Renderfarmer's WS

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renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
249
1
18
New Jersey
Name: WS
CPU: Intel i7-3930K (@ 4.6GHz)
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 680 FTW 4096MB
RAM: 64GB G.SKILL Ares
SSD: 240GB OCZ RevoDrive3 X2
NIC: Mellanox MHEA28-XTC
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X79
Cooler: Corsair H100i
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Corsair Vengeance C70
OS: Windows 8 Pro
Monitor: 27" Eizo ColorEdge CG275W

This is my one and only 3D workstation. I chose a high clock speed at the expense of massive multithreading as I find this benefits modeling and many other single threaded tasks. I then use my render farm for rendering.

I primarily run Maya, Vray, Mudbox, Mari, Nuke, Adobe CS6 on this.

 

renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
249
1
18
New Jersey
Thanks, guys. This is my first DIY in quite some time. I've been using Dell Precision Dual socket machines for the past few years. This time I decided to shun convention and go with an overclocked machine with a hyper fast GeForce instead of dual Xeons and a hyper expensive Quadro. The whole system was put together for $2740 - Not including the display, which was actually more than the computer... If anyone is wondering , teh color coordination is accidental. These happen to be the fans and RAM that I felt were the best value.
 

renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
249
1
18
New Jersey
I've to ask, why the bigass psu? Are you getting a second gtx later on?
Very perceptive ;-) Actually, I took this PSU from a gaming rig that I had built over a year ago that had dual GTX 590s! If Vray GPU rendering improves in the coming year I might get a second dedicated GTX for that. But at teh moment I have no plans to double up.
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
212
63
New Zealand
Thats a vision of beauty you have there.

I have spaghetti junction happening in my rig
What are the other 2 cards below the GTX 680 ? (I do some work over here that might interest in squeezing the best from your card)
 

renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
249
1
18
New Jersey
Thats a vision of beauty you have there.

I have spaghetti junction happening in my rig
What are the other 2 cards below the GTX 680 ? (I do some work over here that might interest in squeezing the best from your card)
Thanks, The other two cards are:

SSD: 240GB OCZ RevoDrive3 X2 (it's an SSD on a PCIe card)
NIC: Mellanox MHEA28-XTC (10Gbps infiniband adapter)
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
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New Zealand
Hehe, had I looked more closely at the specs, i should have been able to work that out :D
I'm bunged up at home with the Flu I can blame that.

Nice monitor BTW, how do the new Dells stack up against the Eizo ?
 

wyluliraven

Member
Nov 6, 2012
114
0
16
Atlanta, GA
Beautifully executed workstation!

I am curious to see what your render farm is consists of!

As far as monitor choice, what made you go with the Eizo over say... an HP Dreamcolor?
 

renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
249
1
18
New Jersey
Beautifully executed workstation!
Thanks!

I am curious to see what your render farm is consists of!
I'll post some pics when I get a chance in the DIY server forum. I'm finishing up some upgrades which will take the whole thing up to 288GHz. I'll put a note here when the pics are up.

As far as monitor choice, what made you go with the Eizo over say... an HP Dreamcolor?
Honestly, I went with Eizo mostly because the print guys at Mercedes-Benz use and recommend them. I don't know 1/10th of what they do about color theory, and the nitty gritty of LCD tech so I just trusted what they said. All I wanted from my monitor was to be able to match what the MB re-touching and pre-press guys were seeing when I was working from home. I haven't done a side by side comparison but the people who have and are really into it gush over Eizo above any of the NECs or HP color accurate ones so I figured an extra $1k above what the others cost wasn't too bad for peace of mind. Personally, what I love most about this LCD is that the color calibrator is built into the bezel and pops out on its own at a preset number of hours and calibrates itself. One thing that I lost by switching away from a Quadro was 10bit color output which this monitor does support.
 
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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Would love to see the DIY server! Those are some fancy monitors. I am still using a HP ZR30w. It's at least somewhat close for STH purposes.
 

wyluliraven

Member
Nov 6, 2012
114
0
16
Atlanta, GA
Fair answers renderfarmer! The color nerds at Mercedes-Benz no doubt have done all the research and evaluations. Not all graphic people even go so far to use color accurate monitors. It pains me when I see all these "graphic artists" or "modelers" who use a standard yet uncalibrated IPS panel, namely the OSX junkies.

Drooling in anticipation of your DIY server post!
 

rayt

New Member
Apr 18, 2013
10
0
1
Wow Nice System there Renderfarm

question: Why did you choose core count over iGPU for rendering? Nvidea/AMD are really pushing CUDA/openCL cloud farms for deployments like yours.

My 1st post. Eventually I want to grow my system into a multiuser Video production farm. Hence my interest.
 

renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
249
1
18
New Jersey
Wow Nice System there Renderfarm

question: Why did you choose core count over iGPU for rendering? Nvidea/AMD are really pushing CUDA/openCL cloud farms for deployments like yours.

Thanks.

GPU rendering has come a long way but it still lags far behind CPU renderers in terms of feature set and overall quality.

Current GPU renderers are also severly limited by onboard VRAM - Tesla cards top out at 6GB/GPU. My interest is primarly in high-end animation and I have scenes that take up over 32GB of RAM even using sophisticated referencing, caching, and mipmapped textures. In that space, CPU renderers like PRman, Arnold, Vray, and Mental Ray are still king.

For motion graphics GPU rendering is probbaly much more feasible.

Let us know how your farm build goes.
 

rayt

New Member
Apr 18, 2013
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0
1
I respect your answer very much. I'm on the fence to as cuda rendering as I find the gtx670 is unstable and quality is variable. I have a quadro K4000 on order which *may be* more stable. And so, for now, I render only with cores. ( hence the e5-2687w build).

Yet, test reports like this one makes me question the best way forward. (its findings may not apply here)

NVIDIA GK110 vs. Dual Intel Xeon E5 2687W - Fight! | www.digicortex.net

My render farm is going to be a very long term project. The next step is to figure out the most stable way to virtualize (and max out ) the computational power I've got, and then strategically expand my system as the need grows.

Discussions like this really helps alot Thanks.