Render farm (3ds Max related, plus CPU and Ram)

[Storm]

I know this could go in a number of different forums, like CPU, Ram, Graphics or Software so threw it in here as its relevant to all of them.

I want to start to build a render farm, my current AMD 64 x2 4400+ is fast and dandy. Had it a year ago, £1500, 2gb ram, 7900 GTX, blah blah. My problem is rendering animations and rendering using the Vray rendering engine which can take hours and hours to render a single image.

Anyways, I want to spec up a basic machine to help out with the rendering and my question is when it comes to rendering with software like 3ds Max, am I right in saying its all about processor power and the amount of ram, nothing else really has an effect on render times.

I've found a machine by a well known online PC company for £443 inc vat.
Spec is C2D E6400, 2gb DDR2 533, 256b Intel Graphics Accelerator, blah, blah. Motherboard is Asus P5B-TMX. Now I know the graphics card is onboard but that shouldn't matter in the slightest should it. I kinda know the answer, just want second opinions before spending the wadge and then thinking, damn I needed X, Y or Z too be better.

Thanks for any advice,

 

[Hades]

Yep, you need oodles of processor power and plenty of RAM. Forget graphics and sound. Personally I'd also consider a gigabit network adapter at each end and a gigabit switch.

A loooooooooooong tiem ago I was playing around with Lightwave on the Amiga. I only had one machine but I found that setting up several batch LW's on the same machine and creating a renderfarm (even without any other machines) actually reduced total rendering time. So with a dual core CPU already, it may be worth trying something similar.

 

[iBot]

Just grab some cheap pc's from your local school.

Get them installed with backburner and f@h and your good to go