Home made render farm nodes for 3dstudio, ATHLON II X4 630 based

[MrPositive]

Hello,

I am preparing some specs for my friend who needs to build a small render farm for freelance work. She will start with maybe 2 nodes node, to free up her workstation from rendering. She works on 3D Max 2010, and plans to use backburner. She is still figuring out the details of licensing though. Here is what I have prepared for her:



AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor - 99 USD
Open Box: MSI 785GM-E65 AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - 64 USD
A-DATA Gaming Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model AX3U1600GB2G9-AG - Retail - 107 USD


+ cheapest SATA drive
+ reasonably priced PSU
+ case (or ikea rack )

What do you think?

 

[mosox]

Looks good

HDD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181

PSU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171046

Cases:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119203

comes in four colors, pick the one you like from the site

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129074

For the RAM get these, they work on the lower (standard) voltage

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211364

 

[4745454b]

Is the Athlon x4 the best choice? You might want to look at some benchmarks and see how well 3D max 2010 responds to cores/L3 cache. You might be better off with an x3 that still has the L3 cache enabled. Other then that, looks good.

 

[mikey5802]

I presume that you do understand the implications of the MSI board being an "open box item", Yes? MSRP is $89.99 and the open box is selling for $26.00 off that price. At that price differential, it means it's probably missing everything but the mobo.

 

[MrPositive]

Is the Athlon x4 the best choice? You might want to look at some benchmarks and see how well 3D max 2010 responds to cores/L3 cache. You might be better off with an x3 that still has the L3 cache enabled. Other then that, looks good.

Most benchmarks I've seen on 3D Studio, L3 cache is useless. It theoretically helps when cores needs to exchange a lot of data at once, but it is not a case when rendering. Each subset of pixels is dealt with mostly individually.

I presume that you do understand the implications of the MSI board being an "open box item", Yes? MSRP is $89.99 and the open box is selling for $26.00 off that price. At that price differential, it means it's probably missing everything but the mobo.

Whoops

HDD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822152181

500 GB HDD is about 490 GB of overkill but I guess that is where the sweet spot is today. But surely I do not need cooler master case, I could save 15 bucks, using something cheaper, and it can start to add up if we consider using 2-5 nodes.

Thanks for your input!