Spec me... a render farm in single box...

Dano

Dano

Dano

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If any of you lot are bored and fancy a challenge...

Got a mate who needs a video editing and rendering machine, he has got a quote from somewhere else, no idea where. It looks pricey but is using some very top end stuff so it's probably not that bad. He'd obviously like to spend as little as possible and I'm fairly certain that a far far cheaper machine will be able to attain a significant percentage of the raw power for a not so insignificant saving.

His request:

High defintion editing system with support for DVCPro HD and Sony XDCAM

Super Micro X7DWA-N motherboard
4GB ECC reg, buffered 667 DDR2 RAM
2x NH-U12F-XEON Quiet Intel XEON CPU Cooler
2x 2.66Ghz 1333Mhz X5430 Quad core Xeon processor (12MB cache)
250GB Hitachi EIDE 7200RPM 8MB Cache
2x Seagate 750GB 32MB Cache SATA drive
ATI 512MB 3650 DDR3 PCIe dual DVI graphic card
Matrox Axio LE PCIe hardware only - adds support for Panasonic DVCPro HD (P2) and Sony XDCam to Premiere Pro CS3, plus component and HD-SDI I/o
ADS Pyro PCI Card 1394DV 64Bit
2x 2m DVI-D (M) to DVI-D (M) cable for connecting monitor to graphics card
Power DVD 7 OEM [I don’t think this is essential]
Nero 8 essentials - CD and Data DVD writing software for your PC
Pioneer 115D DVD Writer Black
Edirol MA-15D Powered Speakers [Nice! But not essential]
HannsG 19'' HS191 LCD Monitor, DVI and D-Sub Inputs, res 1280 x 1024
Antec P190 case - two PSU, 650W for PC and 550W for hard drives. Quiet case suitable for Xeon processors
AVG Anti-Virus single user 1 year OEM [Not essential]
Windows XP Professional
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 (Windows) - Includes Encore and OnLocation
BLACK Floppy Drive [Not sure this is needed?]
Optical wheel Mouse (black) [Already have ball mouse]
Windows Keyboard Black [Already have black Dell keyboard]
DVC tutorial DVD - Matrox RT.X2 Discs 1 & 2 [Not required]

Only addition is Newtek Lightwave 9.4

The above spec is retailing at £6,145.25 Including VAT at 17.5%
Click to expand...

[comments are his not mine, but lol at saving money on the keyboard and mouse]

Bear in mind he is running something like an AMD 3800+ currently, I'm not even sure he wouldn't be better off just buying a pretty standard Quad core system as the upgrade in comparision is likely to be huge.

Your thoughts?
 
Yea the dual xeons are expensive rigs.. if he's willing to drop 4 cores, he can get a very nice quad, a decent enough overclock (while keeping it stable enough for 24/7 load) and save himself about 4 grand.
 
1. Why the 250gb pata hdd?
2. hd3650 - surely a 4670 would be more suitable?
3. Only a 19" screen?
4. 2 psu's in a P190? Should only need on big one shouldn't it? (HX1000?)
5. Mouse, go optical, balls are so 70's, lol.
 
ozzy said:
Yea the dual xeons are expensive rigs.. if he's willing to drop 4 cores, he can get a very nice quad, a decent enough overclock (while keeping it stable enough for 24/7 load) and save himself about 4 grand.
Click to expand...

That was my line of thought too.

slowrunner said:
1. Why the 250gb pata hdd?
2. hd3650 - surely a 4670 would be more suitable?
3. Only a 19" screen?
4. 2 psu's in a P190? Should only need on big one shouldn't it? (HX1000?)
5. Mouse, go optical, balls are so 70's, lol.
Click to expand...

Agreed, that was just the specs from a competitor I think, I should have mentioned that I thought a lot of it was somewhat off, sorry.
 
Don't get me wrong, if I had the cash I would get skulltrail setup. But if he really needs some grunt, then two seperate machines would be just as handy and far less money. Most 3D apps support network rendering, not sure about video editing mind you - not really my field.
 
6 grand is a ****ing rip off, you could build that spec for under 2 grand, and better.

300-400 for dual socket mobo,
600 for dual xeons,
400 for 16GB fully buffered ECC ram
100-200 for PSU
200 for HDD's/drives...
 
Samione said:
6 grand is a ****ing rip off, you could build that spec for under 2 grand, and better.

300-400 for dual socket mobo,
600 for dual xeons,
400 for 16GB fully buffered ECC ram
100-200 for PSU
200 for HDD's/drives...
Click to expand...

Yes the main pc, but don't forget to add in the cost of the Matrox Axio LE PCIe hardware, which is :eek:

I'll be getting more info from him later hopefully so I can check if he really needs it though.
 
4gb ram, 512mb video card... yet windows xp (assuming 32bit rather than 64bit as it should mention 64bit) seems a bit wasted there.

The matrox jobbie is £2800 from competitors so that still allows £3200 for a topspecced PC.
 
If its any help, I built a system based on exactly that motherboard and 2 Xeon 5420 (2.5GHz) models about a month or so ago.

You can overclock these to 3GHz using something called the BSEL mod (I think) which involves covering a single pin on the bottom of the Xeon with tape. It basically tricks the motherboard into thinking that it is a 400MHz bus part rather than a 333MHz part. The gamble you take is that the Xeons you buy are capable of running at that speed.

You would need 800MHz memory if you wanted to try this.

It has been absolutely rock stable during this time. I have it with 4GB Corsair FB memory and the HX1000 PSU and a 8800GT. Running Vista64 Buisness.

There is an argument for building 2 quad machines but the problem with this is that for quick test renderings you have an overhead of network transfer to the 'slave' machine. Not such a big problem during high res final renders but worthless for low res quick tests. I would rather have a single 8 core box than 2 quads.

A MacPro is a decent alternative - Careful though because it only has PCIe slots and no PCI. This was one of the reasons why I went this way.
 
you see the mac pro you could use PCI-E to PCI adapters (Y) typically with the mac pro there is not really much in the way of backwards compatibility
 
Imo a self build for such a high end system is a bad idea.

Its fine to fiddle about with your £500 system for games, if something goes wrong np, send off for warranty wait 3 weeks, and all sorted..

If spending that much your no doubt needing the system to be reliable and have a next day on site warranty.

The Matrox Axio alone costs around 2k, so adding up the rest, the builders are certainly making some money, but it isn't a ridiculous price for such a system. It is however missing a raid card and suitable hard disc's. The Antec case although hasn't too many bad things about it you could do a lot better if spending so much.

I personally have a dell t7400 dual 2.5ghz quad xeon, it cost around 1k. has 3 years on site next day service, has certified drivers for most development applications, providing rock solid stability in hardware and software. Worth looking into anyway.
 
I looked at the Dell and HP workstations before deciding to build it myself which I agree has a certain risk with relatively high value components.

I would love to know how you managed to get a Dell dual 2.5GHz Xeon quad for just over £1k though. A quick check on the Dell website shows that a 4GB box will be about £1500 + VAT.

Neverthless I think they are pretty good value considering the 3 yr next day warranty is included and if you are relying on the PC for business then they are certainly worth looking at.
 
Hmm 1 month ago, from the business section, 4gb ram, 512 quaddro gfx, sas HD. 2*e5420's, was 1037+vat and delivery.

However looking now they have gone up, last month they started at 780ish now 1k. but makes sense the £ has lost 25% of it's value.
 
Ouch,

Just realised the kick in the happy sacks in his original spec.

Matrox Axio LE PCIe hardware only - adds support for Panasonic DVCPro HD (P2) and Sony XDCam to Premiere Pro CS3, plus component and HD-SDI I/o
Click to expand...

Although I'm not familiar with this matrox system I am familiar with their edit systems of old (in fact I've built several very high end machines specifically for Matrox based video edit suites, not for a few years though). They are VERY good value for money hardware driven edit systems that do a lot of real time effects etc. that can only be done with time consuming rendering on a system using premier and no specialist hardware.

They have comparable edit performance to high end Avid and Apple Final cut pro (with AJA hardware) systems. A low end AVID Adrenaline which would have similar features to the specified matrox machine above, weighs in at about £15-20K with a reasonable amount of storage, broadcast standard video edit is a completely different kettle of fish price wise! Just for a laugh for you all, top end Avid nitrous, is £100K

Now the down side with the Matrox is they are VERY fussy about the hardware they run on. Don't even consider running this hardware/ software package on components not in the matrox validated hardware list as you only set yourself up for a world of hurt. The first of these systems I built many years ago was a completely flakey pig for a year until I swapped out the non matrox tested Supermicro motherboard to a tested and validate Tyan motherboard, even though both theoretically used the same chipsets, drivers, the works.

The other thing to be aware of if the user requires SDI or HDSI (broadcast standard digital picture connection) you have to buy some fairly expensive hardware video card (that's video card, not graphics card btw) just to get the picture into the computer (Broadcast doesn't use firewire..usualy only SDI or HD-SDI).

Also, if he wants to run proper broadcast HD (Sony XDCAM or HDCAM) rather than the crappy wannabe DV HD format, you need a lot of grunt as the data rates/ processing requirements are huge, hence the pair of quad core Xeons.

My guess would be that the dual Quads are specified to allow the Matrox card jto do what it does with multiple streams of very high data rate video, its not the same as a render farm, two boxes can't help the process as this needs to deal with the video data on the fly in real time, its not like 3D rendering.

Yes this is a very expensive system but its built for the job and reading the spec, I'd guess this company is a video specialist, and believe it or not it at a reasonable price point (compared to the big boys toys like Avid at least).

Maybe check out the Mac pro with Final cut pro and an appropriate HD AJA card, but I bet you that's no cheaper to do the same job...

Long and the short, broadcast video editing ain't cheap, but then when a Sony broadcast HDCam camera comes in at about £40K, you realise this isn't home video stuff.....

Most important point. Do not consider using any hardware not in the Matrox approved list (which is often quite a way behind current I'm afraid). As its not worth the pain of trying to get it to work stably.

Hope this helps,

E-I
 
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How the fark can what is essentially a few layers of PCB and some processors with an oversized breakout box be worth £3K?

They have GOT to be a lot cheaper to produce then that.

What exactly does it do apart from move some effects from software processing to hardware (what kind of effects are we on about here as well?)
 
The Core i7's (Nehalem) are meant to be the dogs danglies for rendering and other multithreaded apps.
It'll cost a bit (though less than that quote), and it's not out until the 14th, but should be worth it.
 
Darg said:
How the fark can what is essentially a few layers of PCB and some processors with an oversized breakout box be worth £3K?

They have GOT to be a lot cheaper to produce then that.

What exactly does it do apart from move some effects from software processing to hardware (what kind of effects are we on about here as well?)
Click to expand...

I guess its a case that this stuff is pretty specialised. The chips that process these effects (DVE's, digital video effects) have to process multiple effects such as blends, chromakeying, transparency flying boxes and all that sort of stuff on multiple video streams that each can easily be as high as 50Mbs, that requires a lot of specialised processing, by custom designed chips on a lot of information that has to happen in real time.

Also to produce this stuff as its not hardware thats selling in the millions of units, the economies of scale aren't great either.

15 years ago a broadcast edit suite to do the same job as as a £20K Avid would have been half a million pounds worth of very expensive tape decks visions mixers and controllers etc. So on the scale of things its a hell of a lot cheaper than it used to be!

E-I
 
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