. I had some problem understanding the "SSI EEB 3.61" from ASUS but I think it's the same as EATX.

Macer, assuming that I'm not going to overclock the system, is $200 extra per server is justified for upgrading to FB DDR2 800? The RAM cost the same, the difference is at the MoBo.

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Macer

It depends upon the performance you're after and your upgrade path. 5420's run with a 1333 fsb, but if you upgrade to say a 3.2G cpu in a year or so when they are more affordable (maybe faster by then?), you would really want to have a 1600fsb capable mobo to make the most of them - along with the faster ram.

But then again, by then you'll be able to get nehalem processors - which are already 20 percent faster clock for clock against the current 54xx xeons. As they have a different pin config you'd have to get a new mobo anyway. You might be better off getting the cheap stuff now and picking up some 8 core processors with a new mobo in a dual setup when you next upgrade - 16 cores bloody fast cores will really power through the renders!

Really comes down to how much power you want now - it won't make any difference if you're running 5420's at stock, unless you have the option to change the memory/fsb ratio in the bios (unlikely in most server boards).

I guess its only really worth while if you either o/c or upgrade to a 1600fsb capable cpu.

daniohayon

Make sense again. I'll stick with the 667 and leave the next step to the next step. Hope this project will go through, I'd love to get this upgrade and throw some performance test renders. Thanks guys!

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RenderSpeed

Have you considered using single quads? You may get more for your money.

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daniohayon

A single quad will still need the case/MOBO/RAM/HDD and will register as a node with Mental Ray which is limited to 8 nodes regardless of processors (if I remember correctly)

The dual quad node cost $1628, with this setup I can get three of them bad boys cased in one of those: http://www.provantage.com/startech-rk1219walh~7STRR00X.htm with 2008 server OS...and stay about the same price as a render Boxx while getting 50% more processing power! all with same specs.

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