How well does Poser 11/12/13 do on network render? I mean how easy is the setup? I haven't played with network rendering in a couple of years. Currently have Windows 10 running, but I can install Windows 11.

8-)
Following.

@seachnasaigh uses a render farm that he built himself, so he would be the one to chime in on how well it works. He gifted me a copy of Poser 11, and it comes with Queue Manager 11, which can assign the renders. I have never used a network to render, so I am going off information he provided.

I don't even know if he's still around. I haven't spoken to him in quite awhile. But hopefully if he is, he'll see this thread and answer your question.

First just to be clear Poser only does full frame renders via the Queue Manager, it does not break it into little pieces to send to the different computers.  Second make sure your version of Poser and the Queue Manager are the same build number.  Third once you start the Queue Manager and wish to stop it use the Exit option on the Menu otherwise just clicking the close X button shuts down the interface, but the Queue Manager is still running.  Fourth you can only have one version of Queue Manager running at the same time.  That is either Queue 11, Queue 12 or Queue 13.  The reason is they use the same ports to talk to each other with.  Fifth make sure they are on the same network and subnet.  Normally not a problem in a home network, but could be a problem in a business network.  Sixth make sure the Firewall allows the Queue Manager to talk on your network.  This one will cause the most problems as the Firewall will prevent communication, but you will have no indication.   Again, normally you are asked to allow the Firewall to allow traffic in a home environment but maybe not in a work environment.  

Not sure when it changed or if it will change starting with Poser13.
And I may be wrong, but I've got the feeling that Poser13's licence will allow 3 install, queue rendering nodes included, whereas old versions of Poser were allowing as many rendering nodes as you can afford, with the same licence.

I repeat: I may have misunderstood

I realised it would be much cheaper and future-resistant to build a 'render box' than significantly upgrade either of my CAD_Tower's now-ageing twin GPU cards...

As Box' graphics need only support VGA , this means you can fit a 'Basic Office' GPU card, an old display. But, the more CPU cores, the better. Mine renders with ~15½ of its 16. One 'gotcha' is my twin GPU cards like Superfly with 1024 vols & buckets. For 'CPU-only' renders, eg on 'Box', these must be dropped to 64 else stalls out...

Yes, all of the above points by Richard60, especially the 'same version' thing.

What beat me for weeks was Window 10's exasperating network security stuff. The error messages do not give a clue to what's wrong. In the end, I realised that the error messages were looking at sorta-flipside of problem, dug deeper, found yet-another poorly documented networking menu. One last check-box and we were in business...

Uh, please may we have a forum for queue rendering and its quirks ??

NikKelly posted at 6:46 AM Thu, 2 February 2023 - #4455196

I realised it would be much cheaper and future-resistant to build a 'render box' than significantly upgrade either of my CAD_Tower's now-ageing twin GPU cards...

What beat me for weeks was Window 10's exasperating network security stuff. The error messages do not give a clue to what's wrong. In the end, I realised that the error messages were looking at sorta-flipside of problem, dug deeper, found yet-another poorly documented networking menu. One last check-box and we were in business...

Uh, please may we have a forum for queue rendering and its quirks ??

The security issues are frustrating. I believe that's why when I jumped from the last two Windows 10 build it caused the network setup to basically break down. I would need someone with programming/network experience to hand me a program that would connect all my pcs on the network, even though Poser only relies on the ip address of the pcs, and not on the network itself. Very confusing.

I, too, thought about a rendering farm. Either that or building a server box with a whole lot of memory (Dual Xeon processors?). That would be my ideal setup. I was even thinking that Poser installed on the server box would be even better than a couple of pcs all hooked together. But quite honestly I don't know if Xeon processors/mb are outdated. I have over the past year gotten into the intel Dell processors (2nd Generaton +) only because I am able to afford them every couple of months. 

Quite honestly with 16GB of ram, this little 990  i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 is blazing fast at rendering in both Poser and Daz.
The only bottleneck is the amount of memory (16GB max). So thinking connecting another 990 (or maybe two pcs with same cpu/memory, etc) would be even faster.

Someone in another post mentioned it's all about the video card. AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3 PCI-E x16. I forgot, but I think it's possible to use a 4GB in this chassis (SFF). With a larger chassis allowing for a full size card with more memory (more money too)

There are also the options of using a dedicated graphics accelerator card in a larger box (Dell MT, or something else). I'm wondering about one of those with the built in gpu on the motherboard...

Just to clarify, IIRC, render box --prior to #13 ?-- uses CPU only. I've a basic VGA card & display in mine.

From what I've heard, on-board GPU chips are not very good at non-game rendering. Also, GPU cores take up die-space that, IMHO, is better used for CPU cores. As I mentioned above, 'Box' uses 15½ of its 16 cores to render. Usage swings from 100~~90 % of CPU resource, between 'pulses' of data to disk...

Okay, so not as fast as a 'state of art' mega-GPU card with a zillion cores and an astonishment of fast RAM, but I'm a hobbyist not a commercial artist, so hits my 'sweet spot' of cost vs performance. YMMV. If necessary, I could build a second 'Box' --plus KVM switch-- for a fraction the cost of a twice-as-fast GPU card, render two views in parallel...

NikKelly posted at 12:23 PM Thu, 2 February 2023 - #4455213

Just to clarify, IIRC, render box --prior to #13 ?-- uses CPU only. I've a basic VGA card & display in mine.

From what I've heard, on-board GPU chips are not very good at non-game rendering. Also, GPU cores take up die-space that, IMHO, is better used for CPU cores. As I mentioned above, 'Box' uses 15½ of its 16 cores to render. Usage swings from 100~~90 % of CPU resource, between 'pulses' of data to disk...

Okay, so not as fast as a 'state of art' mega-GPU card with a zillion cores and an astonishment of fast RAM, but I'm a hobbyist not a commercial artist, so hits my 'sweet spot' of cost vs performance. YMMV. If necessary, I could build a second 'Box' --plus KVM switch-- for a fraction the cost of a twice-as-fast GPU card, render two views in parallel...

So it would be a waste of my time and money (on-board GPU)? I just read that GPU cards run extremely hot... which to me means hot AND loud.