by glimpse » Thu Jun 23, 2016 7:15 am
glimpse
Thu Jun 23, 2016 7:15 am
A lot depends on Your needs @archiform3d - & for each of us those are different. So even if You find some information (including some provided below), take with a grain of salt & always put that in Your own perspective to see how that fits.
There are a lot of limitations & roadblocks, that You need to take into consideration. As You start building solutions You have to evaluate what You're gaining & what You're loosing while picking one or the ther route.
3x 4GPU nodes are fine, but just because You are going to have less cards per node, doesn't automaticaly mean those cards are not going to throttle down. Plus You have to evaluate additional licences, maintainance, upgradability, etc.
The best way is to have propper cooling (at least hybrid solution with AIO) or even full loop (money will come back in performance). However, if You still do not want to mess with any of that.. go with reference design cooler equiped GPUs if they are stacked close to each other or non reference coolers if You have extra space between cards.
Lan speed matters if You ever going to do fast previz or animations. Since OctaneRender allows up to 20GPUs to be utilised, getting nodes with more than 4 GPUs might make sense as well. Also consider externalGPU route.
2x 7-8GPU builds with good cooling would set Youback ~20k$. But You would get close to 2000 in OctaneBench (with ability to expand adding one more node giving in total 1 screen card + 20 GPUs for render). You could use both (or three) systems for single job or as separate workstations. Also as main + backup.
Maintaining "render farm" with 4GPU nodes would cost more & have more downsides. But if that's somethign You're into, it's doable. Upside is that starting this requires less investment as You can start from smaller/cheaper nodes.
Good luck =)