3D Studio max rendering farm advice needed

[PCBliss]

A company we work with that does a lot of 3-D animation is looking at getting a rendering farm going for 3D studio max... Im trying to get an idea for the best way to do this... i imagine they need mostly CPU power. So intel would probably be better? Would the computers in the rendering farm fully utilize dual core? or would faster single core CPUs be better? What about ram? Would 2GB work better than 1GB or does ram not matter so much?

I know these computers wouldnt need anything really for hard drive space or any fancy stuff like DVD burners or anythign.....

They were also thinking about going with like 5-10 computers in the farm? What number would be the best?

 

[JonnyBlaze]

you want to go with dual core. what chip depends on how much you can spend. check anands review here to help you out choosing a cpu. http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2658&p=11

intel is the fastest, if you get the most expensive chip. as for hard drive space they do need some temporary storage so dont go TOO small on the drives. the ram is very important as well. go with 2gigs to save alot of time. as for how many systems you need, the more the better. id go for fewer systems with faster cpu's if you had to make a trade off.

 

[PCBliss]

Alright thats great info, thanks!

 

[Czar]

if you want to go with a bang do this

one rack
fill it with half blade dual core blades from HP... amd processors, cheaper
fit them with small laptop size hd's, think they come with that type of disks by default
as much ram as you can get
Then get one 2u hp server for a small storage server to store the images for the blades along with serving as the control server for the renderings. Also you can get a 1u sas array which you can connect to the 2u server.

Run the blades on some version of linux descreet recomends for mental ray.

And, get some sortof a cisco switch.

Connect the blade backbones to the cisco switch along with one network card on the 2u server, have it as its own independant network, the other network card on the 2u server connects to your local intranet.

Think this is the most condensed cpu power you can get right now

 

[Czar]

gaddamnit I wish I could do this myself

 

[Czar]

or if you want to go a bit cheaper way, more total cost for the same power but less starter cost

get a rack
start filling it with high power 1u server, two dual core cpu's, sata disks if you can
would recomend my 2u server idea all the same

just remember blades start to pay off after about 3-4 blades, can just start with a half filled blade enclosure and then expand it as is needed