True, some shops do have the infrastructure to support water cooled servers. We aren't one of them. Our server room configuration doesn't allow for the risk of a leaking cooler.

Since this machine would be dedicated for Octane, what would you recommend that we build given the budget. You critiqued ...

I'm looking to build a dedicated render server for Octane.

Current thoughts:

Supermicro 4028GR-TRT barebones server
-24x ram slots
-dual xeon 5x v3
-8x pcie3 x16 slots (dual width)
-4x 1600watt power supply
-8x 90mm fan
-24x 2.5" hot swap bays
-2x 10gb lan

2x Intel Xeon 5620 2.4ghz 6 core cpu
16x ...