mac mini lion server quad core i7 for terragen

[coremelt]

Hi, I just bought a mac mini server version quad core i7 2.0 Ghz.  It runs the terragen benchmark scene in a very respectable 9 mins 37 secs!
I increased the subdiv cache to 1024 to get rid of the warning message but apart from that rendered full render with no settings changed.  That's approx the same speed as a 3.6 Ghz i7 920 according to the results at speedmachine!!!

I am guessing this is because the proc in the mac min, although it's billed at 2.0 Ghz can ramp up using speedstep to a max of 2.9 Ghz when needed and it's sandy bridge chipset.

I'm so impressed that I'm considering buying another 3 of them to have a tiny but very powerful render farm, at $999 each for quad i7 it's a bargain, and the power and space benefits are a positive as well.

Has anyone else tried this?  It seems almost too good to be true?  16 physical i7 cores on ya desktop for $4000 

PS I would submit the result but there seems to be a problem creating new account on 3d speed machine, I get an error when I try and create a new account.

[penboack]

Thanks for posting this. I have been toying with the idea of having a Mac Mini Server as a mini render farm for a while now.
A few questions.
Are you using the standard 4GB RAM, or did you upgrade it to 8GB or 16GB?
8GB (2x4GB) is very inexpensive now and very easy to fit in a Mac Mini mid-2011.

Have you run CINEBENCH CPU test on it?
CINEBENCH is based on CINEMA 4D, so is very useful for comparing the likely render performance of different configurations. You can get CINEBENCH here: http://www.maxon.net/downloads/cinebench.html.
The only tests I have seen tested CINEBENCH 11 on a 4GB RAM standard Mac Mini Server model and scored 4.2, you can find these result here: http://www.barefeats.com/mini11_01.html.
The score for the CINEBENCH CPU MacBook Pro 17 (early 2011), 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM is 5.4, so based on that I would expect the Mac Mini Server with 8GB RAM to score 4.8.

How hot does it run and is it very noisy?
My main worry with these laptop chips, as used in the MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Mini, is that they are designed for short bursts of high performance computing. Rendering on them means running them flat out for hour after hour, maybe for several days at a time, which may increase the chance of system failure. The Xeon, as used in the Mac Pros, seem purpose designed for heavy processing tasks.

[coremelt]

at the moment it still has the stock 4GB RAM.  I have 8 GB from a laptop that I'll put it in sometime soon.

Yes it is a concern if it will fail running constantly at full load, however 3 years applecare is pretty cheap for it, I didn't take that yet because I didn't think I was going to use it as a renderer, it was only meant to be a file server with thunderbolt.

If I do get another one and set them up as a render farm then I'll get Applecare on both of them, so if there is any failure it will get replaced for free.

I'll run cinebench and report tomorrow, its late now (I'm in Japan).

[coremelt]

ok I got restless so I ran cinebench tonight.  I also chucked the 8GB RAM in.

it gets 4.34 on the cinebench CPU test.  After rendering the TG benchmark scene for 10 mins with all cores maxed temperature monitor reported 91 degrees from the cores, which seems hot but a quick google search indicated core i7's are fine up to 105 degrees.  Whether it will cook anything else inside the case is the issue I guess.

I'll try longer renders tomorrow. It's completely silent in normal use and when maxing the cores you can hear the fan ramp up but it is still very very quiet compared to a mac pro tower or a normal PC.

[Oshyan]

This may be due to the somewhat skewed nature of that benchmark scene which is probably not fully representative of many average scenes these days. There is one part of the scene that takes a disproportionally long time to render. This was somewhat intentional when it was created, to try to give some advantage to faster single core machines of the day, but these days dual core is a minimum, and quad cores commonplace. So I think the benchmark should be updated. You are right though that the speed is probably due to the newer turbo throttling for the CPU when it's using just 1 core on that last tile.

I'll look into the 3D Speed Machine reg issue. I haven't had any other reports of it though. Can you give more details on the error?

- Oshyan

[coremelt]

ah ok, it gave me an error but the registration went through.  I've submitted the benchmark.

Out of interest I went looking online for shuttle or small form factor windows boxes with i7's and can't find anything comparable at the price range.  The need to pay for a Windows Pro 64 license on alternatives means the mac mini server (which includes Lion server) at $999 seems to be the best value per cpu cycle out there.

[Oshyan]

You can get a better deal if you build it yourself, but the small form factor is hard to beat if aesthetic and/or space are an issue. However I think that would not be best for long-term rendering from a heat standpoint. If it's at 91 degrees after only 10 mins, it would be some cause for concern, even though the CPU can technically go higher. It would also matter what the ambient was, and 4 of those machines would increase the ambient a bit more over 1, as well.

- Oshyan

[coremelt]

Well adding in 3 years Apple care takes it to $1148 total, so if it blows, they'll replace it.  I don't think Apple can refuse to replace parts because you ran the system at full load when they sell it as a server.

I'm living in Japan, so space is definitely a concern   Stack up 4 mac minis (and put 1 inch spacers in between them for air flow), you've got 16 i7 cores in a space smaller than a standard ATX form PC.

[Oshyan]

Yeah, for the space and price it's pretty nice. Guess it's worth a shot, if you want a mini farm. But you'd want at least 8GB and preferably 16GB in each one, so that brings up the cost some.

- Oshyan

[coremelt]

16GB of SODIMM can be had for 10,000 yen = approx $120 in DenDen town (Osaka's equivalent of Akhihabara).

[Oshyan]

Yep, just pushing the price up a bit more though, you know? I wonder how much one could put together some Shuttle boxes for with similar performance. Well, I spec'ed out some $750 boxes previously that had 2600k's (much faster than the 2.0Ghz i7's in the Mini), but those were full-size cases. I guess you could tack on a few hundred more for smaller cases and motherboards, so maybe $1000 even. Those prices were with 16GB of RAM, and cooling sufficient to overclock to 4.6Ghz. So price/performance it would be better. But size-wise, and in terms of time/effort, obviously they lose to the mini's. Heh.

- Oshyan

[coremelt]

Yep, in terms of setup time, the Apple store is a 10 minute bike ride away, they have ample of these in stock and I can pick up 16GB ram from a generic PC shop on the way home.  Swapping the RAM takes 5 mins and the systems are preloaded with Lion server.  Then just install Terragen and Deadline slave and you're good to go.

Total time to add another 4 i7 cores, maybe 2 hours tops.

[Oshyan]

Hehe, yeah, that can't be beat.

- Oshyan

[penboack]

Coremelt, thank you for sharing the results of your tests.
It shows the danger of making simple extrapolations from one chip to another based on differences in clock speed, even within the same chip family. I had assumed that a Quad Core i7 Sandy Bridge 2.2GHz in an early 2011 MBP would be 10% faster than a 2.0GHz chip in a Mac Mini, that clearly isn't the case, the difference is closer to 20%.

I think that Apple will update the Mac Pros (very?) soon with the new Intel E5-Xeon processors and updated graphics cards. Then you are looking at dual processor standard configurations of 12-Core and 16-Core running at maybe 2.4GHz and 2.2GHz and costing around 3500 USD and 5000 USD respectively. In addition you have a decent graphics card so the computer can be used either for rendering or as a workstation, whereas the Mac Mini servers use Intels integrated graphics.

So I would wait and see what Apple do before buying.

One good thing from a Mac owners perspective is that resale values are very good.

[coremelt]

at this stage I wouldn't be that surprised if Apple doesn't update mac pro towers and instead drops them from the lineup.  Between the speed of imac's and mac mini's,  the flexibility of thunderbolt add on options and the hackintosh option the number of people that really need a full size tower is vanishingly small.