Modest GPU & CPU render nodes? Cheap, Fast & Good? :) Tweet

[carmichael84]

Hey guys,

Looking for a little advice here on building out a few render nodes. Trying to figure out best bang for the buck for CPU + GPU nodes. I'm a remote freelancer so just looking to add a bit more horsepower to my setup. I've been using Octane a ton, but also want the option to be able to throw CPU renders in Arnold to my network. Looking to spend probably max ~8k.

Am I crazy or do older workstations seem like a really nice value / performance ratio?

Option 1 I've been thinking about is getting a few older workstations with Dual Xeons, like the HPz600/800 or Dell equivalent, and try to fit 2 gtx1080's in them or maybe 1070's. I've been finding Z800's with 12 core x5675 CPU's for about $660. + 2 1080s@ $500ish = about $1660/rig

Option 2 is find some older xeon chips like maybe e5-2670's and build my own rigs. This seems like it's going to be a bit more expensive just because the mother boards for these chips are still in the $400-$500 range.

Option 3 - Maybe buy some old 12 core 5.1 mac pros. Seems promising considering the 10 series drivers are soon to be released, and I know these machines are solid still. Not so sure about their HP or Dell equivalents which seem like a pain to work on.

Option 4 - Build or buy 1 single modern beastly Dual Xeon machine with multi GPU's. This is definitely the simple solution, but considering I've been seeing 12 core and 16 core z800/820's for about 600-1200, I can't help but feel like I'd get a bit more cores getting older machines. Granted they'll be slower per core, but for CPU rendering that's fine. The downside to the older rigs is it's looking like maybe 2 GPU's max, and I'd probably still have to upgrade the power supplies?

Even if I can only fit 2 cards / machine, I could probably afford to pick up 4 12 core machines and add 2 GPU's each, giving me 48 cores for CPU and 8 more GPU's. My main rig is a 5960x with 4x980ti's, so I'm really just looking for some machines to help with some heavy lifting at render time...

If anyone can help me weigh out the pro's and cons I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks yall.

[glimpse]

good topic!

Actually it is wise to buy slightly older tech & used card would give You better value, for sure..BUT! You always need to take into account licence costs, additional operating systems & so on..

Here is an alternative build I would see being a wise move for render node to be used for Octane.

Sticking with older gen Z170 board that has PLX ( 8 lanes for each of four GPUs) - ~ 250$
Adding quad core (no need of HT), so You can get pretty cheap 300-400$
Good & stable PSU - looking at parts like HX line from corsair in a range between 800-1200W that would be 200-300$
RAM depending on needs, but at least 32 GB & that's another 200$
Some case + set of good fans in total let's say 250$
System drive (well, it depends on Your needs but even basic 120GB SSD would do the job) that less than 100$

in total for the backbone without GPU You would pay somewhere between 1500-200$ - keep in mind that this node would need only one standalone licence to be used via network (unlike 3-4 boxes with pair of lower end GPUs, so You save at least 1000$)

& then You can add crazy amount of power ontop. if You wish - stay with 1070s, but if I were to invest into some render node, I would get 1080Ti..one two, & later all four. On air, out of the box those would give between 170-190 in OctanBench & if tweaked over 200, so from single machine for around 4k$ (1500$ + 300$ + 4x 700$) You can get ~800 in OctaneBench.

Task for You ;) try to do calculations & beat this value 800 in OctaneBench, ~10GB of usable VRAM for roughly 4k$. & if You look from this perspective, taking into account all the costs, building new system that would perform very good is not that expensive compared to used nodes. For sure You can build cheaper, but You would not get that amount of VRAM, You CPUs might be slower or.. You would have 3-4 systems (paying extra for licences, etc).

I guess we all have slightly different preferences & it's OK, just wanted to point the same situation from slightly different perspective. hope that makes sense & You will find that being useful ;)

[carmichael84]

First off, Glimpse, thanks for being all over this forum dropping knowledge!

This is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. I ended up picking up one of the z620's and stuffed 2 1070's in it. So far it's been working great, 16 cores of CPU + I get about 260 on hacked Octane Bench, which was surprising. Total cost for the 1 rig + Standalone license was $1520. Seems like a wash in the end (buying 2-3 more of these VS 1 4 GPU monster.)
Either way I'd get close to 800 octane bench, but have to deal with upkeep of multiple machines + networking and having older used hardware...

If you don't mind, can you recommend a Z170 board that is reliable with PLX for 4GPUs? I didn't even know about this. Figured I'd have to go up to one of the more expensive 6 core + chips to get enough PCIE lanes...

[Rebelismo]

Hey guys,

Looking for a little advice here on building out a few render nodes. Trying to figure out best bang for the buck for CPU + GPU nodes. I'm a remote freelancer so just looking to add a bit more horsepower to my setup. I've been using Octane a ton, but also want the option to be able to throw CPU renders in Arnold to my network. Looking to spend probably max ~8k.

Am I crazy or do older workstations seem like a really nice value / performance ratio?

Option 1 I've been thinking about is getting a few older workstations with Dual Xeons, like the HPz600/800 or Dell equivalent, and try to fit 2 gtx1080's in them or maybe 1070's. I've been finding Z800's with 12 core x5675 CPU's for about $660. + 2 1080s@ $500ish = about $1660/rig

Option 2 is find some older xeon chips like maybe e5-2670's and build my own rigs. This seems like it's going to be a bit more expensive just because the mother boards for these chips are still in the $400-$500 range.

Option 3 - Maybe buy some old 12 core 5.1 mac pros. Seems promising considering the 10 series drivers are soon to be released, and I know these machines are solid still. Not so sure about their HP or Dell equivalents which seem like a pain to work on.


Option 4 - Build or buy 1 single modern beastly Dual Xeon machine with multi GPU's. This is definitely the simple solution, but considering I've been seeing 12 core and 16 core z800/820's for about 600-1200, I can't help but feel like I'd get a bit more cores getting older machines. Granted they'll be slower per core, but for CPU rendering that's fine. The downside to the older rigs is it's looking like maybe 2 GPU's max, and I'd probably still have to upgrade the power supplies?

Even if I can only fit 2 cards / machine, I could probably afford to pick up 4 12 core machines and add 2 GPU's each, giving me 48 cores for CPU and 8 more GPU's. My main rig is a 5960x with 4x980ti's, so I'm really just looking for some machines to help with some heavy lifting at render time...

If anyone can help me weigh out the pro's and cons I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks yall.

Hey Carmichael84!

I actually ended up going with something close to option 1, because I purchased a refurbished HP Z620 with a 8-core Xeon E5-2670 2.6GHz , and 64GB DDR3 Memory. I put two cards in there, and it's a nice addition to my other systems. I haven't had any issues with it, so I'd say that it's a good value. Galax recently announced a single slot 1070, so if you have the necessary ports and a decent power supply, that might also be an option in the near future. I personally don't do a lot of cpu rendering anymore, because the return on investment wasn't as good as the gpu. The same is true with anything Apple. No need to worry whether drivers will be supported natively or not.

Besides building a physical farm, I'm also intrigued by the idea of something like ORC where you don't have to own the equipment and scale as needed. There are of course issues with each approach, but the good thing is that you have plenty of available options and the cost is not outrageous.

[carmichael84]

Hey Rebelismo!

Thanks for chiming in. I'm glad I'm not the only one swooping up those old workstations. I picked up a 16 core z620 for $500! My main gripe is the power supply's need to be upgraded in order to fit anything more power hungry than a 1070. BUT, I was able to get 2 1070s in stock with a pretty decent overclock and it's a very welcome addition.

Glimpse brought up some good points though which I wasn't really considering/ price / performance. I had my mind set on getting more CPU and GPU power, and these 16 core xeon machines even though they're older still are pretty amazing. I think the sweet spot for me is going to be getting one more z620, then instead of stacking those up, building another 4x GPU z170 slave machine (eventually).

I think I've come to the realization that really anything heavy enough to require me to switch to CPU rendering, I'll probably be throwing it to the cloud anyway. It'll still be nice to have a little extra CPU power though for doing test renders of animations. I'm sure GPU cloud rendering will catch up but at the moment it seems like it's more beneficial to just build some cheap nodes that have enough power to get 4+ cards.

Looking for suggestions on a z170 board with the PLX chip that can fit 4 GPUs.

I was looking at:
Asus z170 ws
EVGA classified K
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming G1

Was kind of leaning toward the Asus just because I've done an asus e-as build that's been super solid, but I know every board is different.

The EVGA seems the cheapest, so maybe that's best for a renderslave? Maybe none of these are good? Who knows