So, by now you guys know that I am a 3d artist…Heres the thing, I need a LOT of computing power to render out animated sequences in any decent amount of time. So, Instead of having a bunch of towers in my room I have decided to go rack mount….I went shopping and decided that a full 42U rack was way to huge for my room, and in general, I am in college and will find myself moving every year or so, so I decided to go with a smaller rack if I could find one, it would be more mobile, yada yada…Anyway, I saw and add for a 24U rack with plenty of depth on Craigslist and I went and bought it, I was in a rush to get back to work and forgot to bring a tape ruler, so I didn’t even bother looking at it to closely at his office. Stupid me when I got it home, I noticed that the rack only 15U, and after a few hours of research trying to fuigure out what brand it is, it turns out the case isn’t really a server rack, its a rack originally built for audio equipment. I have read that this will work, but I am concerned about heat management. if I go with it, there will deffinately have to be some airflow management modifications…Here’s a pic:
I guess my only options right now are to order my “renderblades” and hope they fit, if they don’t I can find a 42U rack and modify it to suit my needs I guess, but I love having casters on that thing, its so easy to move around. For anyone wondering, I guess a little outline to my project would help:
As you can see I will put my render nodes (the big cases in the rack) into a patch panel, which will then be put into a gigabit switch, (if I can get my hands on one….), from there I will control it from my workstation/node manager…that all that really needs to be said about the network/layout…I don’t claim to be an expert on this stuff so if anyone has any recommendations feel free to contact me.
Anyway, on to my render blades. My render blades need to be cheap, fast, quiet, and cool. That is a lot to ask for in a machine (x3+). I have devised a build which will give me this for about $680 shipped to my door, after rebates. This isn’t bad, here is the build:
OCZ StealthXStream 500W – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341012
Norco 4U Case – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219002
GIGABYTE GA-P35-S3G – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128084
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (OC 3ghz) – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115018
CORSAIR 4GB DDR2-1066 – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145197
Seagate 160GB SATA – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148230
LITE-ON DVD burner – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106263
GeForce 7200GS – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500036
ZALMAN 9500 – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118223
I will overclock the blades to 3ghz, so it will spec at 3ghz quadcore with 4gb of ram, with the option to go 8 gigs. Before anyone says anything, hard drives are not an issue, I will be building a NAS, and neither are video cards. I don’t render with them nor will I have a monitor hooked up to them so really they are just there for just in case scenarios since the mobo does not have video support built in.
Now, here is the challenge…I know I can build 4U servers no problem, (they are pictured in the diagram) but since this rack is a 15U, I want to try and go 3U so I can fit an extra render machine, plus more stuff in there like my web server and a switch and patch panel…Now the real challenge I face is cooling, I need to fuigure out a way how to keep my processors cool at 3U, a regular heatsync like the Zalman 9500 wont fit in that short of a case. Water cooling seems like an impractical and expensive way of doing it, so I may need to think about this a bit longer…I can just put a heat spreader on the processors, and put an extra fan or two in the case (more noise), who knows, let me think about it.
One thing I did think about when writing up this blog is, I should probobly have my server infront of the firewall…I wonder if I should even bother putting it in a rack if thats the case…hmm…Anyway, look forward to another post in the near future…
Keith