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Project Helmer the Render Farm
So I've been wanting to expand my horizons with the 3D animations I make, as currently working with just my iMac it's really not ideal to let it render a full 3D animated scene really slowly and then I'm not able to use the computer whilst it's rendering.
I decided I will lighten the workload and build a little budget render farm to not only speed up my render times, but so it can take the full workload and let me then start working on the next scene or work on something else whilst i wait.
I've being doing a lot of research on how other people do it and looking at other projects, and a piece of Ikea furniture started to be mentioned frequently by many people. As a huge fan of Ikea Hacks I didn't need much convincing to grab myself an Ikea Helmer for £25, then start to plan on my hardware choices.
The drawers are great because not only are they cheap but they are the perfect size to fit in a micro-ATX motherboard and a power supply unit.
Thanks to help in this thread, I quickly bought my hardware and now it's arrived I can now start on the build.
Here's my box of goodies, even with a couple of tasty packets of Haribo
and all the bits, each pile will go in a drawer
Sadly I could not afford to fill every drawer, but this will be a good starting point that I can upgrade on later.
Here is a quick mock of the PSU, motherboard and one of the fans (to see the thickness) sitting in one of the drawers
My first port of call I think will be to sort out all the excess wiring coming from the PSU. The cables hanging over the outside of the drawer at the top of the picture above aren't needed (The seperate SATA power cables and the graphics card power cables).
I'm not really good with a soldering iron, nor do I think the cheap Aldi one we have will be good enough to take the wires straight from the PSU, but I was thinking of cutting the wires from inside the PSU and then covering the ends up. Not sure how good of a job that will be or if its safe or not, does anyone have any suggestions?
Specs per drawer:
1 x Intel Core i5-3450 3.10GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £143.99
1 x Sandisk Ultra SSD 60GB 2.5" SATA-2 Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDH-060G-G25) £41.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
1 x MSI H61M-P31-G3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £33.90
1 x Antec VP350P 350W '80 Plus' Continuous Power Supply £32.99
1 x Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XR2 Fan - 60mm £3.49
2 x Xilence XPF80R Red Wing 80mm Quiet Fan £6.64 (£3.32 each)
Total per drawer: £307.01 inc VAT
I also went for a TP-Link 5 Port Gigabit Desktop Switch (TL-SG1005D), so grand total for the hardware for two drawers plus the switch box came to £630 inc VAT, thanks to the free next day delivery that is offered for long standing members. So current spend is £655.
So I've been wanting to expand my horizons with the 3D animations I make, as currently working with just my iMac it's really not ideal to let it render a full 3D animated scene really slowly and then I'm not able to use the computer whilst it's rendering.
I decided I will lighten the workload and build a little budget render farm to not only speed up my render times, but so it can take the full workload and let me then start working on the next scene or work on something else whilst i wait.
I've being doing a lot of research on how other people do it and looking at other projects, and a piece of Ikea furniture started to be mentioned frequently by many people. As a huge fan of Ikea Hacks I didn't need much convincing to grab myself an Ikea Helmer for £25, then start to plan on my hardware choices.
The drawers are great because not only are they cheap but they are the perfect size to fit in a micro-ATX motherboard and a power supply unit.
Thanks to help in this thread, I quickly bought my hardware and now it's arrived I can now start on the build.
Here's my box of goodies, even with a couple of tasty packets of Haribo
and all the bits, each pile will go in a drawer
Sadly I could not afford to fill every drawer, but this will be a good starting point that I can upgrade on later.
Here is a quick mock of the PSU, motherboard and one of the fans (to see the thickness) sitting in one of the drawers
My first port of call I think will be to sort out all the excess wiring coming from the PSU. The cables hanging over the outside of the drawer at the top of the picture above aren't needed (The seperate SATA power cables and the graphics card power cables).
I'm not really good with a soldering iron, nor do I think the cheap Aldi one we have will be good enough to take the wires straight from the PSU, but I was thinking of cutting the wires from inside the PSU and then covering the ends up. Not sure how good of a job that will be or if its safe or not, does anyone have any suggestions?
Specs per drawer:
1 x Intel Core i5-3450 3.10GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £143.99
1 x Sandisk Ultra SSD 60GB 2.5" SATA-2 Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDH-060G-G25) £41.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
1 x MSI H61M-P31-G3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £33.90
1 x Antec VP350P 350W '80 Plus' Continuous Power Supply £32.99
1 x Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XR2 Fan - 60mm £3.49
2 x Xilence XPF80R Red Wing 80mm Quiet Fan £6.64 (£3.32 each)
Total per drawer: £307.01 inc VAT
I also went for a TP-Link 5 Port Gigabit Desktop Switch (TL-SG1005D), so grand total for the hardware for two drawers plus the switch box came to £630 inc VAT, thanks to the free next day delivery that is offered for long standing members. So current spend is £655.
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