Hasta La Motion!

So, I’m a freelance After Effects person that got into cinema 4d a few years ago. I’m currently running a Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Xeon with 6 GB of ram. I know, I know, not a lot of ram. But this machine is apparently optimized for 3 sticks of ram rather than all 4 slots being filled. And I originally got it with 3gb, so 6 was a nice step up.

Anyhow, I’m currently at the point where most Cinema 4d renders I do take about 48 hours per minute of animation, and it’s simply too much time for my primary workstation to be tied up. So I’m looking into some render farm node stuff to offload the rendering from Cinema 4d and also After Effects (because why not).

I’ve done a LOT of research on render farms at home, from the Dashcat2 setup, to the Helmar Ikea render farm, and every piece of online literature I could get ahold of.

I’m posting this thread in the hopes that somebody can help me with the setup I’ve chosen, or at least the setup I’m leaning towards.

For starters, I want to add one node per month up to 4 nodes at the moment. I have an intel mac, so I’m sticking with intel processors.

My Most Expensive Setup
(I believe this gives me the best performace per node without getting outrageously expensive.)”

Mobo: $129.99
SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SBA+-O LGA 775 Intel G33 ATX Intel Motherboard (Newegg Link)

CPU: $169.99
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 Yorkfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80580Q8400 (Newegg Link)

Case: $99.99
SUPERMICRO CSE-512L-260B Black 14" Mini 1U Rackmount Server Case w/ 260W Power Supply (Newegg Link)

RAM: $75.99
Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N5K2/4G (Newegg Link)

HDD: $49.99
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (Newegg Link)

CPU Aftermarket Fan: $31.99
Dynatron P199 80mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler (Newegg Link)

Total w/ shipping: $567

That’s about $200 more than I want to spend, but it seems to be the best that I could manage from what I’ve researched. I was also wondering about just setting up a Micro ATX board, something from Asus that would run an e5500 or something like that. That chip, with the board would equal about 120-150$ total. If I went that route, I would just build my own rack out of wood with wooden shelving to mount the boards. I could just screw the boards into the wood at that point. That would save me roughly $200-$250 per node.

But does it make sense at all to make it with Micro ATX boards? Is there a hidden caveat that I should be aware of? Is my first build concept the best performance I can get for that price? Or can I get better performance/slightly reduced performance at a significantly cheaper cost?

Any advice at all would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!