zukine321 Posted January 6, 2015 Share Posted January 6, 2015 I have a lot of old duo core computers with ddr2 ram maybe 40+ of them. and 5 2x quad core xeon mac pros 2006 versions. I was thinking of truing them into clusters to video edit and gaming but im assuming that wont be power efficient or efficient in any way? Assuming i have infinite space and run Virtual machines should I turn them to a cluster or upgrade and buy an 17 or pentium g3258? can i make any cluster more cost and power efficient over buying new computers in anyway? Also Is there like a cloud computing or an vps service that charges low monthly fee or per hour for video editing and gaming and maybe running some bots inside a few games that you recommend? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted January 6, 2015 Share Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) Anything you already own is going to be more cost effective than something you buy new. Anything you already own is going to be less more power efficient than something buy new (at the same performance level). So the question becomes: What does it cost to run all those machines? Get yourself a kill-a-watt or similar measuring device that will tell you how much juice each of them guzzles while doing something useful. Compute the amount that would cost you in a year (assuming that 'something useful' remains useful throughout the year) and ask yourself if it's worth it. When I was young I wanted to have *LOTS* of computers. When I got my first house I had 6 machines running 24/7. After a bit I noticed that keeping all those machines up to date was costing me quite a bit of time I could've spent doing other, more fun stuff, so I took a close look at what each of those machines were doing. Having taken inventory and assessing the load on the various machines I consolidated everything onto 2 machines where 1 would suffice but security considerations made me stick with 2 (you could say 1 was DMZ, one was LAN). As time progressed I upgraded these machines with a focus on power-efficiency and my last round of upgrades can currently be seen here in my Cheap Low-power Linux Fileserver topic. I love everything about clusters to the point where I've got another topic for a cluster of multiple ARM machines in a nice, small enclosure. I'm willing to spend some money to get the thing and play with it, but I don't want an electricity bill that goes through the roof nor do I want to deal with the heat that gets emitted by using more standard or, worse, server-class hardware. I think cheap cloud crap (I hate 'Cloud') can be found on Amazon for one but there should be more. Note that this industry is struggling to actually make a buck doing what they do so if you think it's expensive now you're going to be disappointed. Video rendering... No clue but these days a lot of that work is (or can be) performed by the video card so have a look at that before you consider dusting off the old boxes. Having a separate box to run bots for games sounds just excessive, but since I don't play games it might just be my way of looking at things that's the problem here. Edited January 6, 2015 by Cooper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zukine321 Posted January 6, 2015 Author Share Posted January 6, 2015 Cooper i would like to thank you. You truly bring life to these forums on all topics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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