making your own renderfarm

[dragonassasin]

i have 5 or so older computers still good just not as good as what i use is there a way for me to harness thier proccessing power instead of thier dust colecting power for my renders and games???

[geldslaw]

yes there is, there's the july issue of 3DWorld that actually explains how to make a renderfarm. you might want to search their website for the article on how to do it

[OzziGuy]

Does it matter if the computer isnt running that well? Or is it only how powerful the cpu and ram is? Because i have an old computer that runs pretty slowly now, but it has a 3ghz processor and 2gb of ram

[Jelmer]

Hmm I think it will have an influence, but of course you could just re-install your PC, if it's not a hardware issue it will usually be a lot faster after doing that.

[MrTom]

Originally Posted by OzziGuy

i have an old computer that runs pretty slowly now, but it has a 3ghz processor and 2gb of ram

....and you call that old?

Maybe i'm a bit behind the times here, but if I had access to that I'd hook it up pronto!

One phrase springs to mind, 'it's only as good as the weakest link', but in the case of renderfarms this doesn't really apply. The slower server doesn't neccessarly slow the whole process down....unless it gets to render the last bucket....but Autodesk are working on that!

All it means is that the slower server will render less buckets, because it takes it more time to calculate, the faster servers take no notice of it and carry on at their own pace.

If you have an old PC lying around (whatever age), it can always be used to speed up rendering, especially if you go for a bare bones install of OS and Max only.......leaving out everything you don't really need.

I only wish I had the power of your 'old' PC to start with......think yourself lucky.

Regards.

[Amotea]

It can very well be that it's just an old Pentium III, those Pentiums had clockspeeds up to about 3,4GHz if I remember correctly. Clockspeed isn't all that important anymore nowadays. Most cores run around 2.0GHz these days and still beat those old PIIIs by miles.

[Lithium 3D]

Yes mostly with the multi core systems... personally I am waiting for the 3.8 ghz quad core :P

[CU441ES]

lol how much would that be :P

[MrTom]

Well I bow my head to those of you who know your stuff when it comes to clockspeeds and the like!

At the moment I have no idea what is good or bad in terms of processing power....there seems to be so much choice!

So what would be classed as an average configuration? (either off the shelf or DIY).

What configuration do you guys use?

It used to be simple, but now it's a total minefield!

Regards.

[Jelmer]

It's still quite simple, most of the time you can apply the rule "you get what you pay for" meaning a more expensive CPU performs better, but before you buy of course, you should investigate if this is true for your cpu you're considering.

Furthermore you should have a good balance between cpu, memory, hd and videocard and all the other components. An average? that's hard to say, you could take a look at benchmarks of course, tomshardware.com is a good one for that, Tom.