Build spec for a render-farm manager

Xandos

Xandos

Xandos

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Joined
19 Aug 2006
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596
Hi guys, I was hoping for a little advice about a suitable specification for a render-farm manager. What it does, is basically sit on a network, receive registrations from other network machines, and sends out tasks to them (varying from 1mb-1gb). The rendered frames will then be sent to and stored on this computer. It also might function as a network share for dependant files, ie textures etc.

So basically what I'm looking for is a rock solid stable machine, with at least 2TB of disk space - I don't really know anything about RAID but it needs to be that if a disk dies, there is a backup alternative.

Now, I wouldn't imagine this needs much CPU/RAM really, as all it's essentially doing is moving files around a network.

I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts about this build. There is no budget as such, just something that does exactly what I need it to at a price worth paying for what it does.... If it wasn't for probably needing a bunch of HDDs in it I'd be tempted by something small form factor.

Thanks for reading!

Oh yeah, it's Gigabit network obviously, is there anything one can do to, I don't know, stop it from getting cluttered if for example it's sending a load of data to one machine whilst another is trying to request some...
 
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i would advise but since i browse this site on my phone like 90% of the time, it's not convenient for me to do up a basket.

but you'll get a wee amd build cheap enough, or you could go core2duo or core2quad, as those are considered old hat by the enthusiast market, and as such will be cheap as chips.

sowork out what you want to spend, start around one of these chips, then look for a matching board with built in raid (most gigabyte and asus boards have it), then have a look for a pair of 2tb hard disks and your basically done.

if your not using heavy grphics intensive gear just get the cheapest one as most good boards don't have onboard graphics, as for power, i'd say you'd need no more than 450 watts for this, budget 40 for your power supply.

as for opticals, there's a 14 quid dvdrw on this site, does the job rightly. enjoy.
 
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