Hi,

I am currently helping one of our professors build a renderfarm in a custom cabinet that will run Linux on all the nodes (no specific distro decided on yet). I have some experience with Ubuntu and Kubuntu, but am still a basic end-user.

We are planning to use cheaper off-the-shelf components to build a 12 node farm for rendering Blender scenes.

So far I have been looking at multi core AMD APU/GPU setups as we would like to use GPU rendering as it becomes more supported. However we are not yet locked into any specific hardware setups.

Can anyone give advice on what kind of hardware has been shown to work easily and reliably on this kind of system?

Thanks,
Colin

I think you might be starting in the wrong place.

Find what you can get drivers for, or support for; Find what you can buy and assemble. You might like 12 gpus, but can you get them set up in pcie slots? How much power is it going to need?

Well power won't be a problem, each motherboard will have its own PSU and we will put three to a drawer that all use one power-strip. Then each power-strip will have its own wall socket.
We are doing this in one of the best equipped biology institutes in Japan so we do have access to a great infrastructure.

As far as drivers etc. go, that is basically what I am trying to find out now. Has anyone used a Linux distro on an AMD APU/GPU crossfire system? If multi cpu/gpu is not feasible we will still build the system, but just use mobos with on-board graphics for the few times we might want to work on a node individually or whatever.

The idea is to have as many low cost cores as possible in a small space. Adding GPUs is just an attempt to future-proof the system as GPU rendering becomes more mainstream.

Dont. It might be possible, but the FM1 (amd 'fusion') APUs dont have as much CPU power as the bullodzer CPUs (AM3+, FX-4XXX-FX8XXX).

If you go for AMD AM3+ CPUs, I'd suggest getting motherboards without onboard video (AMD 9XX chipsets) and add video cards as needed for display or when you move to GPU rendering.