This is EXACTLY my same rationale.

And just as you have said, the main pluses are low power consumption/heat and ease of implementing into a mac based workflow.

RE: reliability.  I think part of the budget factor would be getting applecare for all of them… again, it drives the cost up above a comparable setup.  But I think the benefits may outweigh the added cost…

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tony romain | principal/creative director

trance

motion graphic animation and design

323 651 1114

www.trancedesigns.com

From: Nathan Shipley <nshipley@gmail.com>
Reply-To: AE list <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
Date: Monday, November 12, 2012 1:02 PM

To: AE list <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
Subject: Re: [AE] Semi OT: Yet another mac mini render farm thread

True.  If I went this way, I'd mainly be thinking about something simple and on the smaller end that I could set up here in my studio and expand if needed.  Frequently I could use a few more machines cranking on a 3D render.  For heavy rendering jobs, I usually just use Render Rocket (cloud rendering) and work that into the budget.  But there are enough times that it would be helpful to have some extra juice that I'd consider spending $2 - $3,000 for some more machines here.  The plusses versus a PC setup being that everything else I have is already OSX, they're small, they're quiet, low power consumption, they'd network together easily.

Enticingly, the Geekbench score recorded for the late 2012 i7 Mini (11,656) is almost as good as the 2010 2.4 GHz 8-core Mac Pro I'm using (14,158 as my workstation).  By that metric, adding three Mac Minis to my setup would be like having more than two additional Mac Pros to render with for about $2500.

One of my main concerns would be about reliability if they're pegged at 100% CPU usage for extended periods of time without some additional cooling/ventilation...