Super Computer Or Small Render Farm?

[jedg]

Need expert knowledge about a computer that will be able to handle running 3D Max 8, CS2, After Effects 7, Combustion 4, & Premiere for a professional production company. We would also like to set up another computer to help handle rendering for 3D Max from the main computer. We have a possible budget of 10-15k for both computers, monitor, and the software purchase for Max 8($3,500) and Adobe CS Production Studio Premium($1,700).

We are looking at the computer below to be our main computer:

HP xw8400 workstation

# Two (2) Intel

[bellwilliam]

one option you might want to consider:

build 2 exact same boxes. you can use either or both for rendering. the difference between render box and workstation is basically just the video card. Some newer rendering software now use GPU for rendering, so it might not be a bad idea to have an extra GPU.

it also mean you will have 2 workstations if the need arises.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE
After Effects 7 ... Premiere ... 160 GB SATA 3Gb/s NCQ (7200 RPM)...

One suggestion : buy 2 similar hard drives and create a RAID-1 array (mirroring).
Your datas are crucial in a pro. environment. You don't want to be stuck with a disk failure in the middle of a prod ....
Even better make it 3 or 4 and create a RAID10 (check http://www.acnc.com/04\_01\_01.html for explanation on RAID arrays).

One important thing is to avoid Input/Output bottlenecks .. So I usually work we several drives (1 OS installation and software, 1 projects and resources, 1 for rendered images ...). New motherboards have separate "pipes" for the hard drives (SATA-300) and by multiplying the number of drives and thinking carefully of what type of RAID array you can use, you can achieive amazing bandwith .... which is very important for video processing (AE) and editing (Premiere).

BTW, do you know that After Effects projects can also be rendered using a small render farm ?

Hope it helps,
Guyb.

[joojaa]

Definitely farm, the felxibilitys better. Tougha farm might need GPU's aswell as future is ibn that direction.

Personaly if i would build a new workstation/slavestation setup today id invest in

a good monitor/keyborad/usb switcher so icould use all machines form same desktop.

fiber channel.