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- Oct 24, 2004
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Hello,
This summer has been pretty calm, until my brother came to me with a special request : He heard i got hold of a retired (yet fully functionnal) Dell Poweredge T630 at work, and since i couldn’t do what i wanted with it, we decided to transform it into a rendering server for his company.
The goal is to invest in a powerfull production tool, in order to become completely autonomous and self-sufficient to render their own Cinema4D / Optane creations :
« Bonjour Lab is an interactive visual creation studio that aims to design and produce new storytelling approaches.
Since 2013, we blend cutting edge technology and visual poetry to deliver tailor made, limitless, creative experiences.
Experts in new visual production techniques, at the forefront of technological innovation and the design of immersive spaces, we conceive and craft innovative and meaningful experiences and places.
Our expertise ranges from real time data driven interactive creations, to the design of immersive spaces and large scale media art. We work for company headquarters, showrooms, exhibition fairs, malls, flagships, brand events and cultural performances and institutions.
We advise about technologies and visual tendencies that would fit communication objectives. We create new visual designs daily to imagine new narratives that emphasize the brand’s message. We are always searching for new technologies to combine and integrate in new kinds of experiences. We conceive and create in an arts and crafts manner to best fit our clients’ needs. »
Please take a look at their showcase website, you will see some truely unique and impressive visual creations, they will speak more than a thousand words ! : https://www.bonjour-lab.com/
Here are the specs :
- 2 x Intel Xeon E5 2630 V3 (a total of 16 cores / 32HT @2,4Ghz / 40MB L3 cache)
- 2 x 32Gb DDR4 PC2400 Registered
- 2 x Dell PSU Platinum 1100W each
- 2 x MSI Geforce RTX 2070 super OC GP (soon to become 4 of them)
- 2 x Kingston 128Gb set in RAID1 for the operating system
- 2 x Crucial BX500 2TB each to store the assets and the renderered scenes
Additionnal parts required to power this beast and to cool it decently :
- Dell GPU enablement kit ( 4 x 8pins to 8Pins+6pins power adapter cables)
- Dell GPU fan kit (4 additional fans)
Here’s the server :
There’s a lot of room in this case, you can shove up to 1536GB of RAM across all 24 RAM slots, that’s 768Gb per CPU.
Since we did not win at the lottery recently, we will be content with those 2 sticks of 32GB PC2400 registered DDR4.
Dell suggest to populate the white slots first, so that's what we did with our 2 sticks :
This motherboard can handle 4 x PCI 3.0 graphic cards, so we will start with 2 MSI Geforce RTX 2070 Ventus OC GP :
Populating 2 PCI-E slot with our first 2 GPUs comes at a price : we had to drop the original 2 x 717W PSUs in favor of 2 x 1100W Platinum PSUs, since it's the recommended configuration according with the Dell user's manual.
They will be mandatory when the server later grows to 4 GPUs anyway :
The server came equipped with 2 redundants and hot swappables system cooling fans. They are extremely powerfull and consequently very noisy, thats why i did my homework and found a way to disable dynamic speed shifting, in order to impose a set speed for everyday's use (before becoming deaf !) This involves some light scripting and the use of the embedded iDRAC controller (more later if you are interested).
Each CPU is cooled with what look like a fairly generic blocks of aluminium with fins :
Luckily, the cooling shroud has aerodynamically placed openings that direct the airflow across the entire system. The airflow passes through all the critical parts of the system, where the vacuum pulls air across the entire surface area of the heat sink, thus allowing increased cooling.
[--- end of 1rst part, thanks for watching this thread !! -----]
This summer has been pretty calm, until my brother came to me with a special request : He heard i got hold of a retired (yet fully functionnal) Dell Poweredge T630 at work, and since i couldn’t do what i wanted with it, we decided to transform it into a rendering server for his company.
The goal is to invest in a powerfull production tool, in order to become completely autonomous and self-sufficient to render their own Cinema4D / Optane creations :
« Bonjour Lab is an interactive visual creation studio that aims to design and produce new storytelling approaches.
Since 2013, we blend cutting edge technology and visual poetry to deliver tailor made, limitless, creative experiences.
Experts in new visual production techniques, at the forefront of technological innovation and the design of immersive spaces, we conceive and craft innovative and meaningful experiences and places.
Our expertise ranges from real time data driven interactive creations, to the design of immersive spaces and large scale media art. We work for company headquarters, showrooms, exhibition fairs, malls, flagships, brand events and cultural performances and institutions.
We advise about technologies and visual tendencies that would fit communication objectives. We create new visual designs daily to imagine new narratives that emphasize the brand’s message. We are always searching for new technologies to combine and integrate in new kinds of experiences. We conceive and create in an arts and crafts manner to best fit our clients’ needs. »
Please take a look at their showcase website, you will see some truely unique and impressive visual creations, they will speak more than a thousand words ! : https://www.bonjour-lab.com/
Here are the specs :
- 2 x Intel Xeon E5 2630 V3 (a total of 16 cores / 32HT @2,4Ghz / 40MB L3 cache)
- 2 x 32Gb DDR4 PC2400 Registered
- 2 x Dell PSU Platinum 1100W each
- 2 x MSI Geforce RTX 2070 super OC GP (soon to become 4 of them)
- 2 x Kingston 128Gb set in RAID1 for the operating system
- 2 x Crucial BX500 2TB each to store the assets and the renderered scenes
Additionnal parts required to power this beast and to cool it decently :
- Dell GPU enablement kit ( 4 x 8pins to 8Pins+6pins power adapter cables)
- Dell GPU fan kit (4 additional fans)
Here’s the server :
There’s a lot of room in this case, you can shove up to 1536GB of RAM across all 24 RAM slots, that’s 768Gb per CPU.
Since we did not win at the lottery recently, we will be content with those 2 sticks of 32GB PC2400 registered DDR4.
Dell suggest to populate the white slots first, so that's what we did with our 2 sticks :
This motherboard can handle 4 x PCI 3.0 graphic cards, so we will start with 2 MSI Geforce RTX 2070 Ventus OC GP :
Populating 2 PCI-E slot with our first 2 GPUs comes at a price : we had to drop the original 2 x 717W PSUs in favor of 2 x 1100W Platinum PSUs, since it's the recommended configuration according with the Dell user's manual.
They will be mandatory when the server later grows to 4 GPUs anyway :
The server came equipped with 2 redundants and hot swappables system cooling fans. They are extremely powerfull and consequently very noisy, thats why i did my homework and found a way to disable dynamic speed shifting, in order to impose a set speed for everyday's use (before becoming deaf !) This involves some light scripting and the use of the embedded iDRAC controller (more later if you are interested).
Each CPU is cooled with what look like a fairly generic blocks of aluminium with fins :
Luckily, the cooling shroud has aerodynamically placed openings that direct the airflow across the entire system. The airflow passes through all the critical parts of the system, where the vacuum pulls air across the entire surface area of the heat sink, thus allowing increased cooling.
[--- end of 1rst part, thanks for watching this thread !! -----]
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