AMD 5700G as a cheap render farm
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2023 4:51 pm
AMD's Zen-3 based 5700G is on sale at a lot of places this month for about $180, probably to clear stock when the non-X Zen 4 processors arrive. I managed to scrape together an AM4 motherboard and 32 Gigs of memory with the processor for around ~$350 USD and recycled my windows license, hard drives, and a few other components to make a major upgrade to my render machine. The on-chip video is good quality and I have no trouble running DaVinci Resolve or Hitfilm Express for editing. The 8-cores have taken a huge bite out of my render times for the past month.
The main problem is the upgrade path further down the line. AMD isn't making any more processors for the AM4 motherboards, and it still uses DDR4 instead of the newer and faster DDR5 (which greatly speeds up image processing). But at my budget, it's pretty good and will probably last me another 6-8 years. I don't see myself moving up from 720p video as a hobbyist anytime soon.
The main problem is the upgrade path further down the line. AMD isn't making any more processors for the AM4 motherboards, and it still uses DDR4 instead of the newer and faster DDR5 (which greatly speeds up image processing). But at my budget, it's pretty good and will probably last me another 6-8 years. I don't see myself moving up from 720p video as a hobbyist anytime soon.