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$3500 - $4000 for a rendering machine. Any suggestions?

alfa147x

alfa147x

Lifer
I'v been tasked to build two machines. Budget: $900 - $1000 for the rendering and $300 - $400 for storage (Before cost of drives).

The rendering machine does not need a power full video card due to most of the rendering will be done from Premiere Pro. The option for an upgrade would be nice (PCI-E 16x)



The other machine will need to have at least 5 TB of disk space set up in a 1 to 1 backup. That is the only requirement for that. At night this machine will be backed up to an off site server.

The only manufacturer I would like to stick with is Intel for the CPU.

Also both machines will need to be rackmount-able.

Thanks a lot,
Alfa

Edit:
Look for suggestions on case, motherboard, cpu, and amount of ram.
 
Last edited:
Do you have a limitation on the total number of U that you can use? 4U boxes are going to be the most cost-effective because they are basically the size of an ATX tower on its side and can thus use desktop components. They aren't very dense though.
 
Are you sure you don't want to use the Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro CS5? I hear it works great when using a Nvidia GTX card.. it's first target video card was the GTX 480. Search the Adobe forums about it. You'll get a lot of good information regarding it
 
mfenn said:
Do you have a limitation on the total number of U that you can use? 4U boxes are going to be the most cost-effective because they are basically the size of an ATX tower on its side and can thus use desktop components. They aren't very dense though.
Click to expand...

4x 4U will fit


BTRY B 529th FA BN said:
Are you sure you don't want to use the Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro CS5? I hear it works great when using a Nvidia GTX card.. it's first target video card was the GTX 480. Search the Adobe forums about it. You'll get a lot of good information regarding it
Click to expand...


Thanks! I'll look into it
 
Since these are rack-mount, I'm assuming that you're not going to be physically sitting at the console most of the time. Also, I'm not including a DVD drive in the systems because I figure that you can just use a USB one for the limited times that you will need it.

Rendering:
i7 2600 + P8H67-M LX combo $364
Qty 2 Mushkin DDR3 1333 8GB 16GB total $140
Qty 3 Samsung F3 1TB $195 - one for OS and render source, one for render target, one for scratch
Seasonic 350W $42
http://detonator.dynamitedata.com/c...com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811182566Habey RPC-410 $65
Habey RL-26 rails $35
Total: $841

Storage:
Athlon II X2 250 $61 - I don't really see the point in going Intel here
Biostar TA880GU3+ $75
Patriot 4GB DDR3 1333 $25 AR
Samsung F4 320GB $43 - Might as well keep the OS on a separate drive than the storage array
Seasonic 350W $42 - Only has 4 SATA power connectors, but you will have plenty of power to use a Molex to SATA Y cable.
Habey RPC-410 $65
Habey RL-26 rails $35
Total: $346
 
mfenn said:
Since these are rack-mount, I'm assuming that you're not going to be physically sitting at the console most of the time. Also, I'm not including a DVD drive in the systems because I figure that you can just use a USB one for the limited times that you will need it.

Rendering:
i7 2600 + P8H67-M LX combo $364
Qty 2 Mushkin DDR3 1333 8GB 16GB total $140
Qty 3 Samsung F3 1TB $195 - one for OS and render source, one for render target, one for scratch
Seasonic 350W $42
http://detonator.dynamitedata.com/c...com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811182566Habey RPC-410 $65
Habey RL-26 rails $35
Total: $841

Storage:
Athlon II X2 250 $61 - I don't really see the point in going Intel here
Biostar TA880GU3+ $75
Patriot 4GB DDR3 1333 $25 AR
Samsung F4 320GB $43 - Might as well keep the OS on a separate drive than the storage array
Seasonic 350W $42 - Only has 4 SATA power connectors, but you will have plenty of power to use a Molex to SATA Y cable.
Habey RPC-410 $65
Habey RL-26 rails $35
Total: $346
Click to expand...


Could he get away with an E-350 board though? Or even an Atom setup, it is only for storage after all. Just curious, otherwise it looks pretty solid.
 
Jimmah said:
Could he get away with an E-350 board though? Or even an Atom setup, it is only for storage after all. Just curious, otherwise it looks pretty solid.
Click to expand...

He very likely could in terms of processing power. The reason that I went with an Athlon II is that it has 6 SATA ports onboard (which only a few E350 board have) and has plenty of PCI(e) slots for addon controllers should he ever decide to go with hardware RAID.
 
Thanks for the recommendation. What if I budgeted another $300 - $400 for a video card. GTX 480 or similar. Would that change anything?
 
Made a couple of edits:

Rendering:
i7 2600 + GA-H67MA-USB3-B3 $389
Qty 2 Mushkin DDR3 1333 8GB 16GB total $140
Qty 3 Samsung F3 1TB $195 - one for OS and render source, one for render target, one for scratch
SeaSonic S12II 620 Bronze 620W $87
Habey RPC-410 $65
Habey RL-26 rails $35
EVGA GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) 1536MB = $325.99
Total: $1 236
 
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Rendering:
Intel Core i7-970 Gulftown 3.2GHz $594.99
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition $590
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) $300
4x Samsung F3 1TB $259.96
2x Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) 2.5" 120GB $568.98
SeaSonic X Series X-850$200
iStarUSA D-400-6/Q $249.99
SUPERMICRO CSE-PT26L-B $35
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) 1536MB $651.98
Noctua NH-C14 $90
Miscellaneous $150
Total: $ 3 689.99

Thoughts?
 
I'd get 580s. The 480s are going to produce a lot more heat and consume a lot more than 650W. 650W is a lot better for 580s. Another thing is, if this is a rendering box, does your rendering engine make use of CUDA? Premiere Pro and the rest of the Adobe software doesn't at all. If you are editing on this machine, you will see a boost from a NVidia GPU, but you could get away with a single 460 1GB. The 480/580 in SLI especially would would be wasted with your listed tasks.
 
Yeah, look into whether you can use CUDA and also RAM requirements.
With your budget now at $4k you look to be in the range of a dual Xeon E5649 with 24GB RAM per socket, that's with pricey 8GB RDIMMS allowing for expansion to 96GB total.
 
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alfa147x said:
Thanks for the recommendation. What if I budgeted another $300 - $400 for a video card. GTX 480 or similar. Would that change anything?
Click to expand...

The 480 is old news. You'd want to go with the GTX 580 at this point. Though, with your budget, true connoisseurs will get the fully unlocked, uncrippled C2070.
 
DominionSeraph said:
Yeah, look into whether you can use CUDA and also RAM requirements.
With your budget now at $4k you look to be in the range of a dual Xeon E5649 with 24GB RAM per socket, that's with pricey 8GB RDIMMS allowing for expansion to 96GB total.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: I agree. $4K lets you get a real server and avoid the annoyance of whiteboxing it altogether.
 
Rendering:
2x Intel Xeon E5645 Westmere-EP 2.4GHz $1189.98
EVGA Classified SR-2 $590
2x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) $600
4x Samsung F3 1TB $259.96
2x OWC 120GB Mercury EXTREME™ Pro 6G SSD $639.98
EVGA Classified SR-2 1200W $370
LIAN LI PC-V2120B $249.99
EVGA GeForce 570 GTX $334.99
2x Noctua NH-C14 $180
Miscellaneous $150


Total:
$4,264.9
 
alfa147x said:
EVGA Classified SR-2 $590
Click to expand...

umm... go for a Tyan... or MSI

alfa147x said:
EVGA Classified SR-2 1200W $370
Click to expand...

No way you'll be needing this.

You're really going about this the wrong way man. I think you're just getting an expensive build to have an expensive build. There are much more inexpensive ways to get that kind of horsepower.

Another thing I have a problem with is the gaming GPU. Cheapo workstation builds have gaming cards to save money, but you have no need to. Another thing is, you still haven't said you'll be editing on this rendering rig. The point of a rendering rig is to be dedicated to rendering, and you edit on a separate box. You could possibly get a super cheap GPU and have the exact same performance.

Another thing to consider is at this price range you can get a real server with close to the same hardware (well, better hardware considering your current choices...) from Dell or HP. That is what DominionSeraph and Mfenn meant by "Real Server"
 
You want to build for needs, not for budget. If what you need is a rendering box, then put more money into processing power and SAS drives for an external storage server. Don't tac on a energy hogging GPU just for it to be a placeholder.
 
Davidh373 said:
You want to build for needs, not for budget. If what you need is a rendering box, then put more money into processing power and SAS drives for an external storage server. Don't tac on a energy hogging GPU just for it to be a placeholder.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:
 
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