Render farm CPU?

[tfboy]

I'm looking at increasing my CPU throughput as I'm now working on projects which require rendering. I'm currently with an i5-3570k. I guess first thing (for free) is to overclock it a bit to get some more thrust.

However, I'm also looking at the option of getting a couple of additional PCs used purely for rendering - the apps I use can distribute load over a network. All the rendering is (currently) 100% cpu-based, no GPU is used. I have around half a dozen low-powered PCs so could use those, but they have so little CPU power (think Atom based, etc), they're probably not worth using.

In an ideal world, I'd just get a couple of proper servers (I use HP DL and blades at work), but as this is for my home office environment, noise is an issue and rack-based servers are a no-no.

Having multiple platforms will be more expensive to purchase, but do give more flexibility and I don't need them powered up if not rendering to save on the electric bill.

So has anybody done this at home or have any suggestions to offer? Wild, original ideas most welcome.

[Agent]

Yes - done it many times.
I'm a bit busy to go into too much depth right now, but consider just contracting the rendering out. When I looked into the time saved vs hardware cost + electricity cost (nevermind maintenance and failures), it was a better solution.

eg. : http://www.renderrocket.com/ and http://rentrender.com/all-render-farms-list/

Render rocket offer free tests and trials - so try them out.

Unless you have a very bespoke setup or need the machines for other things, I'd always contract it out.

Then again, I have access to nearly 200 I5 and various high end AMD systems at work....so it's been a while since I needed to

[tfboy]

Thanks Agent. I'll need to figure out what bandwidth requirements are to see if contracting it out is a viable option - certainly one I hadn't thought of!

[Agent]

Bandwidth?

You just upload your entire project, render it out their side and download the completed files.

Unless you have massive projects that will take an age to up/download, bandwidth shouldn't be too much of a concern. A lot of the people I know save their projects directly to Gdrive/Dropbox, so if they get too big, it's already hosted somewhere in the cloud as the project has been progressing. Then just login to the web interface of G/Dropbox, zip it up - share the file and then you have a public URL the render farm can download and use.

Unless you're on an insanely slow connection, I can't see how it would possibly be slower to chuck it across to a farm

[tfboy]

Hmm looks like support is an issue: I'm using Keyshot and very few farms out there support it - only found 3dotp so far...

[Agent]

Ahh yes, you'll struggle with that. I can't offer any recommendations for farms using it.

If you decide to do it yourself, always keep one thing in mind: Cores are often king, certainly with the current prices for AMD 8 core chips.
With anything of this nature, it's project dependant, but it's a general rule that stands true for most things rendering based.

The reason is simple: The processes on render farms are almost perfectly parallelised. Each frame is not normally dependant on the previous / next one. That offers a huge advantage to rendering things out. Going from 1 to 2 cores is almost exactly double the output in some situations. Same for 2 to 4, and 4 to 8.
Of course, raw speed is also important, but because of how (almost) perfectly you can run the processes in parallel, an extra core can make up a ton of raw speed in many situations. I know a few people that go with 8 core AMD chips for this reason, even though in some other benchmarks, they appear slower.

For example, you can pick up a FX 8350 (8 core) for ~£130 online. That's in the area of an i5, of which will get beaten in most rendering tasks.
http://techreport.com/review/23750/a...or-reviewed/12
It firmly holds its own against i7 chips (HT really can help with rendering), with you needing to get into the i7-3960X area (£££) for a bigger jump, which the 6 cores help with.

I can't speak for Keyshot, but other software will use pooled memory when rendering on the same machine. That means that if you're running multiple instances of the rendering program, they'll all use a common bit of RAM. This helps as you don't need to increase your RAM amount for extra renders by much. You need to check if Keyshot does this.
Although to be fair, while I don't know what you're rendering exactly, most home / prosumer renders will rarely exceed 8GB RAM in my experience. It's hugely dependant on the scene, but you can get a good indication by rendering on your current system and checking the resource use. Do it with one renderer, then two...and so on, to see how much it goes up by and how much you'll need. It'll give you a good estimation.

Sadly, some of the stuff I do needs 32GB RAM, but that's probably unlikely unless you're doing some very complex stuff within multiple programs.

In short: Given the price of AMD kit and their numerous cores, they're probably a pretty good option for what you want. What exactly you go with will depend on your budget though more than anything.

[cptwhite_uk]

Isn't Keyshot a CUDA based GPU capable render? You might want to consider a multiple GPU based set-up, dual/tri Titan setup might be a possibility. Assuming it can process the type if rendering you require?

[Agent]

He does say "no GPU is used".

I've also just done a quick Google and I can't see anything obvious for it. This was from 2013: https://www.keyshot.com/forum/index.php?topic=5294.0

It is not that we do not want to use GPUs. The algorithms that make KeyShot fast do not map well to GPUs. We have made a GPU implementation internally, but it was too limited and it only ran on certain types of graphics cards. Intel will release a new generation of CPUs later this year with a significant increase in the number of cores - this should translate directly into a performance gain for everyone.

This suggests that in Jun this year, it wasn't an option (or at least on his hardware): http://designandmotion.net/luxion/lu...for-keyshot-5/

Keep in mind that only very specific things can be mapped to GPU rendering. Some renders can use it, but it's normally more of an accelerated thing over a total replacement. Any total replacements have their own limitations.

[scaryjim]

... you can pick up a FX 8350 (8 core) for ~£130 online. ...

And of course there's the 8320e now that's not much slower, and has a lower TDP and therefore (theoretically) lower heat generation, if noise levels are a big issue. If you're just looking at render speed though the 8350 is probably slightly better value for money.

[tfboy]

Thanks for all the input, guys.

The immediate need is for Keyshot rendering (even version 5 is not GPU-based) and also JPEG2000 compression for DCinema applications. There is/was a CUDA-based J2K compressor, but I found it rather limiting and just stuck to CPUs so in both cases, good CPUs would be sufficient.

RAM usage is fine. I'm currently doing a render which will take around 1.5 days to finish, and I'm rendering on my desktop i5 (using 3 of the 4 cores), an old HP XW6600 with old dual-core, hyperthreaded Xeon CPU and my laptop (i5 dual core).

I'm under 3GB total OS usage whilst rendering so any PC with 4GB is more than enough

I'll look at those AMD chips. Been years since I put an AMD rig together, but from memory, the motherboards are also a fair bit cheaper so it wouldn't cost a fortune to build a couple of octo-core rigs which I'd power up just when required.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Secondhand Xeon 5650,although socket 1366 motherboards might be hard to get now,and I suspect the AMD FX8300 chips have newer instruction set support.

[DR]

Drop me a PM - I may be able to offer you an attractive solution.

[DanceswithUnix]

If this is easy to benchmark, I could try running it on my Fx8350. Stock clocked with 12GB of ECC ram.

Noise isn't much of an issue, just slap a tower cooler on it they aren't that expensive.

[tfboy]

Thanks DR, PM sent.
DwU, you'd need the Keyshot program (freely available trial from their website) and my .BIP file containing all the model and textures settings.

If you're interested, it's for work on a modular high-end audio power amplifier. I have a couple of designs going, from single monoblocks to multi-channel-in-a-box. This is the 7ch version:





And the insides:

[abaxas]

Why are those caps so near the heatsinks..

Sack the designer!

[tfboy]

Why are those caps so near the heatsinks..

Sack the designer!

Care to elaborate? And which caps and which heatsinks?

edit: in case you're wondering, it's by design. They are chosen for their specification to withstand higher temperatures (if it's the heat you're worried about). Also, they are close to the aluminium silver heatsinks as the latter keeps the switching transistors cool and you want to minimize any inductance in the traces between the caps and the trannies.
The larger black anodized heatsinks don't get that hot - they are way over-specified and in testing, don't get warmer than about 40 degrees at the top. It's all taken into account.