NikKelly posted at 6:26PM Sun, 25 October 2020 - #4402133

Like 'external GPU' units, render farms don't seem to have noticed potential Poser market. If any do provide Poser support and take PayPal, they may do well...

FWIW, I've just had a quick look at eGPU options. As with any 'young' market, you need deep pockets. Really, really deep pockets. Cheapest enclosure (!!) is ~$_200, but is too small for high-end graphics cards. Sweet spot seems ~$_500, then you must add a powerful GPU card or cards. Plus a Thunderbolt adaptor for your PC, unless USB_C will do. Possibly a network connection will suffice, if you don't mind your home net struggling. So, at best, scant change from ~$_1k...

In theory, putting a couple of GPU cards --Last year's braw brutes, now affordable-- into an external box would seem an economic solution but, IMHO, the tech has not yet reached 'economies of scale'...

YMMV.

According to this site, there are a handful of render farms that mention Poser as one of the softwares they can handle. I've been looking at the one on top, IRenderFarm, and while the rates they mention sound affordable ($.75/hour per node at base) you can't see what their plans cost without signing up, and that has always come across to me as "if you have to ask, you can't afford it". But I might make an account just to take a look. They run on a credit system and their minimum top-up is $10, which makes me think it's probably somewhere between $100-250 to start with. But then there's licensing confusion I'm trying to resolve in another thred and I don't think anyone knows because nobody does this yet. I don't know if I want to be the pioneer here, that might be more stressful than just not being able to do art until I get a new computer.