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Net Render Unlimited – Burning out G5s
I am a c4d animator that uses Net Render Unlimited over a network of Macs. When the rest of the department heads home for the evening, I open up Net Render Client on their idle machines to act as a render farm overnight and on the weekends. I am able to network 12 Macs at once and it really speeds up render time.
Some of the other designers in my department are worried that Net Render may be damaging their Macs. There have been two instances where when we come in to work in morning to find the G5’s fan whirring loudly. The Mac was frozen with a kernel panic on the screen and the hard drive and/or logic board had been fried. There was green ooze dripping from the back of the machine and it needed to be sent out for repair.
These older G5s (Fall 2004) had some cooling issues with dripping anti-freeze some sort of liquid cooling systems built by General Motors.
Has anyone experienced anything like this?
The issue in the department (that I don’t know the answer to) is what does Net Render Client do to a machine… does it slow it down? Could an application like Net Render Client running overnight or over the weekend cause a hard drive to burn out? It seems like a harmless process.
I know the real problem are these older G5 machines with the bad cooling system but the blame is being assigned to Maxon Net Render. None of the newer machines or Intel MacPro machines have had any issues. I love being able to network all the machines but don’t know how to defend the use of the application if our Macs keep burning out while it runs overnight.
Any thoughts, similar stories, technical info on Net Render or ideas are welcome on this issue.
Mike
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3 Replies
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Just running the client — if it’s not running a job — won’t put any kind of stress on the machines. If the clients are running jobs they put the machines under the same stress that you would if you were running Cinema on them directly and rendering.
So if it’s a heavy scene for a cpu (lots of raytracing, GI, caustics, etc.) then it can tax the cooling system. Also, if it’s a big scene (lots of big tex, many objects, etc.) and the machine runs out of physical ram it could cause the hard drive to churn.
But there are many people running Cinema on G5s with no issues. If the comps are in good working order there shouldn’t be a problem.
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Thanks, Adam. I appreciate the feedback.
The c4d projects are usually rendering out Quicktime movies at 1920×1080 with volumetric & visible lighting. Some projects may take up to 3 or 4 days to render a 20 second animation with 12 clients involved. I would say this would fall under the “heavy” category when it comes to rendering.
If the cooling systems in these older G5s are suspect to begin with, it seems like Net Render Client may be causing too much stress on the processors. I’m worried that the G5s are chugging all night and the hard drive and logic board is getting too hot and possibly damaging these Motorola Macs from 2004.
I should try using the Activity Monitor to try and gauge what percent of the CPU is used and how much stress is being put on the G5 when it is rendering a frame using Net Render Client.
I do agree that if the Macs are functioning properly and the cooling system is working, that Net Render should not cause damage. It runs fine on the majority of the machines in the network. The fact is that a few of these older G5s were dripping green anti-freeze ooze with a sweet burning smell. They were sent out for repair and came back fixed.
The question I still have is why aren’t these machines failing while using After Effects and Final Cut Pro all day long and is the blame on Net Render Client running overnight justified?
Mike
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There are few things more taxing on a cpu than 3D rendering. But hell, they need to upgrade those machines anyway. 😉
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