What do I look for when buying a render farm or rendering machine?

Support Technical Support
, ,
1

I’d really like to speed up my rendering for my animation work and I would like to invest in something that can speed that up and leave my main PC free to work on. I’ve always used render farms, but it might be cheaper in the long term to invest in some hardware instead.

I’m looking for some recommendations and information on this subject, as I begin my deep-dive journey into this topic, as I’m a complete newbie when it comes to this stuff!! So thanks in advance for any help!

I use cycles for all my animations at the moment.

My main questions centre around:

  • do I need a render machine that has a few dedicated graphics cards for GPU rendering, or will just a processor with tonnes of cores and a huge amount RAM work as a CPU rendering? How many CPU cores do I need to see a significant increase in render time? Is CPU rendering effectively cheaper because you don’t need to spend tonnes of graphics cards? Below are a few render machines I’ve found but I’m not sure which direction to take.

My sister has a BOXX RenderPro 2 that is an amazing desktop renderer, but it’s not available anymore. The BOXX APEXX and RAXX systems are available but the RenderPro seems to be far faster than the APEXX - in fact twice as fast if you read some reviews. The RenderPro uses the Xeon processor integrated graphics, unlike the APEXX and RAXX that seem to use high-end Nvidia graphic cards

BOXX APEXX 2 (£3,449 for older model) ■ Intel Core i7 6700K CPU (4.4GHz) (4 cores). ■ 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 memory. ■ 512GB Samsung SM951 SSD + 4TB Western Digital Enterprise Class 7,200RPM SATA HDD. ■ Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB) GPU.

BOXX RENDERPRO 2 (£4,750 at the time) ■ 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2650 v4 CPU (2.20GHz up to 2.90GHz) (12 cores). ■ 64GB DDR4 memory. ■ 240GB 2.5-inch SATA SSD.

BOXX RAXX X3 (varied prices based on config there is a huge range of these on the boxx website) ■ 10-core Intel® Core™ X-Series 3.3GHz ■ 128GB DDR4-2933MHz ■ NVIDIA® Quadro® P2200 5GB ■ 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD

Also available are SCAN computer render servers. This one below looks ok at £4,000 but like the BOXX RAXX it might have to be part of a rack system which is fine but will get expensive when you have to buy quite a few to make it useful.

3XS EGX N4-1E-G2

  • AMD EPYC™ 7262, S SP3, 7nm, Infinity / Zen 2, 8 Core, 16 Thread, 3.2GHz, 3.4GHz Turbo, 128MB, 155W, CPU, OEM
  • 2U rackmount server based on Gigabyte G242-Z10, hot-swap 1600W Platinum PSUs, on-board Aspeed AST2500 graphics
  • 64GB (8x 8GB) ECC Reg DDR4 2933MHz
  • 250GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus

And then lastly there is this one… no graphics card insight and the Xeon processer doesn’t even have integrated graphics!!! but maybe that’s OK? I just don’t know? And for the price, it seems great at £2,945!! It’s also been built with BLENDER CPU rendering in mind - apparently!

HP C7000 BladeSystem incl. 4 x BL460C G7 Server Blades

48 CPU Cores / 96Threads 384GB Memory

Model C7000 BladeSystem

Specifications: (Each Server Blade) Compute 2 x SIX Core Intel Xeon X5650 2.66GHz 12M 12 Cores / 24 Threads Memory 96GB PC3 Memory (12 x 8GB) Storage 1 x 300gb 10K 2.5" SFF SAS (300/600/900gb SAS / SSD options)*** Backplane Two (2) small form factor (SFF) SAS or SATA hot plug hard disk drives or SATA SSD RAID HP Smart Array P410i Controller (RAID 0/1) Networking Integrated Dual Port FlexFabric 1GB/10Gb Network Adapter

So which one of these would be best? Just a really good computer like the APEXX with amazing graphics cards? (but I only really want it for rendering) Or a rack server type like the RAXX or scan computer one and I just buy more over the years and not expect much rendering help initially or get a mini Bladesystem render farm that has no graphics in sight! Or maybe there is another solution I haven’t found.

I won’t be any good at building my own render farm unless I have specific instructions on what to get, so an ‘out the box’ solution might be better - but I’m happy to be convinced otherwise.

Thank you very much for any help in advance - I understand it’s a huge topic and there are probably 1000 ways to build one!

2

First of all, change your focus from CPU to GPU rendering, since we’re talking about cycles here.
The 2nd thing you should address is how much are you willing to spend on this farm? And with this amount of money, how much render time would you be able to buy from an online render farm, to see if it’s worth building your own.
The rest could be discussed later on.

3

Thanks for your super fast reply! :slight_smile:
So I really need something with a graphics card in then? Even if I had 48 CPU cores and 384 GB RAM it would be much faster to render with a lower number of CPU cores and RAM but a super swishy graphics card?
I have read (not sure if it’s true) that GPU rendering is faster for cycles with an average desktop PC but when you get to super CPU renderer with a ridiculous number of cores and tonnes of RAM that it outpaces a GPU renderer anyway?

And then I read things like this “CPU usually supports all features while GPU not always so it depends from render to render. CPU limited by RAM which is upgradable to really large sizes, while GPU limited to VRAM thru now in some renders they can access RAM in addition, but it also makes them go slower. GPU usually faster and it’s more easy to stack them, but that also depends, Threadripper 3990x with it 64 cores does beat single TITAN RTX”

Price-wise - apparently if you want anything decent you have to spend over £4500!! I understand that initially, it’s cheaper to use an online render farm - but some forums say in the end the ‘home render farm’ will make its money back. So many conflicting reports it’s hard to know which one to favour!
Thanks again! :grinning:

4

Hi MedicalArts,

It all boils down to your needs. From your username, I’m assuming you specialize in medical simulations. Are you creating massively complex scenes that won’t fit on a GPU? What is the average size of your scenes? Be realistic and allow for expansion into the future.

I suggest doing more homework before you purchase. Cycles rending on a GPU is much faster than a CPU as long as one doesn’t run out of memory (like you mentioned) and yes CPU supports all features. I’ve run out of VRAM a few times and had to switch to CPU only which is super slow for me as I have an older Xeon W3690 PC with 6 cores only.

384GB of RAM is way more than any GPU could handle even with shared pooling. A fancy RTX A6000 can pool up to 96GB using 2 cards but this would cost way more than your farm just for the cards themselves. Not to mention the issues with getting your hands on GPU’s these days.

For comparative speeds use Blender Open Data benchmarks to give you an idea (use the search feature to quickly find something) : https://opendata.blender.org/

A RTX 3090 with 24GB is a nice fast solution if it would work for what you intend. Perhaps check with your sister regarding needed resources.

To give you a rough idea on performance your Xeon X5650 (x2) score is 551 (median render time). While an RTX 3070 is 75 and RTX 3090 is 45 to 47. So 1 RTX 3070 is over 7 times faster than two X5650 CPUs. But again the 3070 has 8GB (using virtual memory one can bump this up at the cost of speed). For Cycles the scene must fit within the GPU’s memory or it will fail. So you’ll need to work out what will work for you and your type of work (and also your future work). Wondering how much power that farm needs? Make sure you won’t pop your electrical panel! It’s all part of doing the research. Just curious though which OS are you planning to put on your farm?

Big improvements apparently coming down the pipe with Cycles-X for both CPU & GPU rendering so this will help to down the road.

Good review on the RTX 3090.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_rtx_3090_founder_review,1.html

5

This is not the case with cycles. Even a 3060ti could be faster than a threadripper 3990x in some scenarios for a small fraction of the price.

And cycles GPU has all the features available. Cycles CPU doesn’t have an advantage here either. I guess you’re mislead by information for other renderers, like vray RT GPU.
The tough part is that GPUs aren’t available right now, and the only way to get your hands on them is mainly by buying pre built systems. I’ll post some options later, based on what you’ve said so far about the budget and the use.

1 Like
6

I’ve looked around for pre-built systems. None of them comes with 2 gpus installed. Maybe some custom builds on request could include two gpus, but 4.500£ wouldn’t be enough with current gpu prices and availability. So, what I would probably do is to order a pre-built system with one gpu for now, but with a motherboard and a psu appropriate for two gpus, so as to be able to add a 2nd gpu in time.

This is a custom PC from Cyberpower UK. I post it here as a guide. You could add a 2nd gpu when prices come down to normal at some point in the future:

Pc config
Pc config2338×1481 414 KB

1 Like
7

Wow thank you pxlpaul, such a detailed reply thank you!

Yes, you are right I need to do a tonne more homework on this. I think I just wrongly assumed there was an easy fix solution to at-home rendering - magically there might be a freelancers ‘GPU render-box’ somewhere out there :smile: When my sister got her BOXX RenderPro and it quadrupled her render speed, but I suppose it was only built for CPU rendering for 3D studio max. When I’ve tried it for cycles CPU rendering it was twice as fast as my GPU render time on my computer but then anything would beat my old intel i7 with Quadro p4000!

Yes, I create medial simulations and occasionally I run out of VRAM if the scene is very complex with loads of particle systems happening at once. I spend half my time optimising my scenes as my reach often exceeds my grasp when I keep trying to make my animations look like big budge/huge studio masterpieces! The new RTX 3090 founds fantastic and I’ll make sure I incorporate it in a new desktop which I think would be the best way forwards.

I’ll certainly keep an eye out for all the new improvements coming with Cycles-X - sounds exciting!

Thanks again for your time - extremely kind of you!

8

I can’t thank you enough for your reply - and for creating a custom PC on Cyberpower UK!
Excellent idea about adding the 2nd GPU at a later time. I’ll make sure I incorporate that.

Thank you very much for your time, knowledge and expertise!
I’ll have a fun morning playing around on Cyberpower and plan my next desktop.

Thanks again - very kind of you to spare the time to help me out!

1 Like
9

My pleasure. We’re here if you need anything. Happy blending!

10

Hi Birdnamnam,
I was just putting together my order to cyberpower and I noticed in your build that you had two SSDs

  • 1 TB Samsung 980
  • 2 TB ADATA XPG SX8200
    Was that for a particular reason - is it because of cache maybe?

Thank you!

Also, side note - Cyberpower says they have no ETA on the 3090s but they estimate about a 4-6 week wait! I suppose that’s not too bad considering the current climate :slight_smile:

11

Yes, you always need two drives at least for this kind of use. The 980 pro would be the main drive for OS and apps like blender etc and the second drive would be used for fast storage of various files like textures, older projects and things like that, which usually take a lot of space to store. It can also be used for application caches, like blender simulations, Photoshop caches etc.
By the way, I have these two particular drives installed in my PC and I’m happy with their performance. The use is similar to yours.

Yeap, this is the situation unfortunately. If you get it in a one month’s time you should be happy. Things with GPUs right now are quite complicated.

PS if the 3080 is easier to get, go for it first and add a 3090 in time, to use it for rendering. The 3080 is quite close to the 3090 when it comes to rendering performance, it just has less vram, but usually enough for animation projects etc