Could this idea be used to render films and other big things.

Mhm. If you have ever done any 3D rendering with complex lighting, you will know that it take a long time to do a single frame at a semi-decent resolution/quality. If you want tens of thousands of frames and movie level quality, you pretty much have to use a render farm.

I don't suppose anyone has a clue on how to set something like this up? I think it would be a cool project just to get like 4 sets, perhaps cheap components, like some cheap AMD dualies... just for 'poops and giggles'. A competition for who can build and house the coolest looking one would be awesome I must say... Although I doubt many people would partake.

this might be the thing you're looking for.
http://www.linux.com/feature/53227

this might be the thing you're looking for.
http://www.linux.com/feature/53227

Ah sweet, sounds like a project I could do in the summer to me : )

Hmm, I could build a silent clustered pc... use some passive heatsinks, silent power supplies and some SSDs... sounds tasty to me... Although I get the feeling it really wouldnt stay cool ><

For the dude who said use AMD dualies, Linux runs so much better on Intel'. ;)

Also, if you build this for sh1ts and giggles, which we all will, cause I doubt any of us renders theater quality movies, have fun comming up with the money. I wonder how it'd go for a high traffic server. Like a site like craigslist, although you'd need to use a datacenter for an internet backbone cause that's a hell of a lot of data if you make it a server. I still can't think of a practicle use of one of these. Can anyone else think of one?

Just think if you got 6 Dual Gigabyte LAN Motherboards, put a Q6600, and 8 Gigs of DDR2 PC6400, and gave each a western digital 500 Gig Sata, and had and a hell of a lot of fans, how 1337 it'd be. 12 Gigabyte Backbones, you could utilize 6 of them, and have each have their own backup.

And back to a Rendering Workhorse, what can an average person like you or me use this for?

................And back to a Rendering Workhorse, what can an average person like you or me use this for?

Nothing I suppose.

For the dude who said use AMD dualies, Linux runs so much better on Intel'. ;)

I've found it runs nicer on AMD Opterons, over Intel Xeons. I don't know about any low end/desktop CPUs as I only have an C2D at the mo.

I've found it runs nicer on AMD Opterons, over Intel Xeons. I don't know about any low end/desktop CPUs as I only have an C2D at the mo.

Depends, if your using the latest Ubuntu/Debian, or Fedora, they have the issue with AMD is pretty much gone. If you use an older kernel then AMD is sort of scratchy, still runs fine, but not as good performance. Especially the older CPU's that don't use the same Instructions as Intel.

Depends, if your using the latest Ubuntu/Debian, or Fedora, they have the issue with AMD is pretty much gone. If you use an older kernel then AMD is sort of scratchy, still runs fine, but not as good performance. Especially the older CPU's that don't use the same Instructions as Intel.

Also depends if you are running 32 or 64bit, as AMD proform much better on 64bit then Intels do.

And it was all cutting edge stuff, HP 385, or HP 380 for intels, running Redhat Enterprise 5, we did a pretty good proformance testing on it with Oracle, and found that the AMD ones were better, I believe it all really comes down to AMD's onchip memory controller, but don't ask me really only worked with Redhat Linux for 7 years, Debian based for 2 years, and Unix based (Solaris and HPUX) for 10 years. Hardware is pretty new to me, well anything after the 286 chip anyways. :)

In the cutting edge world, most big (blue chip) companies I have worked, or consulted for, choose AMD hardware over Intel now, thats running either Windows or Linux.

Physics and mathematical calculations, such as that of pi, or simulations of say, galaxies. This will be useful to people like me who are are or going to study such subjects at uni.