Superbudget rendering machine

[mycarsavw]

I've been asked to advise a chum on a new build he's planning to undertake - it started as a NAS but it's sort of progressed into a Storage-cum-Render box.

He runs a small video production company, two chaps in an office, two Macs and some PCs. I don't know the full ins and outs but I do know that all raw footage is copied onto external drives and then loaded into the machine that is performing the editing. Once editing is completed, the job is rendered and then dumped back onto external drives. There's currently no network in place.

The initial brief was to spec him components required to build a NAS. I suggested a Synology DS416/416j but this was ruled out because of the limitations on physical drive space, ie there's no (cheap) room to grow.

We moved on to building a NAS in a large tower case. I suggested FreeNAS but it was mentioned in passing that it'd be nice to send the rending jobs to the new machine and have it perform duties out of hours so they can work on the next job.

Adobe Media Encoder (the render of choice) has the following requirements;

Multicore processor with 64-bit support required
Microsoft Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (64 bit), Windows 8 (64 bit), or Windows 8.1 (64 bit), or Windows 10 (64 bit)
8GB of RAM (16GB recommended)
4GB of available hard-disk space; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash storage devices)
1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended)
Optional: Adobe-recommended GPU card for GPU-accelerated performance

I'd love to find an old HP Z620 workstation with a couple of Xeons in it but for the budget - £300 exc VAT(!) - I don't think that's going to be possible which is where you lovely lot come in, any ideas?

My first, rough build was;

CPU: i3-6100
Mobo: MSI H170M-A PRO - Started with the H110 but there aren't enough SATA ports
RAM: 16Gb DDR4
GPU: Onboard
PSU: Corsair CXM 450W
Case: Fractal something

ODD, HDD and OS are already purchased.

Am I on the right track?

Ta!

[ik9000]

make sure it will run ECC RAM

[scaryjim]

For £300 ex vat they're going to struggle with something worthwhile for that purpose.

There's a CUDA engine for AME if their workload can use it, but you'd probably need to look at getting a second hand card to use it. Depending on how well threaded it is and what instructions it uses there's a possibility that a Kaveri APU might be a better choice for the rendering than an i3, although that's a long shot (and I can't find any useful benchmarks!).

To me the whole concept is just screaming Ryzen, but that would require a stretch to the budget - an R5 1400 + mobo + 16Gb DDR4 works out to around £300 ex VAT, before you consider case, PSU, storage, and needing a dGPU...

And reading around it looks like AME can be awkward to optimise and, depending on what filters/settings/etc you use doesn't always take full use of more cores...

Awkward

[mycarsavw]

I started down the Ryzen route, but arrived at the same destination as you, the budget is too tight to make it work.

If I can present a decent build, I'm sure I can push them to stretch the budget a bit.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is on offer:

http://www.ebuyer.com/714837-dell-po...tower-t20-3708

There is £60 cashback on top - there are only 4 SATA ports,but it does have a Haswell Core i5.

Edit!!

The build we more viable if you got a secondhand Haswell Core i5(CEX has a two year warranty):

https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku...A#.WQh74Wnyuyo
http://www.ebuyer.com/737174-asrock-...udio-b85m-pro3
http://www.ebuyer.com/633821-hyperx-...hx316c10fbk2-8
http://www.ebuyer.com/745621-corsair...-cp-9020101-uk

That comes to around £250ish. So that leaves around £110ish for the other bits like the case,optical drive and small HDD or SSD for the OS.

It seems the Dell is cheaper here:

https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/10...xcfhoCIBfw_wcB

The price is £220 too - it seems to indicate a possible £60 cashback too.



Hmm,it might actually support six drives but not sure if that is with another set of bays and a SATA card:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-...1257381/review

[DanceswithUnix]

I wonder if you can stick with a NAS operating system and run the Windows software in a VM. That would give some flexibility in the future if you want to migrate the NAS part you wouldn't need to re-install Windows.

If the machine will be chugging all night I wonder if one of the 4 thread Pentiums would be a good fit.

[Jonatron]

With that budget I'd just search ebay for used "xeon workstation"

[mycarsavw]

With that budget I'd just search ebay for used "xeon workstation"

That's how I started this whole thing off

This has just appeared as a new listing - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/162500212704 - two X5560s.

This is on offer:

http://www.ebuyer.com/714837-dell-po...tower-t20-3708

There is £60 cashback on top - there are only 4 SATA ports,but it does have a Haswell Core i5.

Cashback requires paying another few hundred on the OS but the box is nice, sadly the ECC RAM I'd have to add puts a few hundred onto the price.

I do like your used hardware idea though;

Edit!!

The build we more viable if you got a secondhand Haswell Core i5(CEX has a two year warranty):

https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku...A#.WQh74Wnyuyo
http://www.ebuyer.com/737174-asrock-...udio-b85m-pro3
http://www.ebuyer.com/633821-hyperx-...hx316c10fbk2-8
http://www.ebuyer.com/745621-corsair...-cp-9020101-uk

That comes to around £250ish. So that leaves around £110ish for the other bits like the case,optical drive and small HDD or SSD for the OS.

He has the OS drive already I believe, so all that's left there is the case which I can let him pick as and when.

How would the i5-4750 compare to the dual Xeons in the ebay special above?

I wonder if you can stick with a NAS operating system and run the Windows software in a VM. That would give some flexibility in the future if you want to migrate the NAS part you wouldn't need to re-install Windows.

If the machine will be chugging all night I wonder if one of the 4 thread Pentiums would be a good fit.

I looked at this idea too, but the other way round, putting FreeNAS in a VM.

From what I read FreeNAS doesn't like sharing drives, so I'd end up with n+1 drives as well as the constant nagging from Windows to format the drives. I realised if I ditched the NAS OS, it could probably work quite well. And I wouldn't have to be on call to offer support

[peterb]

There are some Linux alternative to FMLE/Adobe Creator, so if he doesn't need to use windows for his OS, that releases a bit more cash for hardware. (and saves on an Adobe subscription)

[mycarsavw]

There are some Linux alternative to FMLE/Adobe Creator, so if he doesn't need to use windows for his OS, that releases a bit more cash for hardware. (and saves on an Adobe subscription)

Thank you Peter, he already has the OS for the new machine but I'll look into the Linux alternatives to an Adobe CC subscription although I suspect they're already paying for a Team Plan.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cashback requires paying another few hundred on the OS but the box is nice, sadly the ECC RAM I'd have to add puts a few hundred onto the price.

Oops didn't see that bit(fail) but some of the HP and Lenovo tower server deals which pop up didn't require that,and they pop up(but you need to be quick).

Also,ECC DDR3 is not expensive:

http://www.ebuyer.com/630289-kingsto...th-pl316elv-4g

TBH,it would not surprise me if non-ECC RAM would be fine in the system. I am not sure if you missed this update I made to that post,as you can get the system for £220(ex-VAT):

https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/10...xcfhoCIBfw_wcB

So ex-VAT around £250ish I suspect if you install more RAM. It also gives you around £110 to to install a low powered graphics card for it. I know it uses CUDA and OpenCL,but I have not really looked at how the two stackup on equivalent Nvidia and AMD cards,and the quality of GPU vs CPU encodes.

I do like your used hardware idea though;



He has the OS drive already I believe, so all that's left there is the case which I can let him pick as and when.

How would the i5-4750 compare to the dual Xeons in the ebay special above?

The dual Xeons are based on the same chip in the Core i7 920 so for CPU based rendering or encoding which does not use they would be quicker,however remember the warranty is only three months for the secondhand/refurbished systems and power draw will be much higher,but its deffo worth a look. For anything which is more lightly threaded,I suspect the Haswell based CPUs would be faster though and I suspect I/O will be quicker on the newer systems too.

Edit!!

I had a look at GPU support for PP and AME and there are links to various tests from last year which are worth looking at:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2172292

This supports both CUDA and OpenCL,but the MPE primarily uses OpenCL. From what I gather GPU acceleration can make a bigger difference than CPU only.

[mycarsavw]

I'll have a chat with the chaps and see which path they're interested in.

My money's on used Haswell, new mobo, psu etc and a budget GPU to add a bit more oomph.

Thanks CTF, as always, you've gone over and above

[mycarsavw]

We're going with used CPU and new hardware.

CPU: i5-4570 - £85inc
Motherboard: ASRock B85M Pro3 - £50exc
RAM: HyperX Fury 16Gb - £89.15exc
PSU: Corsair CX450M - £41.45exc

CeX - £85
ebuyer - £180.60

GPU - they're happy to have something cheap, I'm thinking a GTX 580 / 670 for £70 from CeX would suffice.

Almost there unless someone spots something I've overlooked.

Thank you

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

We're going with used CPU and new hardware.

CPU: i5-4570 - £85inc
Motherboard: ASRock B85M Pro3 - £50exc
RAM: HyperX Fury 16Gb - £89.15exc
PSU: Corsair CX450M - £41.45exc

CeX - £85
ebuyer - £180.60

GPU - they're happy to have something cheap, I'm thinking a GTX 580 / 670 for £70 from CeX would suffice.

Almost there unless someone spots something I've overlooked.

Thank you

Will need to add a cooler too:

http://www.ebuyer.com/288855-cooler-...r-212e-16pk-r1

Regarding the graphics card,if you are using OpenCL for anything the older Nvidia cards are not that great(but CUDA performance can be better so if you have an old GTX580 or GTX780 lying around they will probably do a reasonable job even compared to newer gaming cards but OpenCL performance is not so great IIRC).

Edit!!

There seems to be 20% off some Amazon warehouse products:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-li.../?tag=ho01f-21

[mycarsavw]

Good catch CTF, overlooked the cooler completely.

One final query. With the GTX580 added but without all the drives that will invariably end up in the machine, PCPartpicker is estimating max power to be around 400W.

Add another 4 x 7w - taking the average from here - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...tb,3494-6.html - and we're very close to the 450W.

I'm aware we'll never be at full power, but I'd like to be comfortable knowing it's not going to power itself off overnight while rendering.

Would I be better off adding a slightly more powerful PSU ?

[kompukare]

Would I be better off adding a slightly more powerful PSU ?

I would say so. GTX580 was probably the most power hungry single GPU ever made. TPU has it down to using over 330W on it's own when running Furmark (guess Nvidia didn't used to throttle during Furmark like they do nowadays). So if this rendering actually uses GPU well that cheap CWT-made 450W PSU you spec'ed is asking for trouble.