Switching from 3DMax/Vray to Cinema/Octane - Hardware Tweet

[NilsWogsted]

Hi all!
I am freelance motion designer who works with 3dsMax/Vray, however i am currently looking to switch to a Cinema/Octane setup.
I dont know much about hardware, and i am totally new with cinema4D and Octane render so i have some questions that i hope you will help me with.

Today I have 2 PC`s that I run 3dMax on. Pc 1 which i do all my work on in 3dsMax, and Pc 2 I use as a renderslave (distrubuted render buckets in Vray)
The setup is:

PC 1 - Win 7 64 |Supermicro 7047A-T Workstation| 2xIntel Xeon E5 8-Core - E5-2687Wv2 3.40 |Quadro K4000 64 GB RAM
http://www.supermicro.com/products/syst ... 047a-t.cfm

PC 2 - Win 7 64 |Supermicro Workstation SYS-7046A-3 |Dual Xeon X5650 2,66GHz Quad-Core,| GTX 760| 64 GB RAM
http://www.supermicro.com/products/syst ... 046A-3.cfm

The two PC´s are connected locally via a router with CAT 6 cables.

Also i have a IMac - OSX El Capitan |27-inch, Late 2013 |3,5 GHz Intel Core i7|32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 |NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB (Home computer)

I am looking for some advice to make my setup more Octane friendly, so i figured to switch from CPU to GPU focus.
Therefore i need some new GFX cards.

As i can see from my details web:
PC 1, I have 3 3x PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots available, and PC 2 have 2x PCI-E 3.0 x16 ?

I want to be able to scale my system with future income, so i am thinking of bying a few High end GFX cards (Titan X? ) and add more later.
Will I be able to add 3 titan x cards to my PC 1? And 2 (Titan X or GtX 970) cards to PC 2?

How do i get the GPU power from pc 2 into pc 1? Will it find it automatically or Is there something like distributed rendering in the viewport?
How many Octane standalone and regular licenses do i need for the two PC`s?

I think there is a 6pin connector in my PC`s, how do i get it to support a 8 and 6 pin connector like in the titan cards?

Any other thoughts and feedback?
Sorry for all the noob questions but it would be really helpful for me.
Thanks, and regards from Norway.

/N

[ristoraven]

Switching from CPU rendering to GPU rendering, you would need only one TitanX to have about 50 times faster render speed.
So I would forget the need for a slave machine for awhile.

I would start with one TitanX and with new PSU. It would be very efficient already to get the hang of things with new 3D program and new render engine.

Then later I would make the jump to a water cooled multi GPU system (9000+ euros). Later the TitanX prices would have dropped / new cards would be available. At the moment the evolution of these cards are again taking a jump - investing on them right now is not a good idea IMHO.

[bepeg4d]

Hi NilsWogsted,
you have very good expandable systems
My advice is to maintain the Quadro and add a new GTX for Octane only (possibly the new upcoming 1080 with 8GB and half the price of a Titan X). Then you can add a second one on first PC, and then you can move them to the second PC and buy newer GPUs for the master based on your needs. The beauty of GPU rendering is that you can expand your system during time, move the cards between the PCs and scale perfectly the power at every GPU added.
You need a Standalone and plugin license for the master, and a second Standalone license for the slave only when you will decide to use also the second PC.
Here are other things that you have to consider:
in the near future, there will be the possibility to get the slave license with a monthly subscription, OctaneRender Cloud is just behind the corner, and Titan X should be updated in few months
ciao beppe