Old 8core macpro as c4d RenderFarm ?

[noich]

Hi, I’have a 12 core mac pro, and I do 3D animation, with c4d and vray.
I need extra power to render my work.


I’m thinking of buying one maybe two old mac pro 8 core at 2.8ghz as render nodes.
They are 2008 - 2010 used computer around &400, $500 depending on ram to add.

Using team render (c4dVray standalone) and a gigabit switch, do you think it’s a good and cheep solution for render farm (render network) ?


Thanks for your advise
Noich

 

[ScottishCaptain]

Depends on what model it is.

I wouldn't recommend the 2008 (or earlier) machines. They use FBDIMM memory, which runs hot, sucks up a lot of power, and isn't very fast compared to the later DDR technology.

The 2009 and 2010 machines are fine though. The 2010 is preferable if you're going to be buying a dual CPU model and upgrading it later, since it takes standard CPUs whereas the dual CPU board for the 2009 Mac Pro requires lidless CPUs (which are impossible to find, because nobody except Apple ever used them). If it's a single CPU machine then it doesn't matter, they're nearly identical on a hardware level.

On a somewhat related side note, I wouldn't recommend buying two machines to begin with. Team Render is notoriously unstable under C4D R15+ and I hear that the VRAYforC4D plugin is somewhat troublesome in such situations as well. For whatever reason, MAXON doesn't seem very interested in actually fixing TRS as it has been broken in some way for over two releases now (R16 and R17, though the latest R17 patch fixed a lot of things, it broke a lot of other things as well).

My point is that you should probably try one additional node first to make sure everything works **reliably** before you run off and buy a bunch of other machines. I made this exact mistake about a year and a half ago when I picked up a stack of 2012 Mac Minis. I've never been able to get them all working reliably 100% of the time. There is always something going wrong somewhere (clients stuck at 99%, clients disappearing from jobs, clients rendering without all the textures they need, etc). Most of them now sit idle because I can't count on them not to screw up a long running render job. I'm actually looking at switching away from C4D for this exact reason, because from what I hear R18 isn't going to be any better.

-SC

 

[noich]

Thanks for your answer. yes i'm gonna try with only one at first. I have been running team render server and client on a network of machine, I had the same problem. Can work sometime 100% but the next day, an other render and some machine don't want to render. Vray as is own DR render, but you can't use c4d shader since the slave are c4dvray standalone.

 

[Chosen Rumor]

Thanks for your answer. yes i'm gonna try with only one at first. I have been running team render server and client on a network of machine, I had the same problem. Can work sometime 100% but the next day, an other render and some machine don't want to render. Vray as is own DR render, but you can't use c4d shader since the slave are c4dvray standalone.

How did this go? I run 4 old Mac Pros. My 12 core Mac Pro is the main machine, plus 3 other old Mac Pros (8 core) over team render. I don't use Vray. Everything has been up to par with my relatively new 32 core PC at my day job. My 8 core machines were $250 each, and I don't believe I've had any memory related bottlenecks as mentioned. The performance is excellent in any case. Physical space is the only limit I've encountered.

 

[mikas]

In the beginning of this year I had a render farm described in the attachment. The speed increase stopped at 5x of the host machine somewhere between 5-6 machines total in my team render network. So the slowest ones are to be dropped now. Actually they allready have been dropped, they were not usefull. I have a faster one to replace 4 of them. And I need to upgrade the LAN from 100Mbps to 1Gbps too. It surely can be a bottleneck here.

But teamrender is good to have. Sometimes 5x speed is undoubtly a good thing, isn't it.

 

[Chosen Rumor]

How did this go? I run 4 old Mac Pros. My 12 core Mac Pro is the main machine, plus 3 other old Mac Pros (8 core) over team render. I don't use Vray. Everything has been up to par with my relatively new 32 core PC at my day job. My 8 core machines were $250 each, and I don't believe I've had any memory related bottlenecks as mentioned. The performance is excellent in any case. Physical space is the only limit I've encountered.

Aaak! I mean 32 thread.