Octane build Tweet

[jarrattmoody]

Im jumping ship from Mac after a decade. Need help as I wade into the world of multi gpu computer builds.

I use After Effects and Cinema 4d with Octane, often rendering 3d while working simultaneously in AE. In general I’m looking for a simple and inexpensive system, but also not cutting corners.

Here’s what I know so far

Processor: I know high freq CPUs are important for AE rendering and c4d viewport responsiveness, which has me looking at i7 7820x because of the 3.6/4.3 ghz speed and 28 pcie lanes. This will allow at least 3 cards to run at 8x. I wish it was 32 for future upgradability, but can’t justify the price of i9 with slower single proc.

Gpus: 2 1080 ti’s to start (free Octane 4!) room for 1 more. Would be nice to have room for 4 but the fast proc/ low pcie lane dilemma is stumping me.


Heres where I need help:

1) I can’t reconcile my desire for expansion to 4 cards along with the need for a fast single processor. Not sure if I should be considering AMD offerings or something else. What’s the sweet spot of speed and pci express lanes?
2) cooling: reference, hybrid, custom? I don’t want a spaceship under my desk but a little hum is fine.
3) motherboard
4) PSU
5) case, something simple. I don’t care about neon anything.

Sorry if this all sounds basic, we all start somewhere. I’ve watched the octane build YouTube video with Glimps and read forums for days, but I would still love some verification before I start buying specific components. Thank you for your time! Any general pointers are greatly appreciated.

[AEponym]

Hello Jarratt!

I also come from the Mac universe and switched to PC a few years ago because of Octane. (And because old macpro's CPU's are really old now)
I also use AE while rendering in c4d/Octane.
Here are few remarks from my experience if that may help you :

- about working at the same time in AE and rendering in Octane : it's definitely slower in AE, but still workable. Disabling the GPU connected to the screen helps, but I still experience big hickups when the CPU has to prepare the frames for the renderer. But I only have 4 cores : i7 6700K.

- regarding the number of cards you can have recognised by your CPU and their PCI speed: the i7 6700K manages 16 PCI lanes, so I can have 4 GPU's connected and recognised: (2 Titan X (first gen) + 2 980ti's) The one plugged to the screen runs at 8x and the 3 other at 4x. But, since the speed of connection between the gpu's and the motherboard only matters at loading times and for retrieving frames, I don't know if a 8x connection on all the cards is super mandatory or not. I still get around 525 in OctaneBench which seems normal regarding octanebench results' page.

- cooling: the 4 cards are hybrid (from EVGA) and I'm very happy with them : more quiet than regular cooling (half the noise I would say, but not silent either) and they always stay below 60°C in rendering; BUT the 4th cooling block does not fit inside the case, AND one of the 4 hybrid coolers died after one year. Not 100% perfect so.

- PSU: 1500 Watts from Corsair AX1500i, never had any problems with it, pretty expensive, but so robust and versatile in cable management possibilities that I'll probably keep it for 10 years, at least I hope so
- motherboard is an Asrock Z170 OC Formula
- case: Corsair Obsidian Series™ 750D Airflow Edition: 2 big fans on the front (like an old macpro one could say... and enough room on the open top to fit 3 hybrid coolers.

Hope this helps... welcome to PC world!

[jarrattmoody]

Thanks AEponym,

Interesting to hear your experience running 4 gpus with 16 PCI Express lanes. I knew 8x was ok, but haven't heard many people running at 4x. Good to know it's not a problem for you! Thanks for sharing your build details and experience with Octane and AE running simultaneously.

Still hoping someone will get on here and lay out an optimal reasonable build for my situation!

[archiblender]

JarretMoody;

If you are familiar with any silver tower Mac Pro 5.1, 4.1, or 3.1; you can be running dual (or triple, or quad) GTX 1070s (or GTX 1080tis) with multi-boot Windows7/10/OSX on any dual-hex Xeon Mac Pro you can get your hands on, tomorrow! Cost: Free!
(Just the cost of the GTX cards and your own silver tower Mac Pro)

Simply install Windows 7/10 natively on the Mac Pro, download the latest drivers, and install the dual GTX 1070s along with one mini-pcie to 6-pin power cable for each card from the motherboard. Don’t use Boot Camp or anything like that. In order to be able to select the Boot OS visually during startup by holding down the Option Key, simply send one of the GTX cards out to be flashed by MacVidCards, and connect a display to that card when they send that flashed card back...

You can then continue your digital life with Mac, and dabble with the Octane Titans in Windows. Two GTX 1070s will easily stay within the 300W combined power draw limit on the four pcie slots in the IO Bay where the GTX cards live. Two GTX 970 reference are a nice, clean setup, as well; i.e. their combined power draw is less than 300W, so no Aux PSU required.

In all cases, download and install MacsFanControl by Crystal Idea on both the Windows and the Mac side. You can tune each fan on the Mac Pro hardware individually (running Windows and/or OSX), so that it is completely silent during normal operations, and revs up each fan individually under various full load conditions to maintain desired quiet set point temps of your choosing. Super easy to use GUI.

You have several choices on card configuration:
1. Basic Internal Dual Layout - Two GTX 1070 FE blower-style; install and go.
2. Easy Internal Triple Layout - Aux PSU mounted to #2 Drive Bay Sled (Corsair SF450 will fit, after some trimming of the IO Bay plastic fan shroud. Consider some variation of the paper clip trick to energize). Remove Drive Bay Sleds #3, and #4 (2.5” SSD may still be installed and secured in these Bays, and configured in RAID0 for nearly instant Boot). Install GTX 1070 FE in slot one, and two MSI GTX 1070 Aero minis in slots two and four. Good to go!
3. Max Internal Triple Layout - Aux PSU mounted in Upper Optical Drive Bay (Corsair SF600 will fit. Consider Velcro to secure and a variation of the paper clip trick to energize). Remove Drive Bay Sleds #2, #3, and #4 (2.5” SSD May still be installed and secured in these Bays, and configured in RAID0 for nearly instant Boot). Three GTX 1080ti FE are possible with this setup. (Order three extra PSU pcie power cables to supply all power to cards from Aux PSU through these cables, not with any cables from the motherboard! PCIE Slots #1, #2, and #4 will each supply their respective GTX or Quadro CUDA cards w/ 75W from the motherboard)
4. CUBIX option - Start with Basic Dual Layout, #1 above, and add a CUBIX pcie expander box to a free pcie slot to add as many GPUs in Windows as you can afford! OSX limits booting with 4 GPU max (max 3 in CUBIX), Windows goes way beyond... I tried the CUBIX Expander Elite II with my dual-boot Windows 7/OSX Mac Pro 3.46 GHz 24-thread w/ 96GB RAM & SSD Boot. Please believe me: It is PLENTY good for practically anything!!! You will love it. They are rock solid and a great buy! EDIT: (One more thing about the CUBIX: Internal airflow looks to be very good for up to four gamer-style GTX cards with oversized dual and triple fan custom cooling solutions; and the distance between pcie slots is very nearly, but not quite equal to triple spacing; very good for oversized and OC’ed extreme gamer cards. You will also need to ask CUBIX for the oversized lids with carry handle, to accommodate the oversized dimensions of these screamer cards. Finally, you should expect a much louder experience than with the factory blower cards, which don’t need the internal CUBIX fan at all! Just my subjective opinion...)

A Mac Pro 2.1 or 1.1 presents a slightly more problematic challenge to loading Windows; easiest to simply install Windows to disk on another Computer, then transfer physical disk to 1st Gen Mac Pro, and activate Windows online... Everything else is pretty much the same as above, except that the hardware itself is practically free. The pcie bus is a lot slower, but hardly makes any difference in Octane with eight Xeon CPU cores; quite functional with only four Xeon CPU cores (dual dual-core). 1st Gen Mac Pros are limited to El Capitan with the wonderful PikerAlpha boot.rom (So no GTX Pascal 1070, 1080 on OSX), but they run Windows NATIVE!!! Go figure? Also, note that in order to dual boot 1st Gen Mac Pro back into OSX, it’s easiest to leave a Fermi-based GTX 500 series card for display after hard reset/boot. Funky, and takes the place of one video card, but GTX 580 3GB can still crank some serious CUDA on the side; best if other video cards are tested for driver compatibility in Windows before purchase, I’ve had problems mixing dual-GPU cards from different series in Windows; no such troubles in OSX, but dual-GPU cards count twice toward the 4-GPU OSX Boot limit. Two Titan Z are possible in Mac Pro 2.1 and 1.1. See my various builds below for some further insights...

Building a PC from scratch and setting it up without it coming off looking like a howling junk pile takes some thinking ahead. Factor in the cost of current memory and big PSU prices, and the elegant silver Mac Pro looks better and better. Have fun! Octane is a winner on both platforms!



MacBook Pro 17” 2011 i7 2720QM 2.2 GHz: 10.12.6, 16GB, 512GB SSD, GDC Beast ExpressCard 34 w/ NVIDIA GTX 980ti 6GB (or a ROG MARS GTX 760x2 2GBx2, or an EVGA GTX 750ti 2GB), Corsair SF450 Aux PSU, and MacsFanControl (Portable, Reliable, Octane!). No mods.

Mac Pro 2,1 2x4-core 3.0 GHz: 10.11.6 pikeralpha/Windows 7 Ultimate, 64GB, EVGA GTX 570HD 2.5GB, ASUS GTX 970 4GB mini, Corsair Aux PSU SF600 Velcro from #2 Drive Bay Sled, and MacsFanControl (First experiment into Octane godlike territory. Very successful; always need to use a display connected to a GTX 500 series Fermi card in order to hard reset boot back into OSX from Windows. The EVGA GTX 570HD 2.5GB, the MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme 3GB, all GTX 590 cards, and a few others support DisplayPort w/sound; these work great with the Apple LED 24” and 27” Cinema Displays, both in OSX and Windows) No mods beyond Velcro...

Mac Pro 2,1 2x4-core 3.0 GHz: 10.11.6 pikeralpha/Windows 7 Pro, 64GB, Gigabyte GTX 580 3GB Windforce, Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB mini, Corsair Aux PSU SF600 Velcro in Upper Drive Bay, and MacsFanControl (2nd Mac Pro/Octane proof of concept). Virtually no mods...

Mac Pro 1,1 2x2-core 2.66 GHz: 10.11.6 pikeralpha/Windows 7 Pro, 32GB, 240GBx2 SSD RAID0 Drive Bays #3 & #4, Gigabyte GTX 580 3GB WindForce, (2) Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB mini, Corsair Aux PSU SF600 bolted into removable #2 Drive Bay Sled, Blu-Ray Burner in Upper Drive Bay, SuperDrive DVD Burner in Lower Drive Bay, and MacsFanControl (Yes, three air-cooled dual-slot Gigabyte GTX CUDA Cards in a bone-stock Mac Pro 1,1 w/ RAID0 SSD 64-bit System Boot, Blu-Ray, & DVD burners. Runs CUDA fast, cool, and very quiet! Nice Octane sleeper setup, even better w/ dual quad-cores. Best 1st-Gen Mac Pro setup I have seen; For a 12-year old machine, it runs Windows 7 Pro better and quieter than many current PC builds!). Very minor Dremel mods to plastic front fan shroud for pcie IO bays...

Mac Pro 5,1 2x6-core 3.46 GHz: 10.12.6/Windows 7 Pro, 96GB, 1TB SSD Boot, EVGA GTX 980 4GB Custom Blower - Mac EFI Boot Screen, and MacsFanControl. (Built for serious commercial production! Runs everything like a beast. Never heats up, never breaks down. Quiet as a mouse!) No mods.

Mac Pro 5,1 CUBIX 2x6-core 2.66 GHz: 10.12.6/Windows 7 Ultimate, 32GB, 1TB SSD Boot, MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme 3GB - Mac EFI Boot Screen, MacsFanControl, and CUBIX Expander II Elite w/ NVIDIA GTX 980Ti 6GB Reference, and (2) EVGA GTX 680 4GB Custom Blower (First eGPU experiment; easy and troublefree. Current OSX builds can only boot w/ 4 GPUs so it would pay to get four of the fastest single GPU cards. Since all my CUBIX test cards were blower style, I disconnected the Expander’s internal fan for a much quieter experience, and ignored the specific hardware failure warnings. Wonderful Octane speed, easy, reliable!) No mods!

Mac Pro 5,1 2x4-core 2.93 GHz: 10.12.6/Windows 7 Pro, 64GB, 512GB Apple Hybrid Boot, MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr 4GB - Mac EFI Boot Screen, OWC ProQ 480GB pcie SSD scratch disk, USB3.1, and MacsFanControl. (Super stable, super quiet basic design station) No mods.

EVGA Classified SR-2 2x6-core X5660 2.8 GHz: Windows 7 Pro, 12GB, 2TB SSD Boot, USB3, eSATA, ROG MARS GTX 580x2 1.5GBx2, (2) EVGA GTX580 3GB Classified Ultra, EVGA SuperNOVA G2 1600W PSU. (Runs cool/hushed w/ two blower-style cards, dual CM V8 GTS, MSI AfterBurner custom fan profiles, and BIOS fan control in CM C700P curved glass case. LED RGB adds a bit of Wow factor! Runs Octane 3 for simple and blazing fast live presentations w/ class) Inverted HPATX layout, PSU on bottom. Gorgeous, but Mod City!!!

Gigabyte GA-Q77M-D2H (rev. 1.0) i5 3570K 3.4 GHz: Windows 7 Home Premium, 32GB, NVIDIA GTX 1070 FE 8GB. (Runs super cool/quiet w/ original CM V8 in handsome & understated Apple G5 case, stock fan profiles. Reliable Octane design studio) Very nicely done w/ subtle Hackintosh-style mods...