Adding two titans in 'old' pc and blow up my house?

[rappet]

Hi guys,

I am thinking to double my GPU power by adding two Titans in my second PC.
The mobo is a MSI X58 Pro-E and it has already a gtx275 in the first slot.
The plan is to fill the other two slots with Titans
This is a link to the mobo:
http://www.google.nl/search?q=msi+x58+p ... qBZ8UNM%3A

I know the pcie is 2.0 and not 3.0, but I understand that has only effect on loading the scene (half speed) and not does not effect the renderspeeed. I'll accept this downside as pro ofr my wallet not having to spent money on a new config

The 900Watt Power should be enough, right?

The thing I am worried about is the heat. I have a Coolermaster CM 690, but only with one fan on the side and one on the back. Should I try and addd more fans when have added the Titans?

I have to re-direct the powercable from PU to mobo, but I must be able to mange that.

The Lan is 1gB. Are there more specs I need to pay attention to, when I want to use the PC for network rendering (hopefully in the near future

At this moment my main PC has 4x580's and Has a optimal aircooling for the lot of heat.
First I was thinking about swap two 580 with two Titans (I want to buy) to boost my power on the one machien,
And add the two 580 in my second machine.
but I think adding two 580's in my second machine (with X58) is not such a good idea, because of the heating problem. If I am right the Titans produce a lot less heat.

Comment and advice is very welcome.

Greetz,

[ROUBAL]

I am not sure that a 900W PSU will be enough for a GTX 275 plus 2 GTX 580.

According to Nvidia specifications, the GTX 580 requires at minimum a 600W PSU.

My former PSU (changed this week after it died) was a 550W and I had only one GTX 260 in the machine. It was an Antec true power Trio so it had 3 rails with not enough power on each rail. I changed it for a Corsair monorail 750 W. So the power distribution is better. I changed the display card for a more greedy GTX 480 that I had in spare.

With 900 W you could add one GTX 580, but imho it would not be sufficient for two GTX 580 and a GTX 275... Maybe two titans could effectively fit, but I am not sure, as Nvidia doesn't provide the real consumption of these cards, only the minimal PSU power for one card. The given required power is the same as for GTX 580 : 600W.

What is the power of the PSU of your main machine ?

[face_off]

If the only thing the second PC is doing is being a render slave - you could use a different motherboard with an on-board graphics card. That will save you some power supply watts.

Paul

[rappet]

Hi Roubal,

Thanx for your response.
My main machine has PSU 1500W.
I am not sure now how to configthe two machines 1500W and 900W optimal with these GPU
4x 580gtx, 1x 275gtx, 2x titans (1or 2 depending on possibility).
Maybe I should leave the 1500W with 4x 580 and leave the 275 out and only put 2 titans in the 900W ?

Greetz,

Hi Paul, good tip.. but I want to keep the PC config to do less as possible andhopefulle get max GPU on the machine.

Greetz,

[rappet]

What is the worst thing that can happen when I stuff my 900Watt PC with one gtx275 and two Titans and the PSU turns out not to be enough?
Will it blow up my PSU? Will it destroy something else as well? Will it burn down my house?
It might be worth trying when it only might or might not blows up the PSU... Then I will buy a 1250Watt and blow up that one as well
Greetz, rappet

[voon]

Question here is the quality of the 900W PSU and it's power distribution. If enough goes to the 12V rails, then you should be fine (although all modern PSUs usually have most of their power on the 12V rails). Cheap noname PSUs usually don't deliver, though.

That said, I drive two 780 Ti OC on my Seasonic P-860W PSU and have no problems at all. Before, I had tried a Fractal Design 800W, which would shut down, even if it should have worked. Original maker rquirements are mostly a joke. They specify numbers that will exceed the requirements, to be on the safe side.

Heat shoul dnot be a huge issue if you space the cards enough ... and buying an extra fan or a few costs clsoe to nothing in comparison to two Titans.

BTW: Why Titans?

[glimpse]

as far as i remember two Titans need less than 500W + system + older card..- as some all depends on quality & how old Your PSU is.

nVidia recommends 550W (600W for TB) power supply for system with single Titan, but again they keep things safe 'cos they don't know what type of CPU You're using, how much over clock You'll have, etc.

To run 780 or Titan with quad core system without aggressive over clock 450W is enough - it's measured fact =)

In Your case if PSU is really good - You should be able to feed You system. What could go wrong? =) well system might be booting & then just after You press button for full load it might hang, restart and so..- again if the PSU & motherboard has safety features built in it nothing bad..but certainly not to good either..as You would never know when things could go wrong if using older parts..

so it depends on what You have, how it was used & so..If You want headache-free time ahead simply get 1200W, So You could have a piece of mind & even add extra card in future (honestly that would be my move =)

[rappet]

Hi voon,
Thanx for your comment.

I looked up my PSU and as far as to my knowledge reading the review, the
Coolermaster Ultimate 900W turnes out to pretty OK,
also concerning the 12v rails...
This links shows a review
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Cases-and- ... onclusions

It will not be possible to space the cards, because I only have 3 slots.
When using gtx275 and two titans it is full and the cards will be very close to each other.
When choosing to go for 2 titans only, it will be better,
but the third slot is very close to the PSU and I have to choose to have the cards close to each other or have one near the PSU.
On the other hand... The system is ATX and SLI ready, so it should be possible in theory.

I was thinking about Titans, because of the 6gb and it is has more renderpower then the 780(6gb). Do you have another opinion about this?

And yes, I should add some fans indeed

Hi Glimpse,
Always nice to hear your thoughts! (You were a great help about a year ago when I was configuring my main machine!)
If I assume that the 900W I have is pretty good dor a 900W (see review)
... then I could add two Titans next to the gtx275, but I then could better not buy the Overclocked version, but the 'regular' on (889 mhz) to not push it to the limit, right?
And do you mean just the 2 titans or the 3 cards?
Gtx275 Maximum Graphics Card Power (W) is 219 W
Titan Black Graphics Card Power (W) is 250 W

[voon]

Well, ASFAIK, the Titans have reference coolers, so they exhaust air through their backsides a bit, which may work better. I had by 780ti's next to each other and that means maximum fanspeed, noise and heat. For rendering speed, 780 ti, 780 and titans can be directly compared by their CUDA cores and the clocks running on them. Multiply clock by cores and you have the winner in speed. 6 GB is nice if you need it ... if the 780 is far less expensive, it may be a bargain for you. The other advantage of titans, Double Precision speed, is not used in Octane.

The PSU: You need to try it .. it should in theory work. My 780 Ti's run at 1150 MHz without problems on my 860W PSU (then again Seasonic is also an excellent maker). The 275 I would just sell if you have two titans ... not that much point in keeping it,

For fans, I like my Enermax TB Silence ... fairly cheap and also quite silent.

[rappet]

Hi voon,
Thanx again for your advice.. It helps a lot.
Ok, I was planning to go for the Titans anyway, but I did some math to convince myself doing the right thing here:

just mutliply cores with speed, right?

780(6gb): 2304 cudacores x 0,863 (863 mhz)= 1988 (call it renderpower)
Titan: 2880cudacores x x 0,889 (889mhz)= 2560 (renderpower)
Titan has then 29% (2560/1988= 1,29) more renderpower

780 cost about 550 euro and a Titan 900 eunro.
The Titan is 75% (900/550) more expensive,
for only 29% more renderpower.
780 costs 0,28 cents per ratiorenderpower
Titan costs 0,35 cents per ratiorenderpower
so Titan is 25%  (0,35/0,28) more expensive in ratio.

If budget is around 1000 euro you could buy two 780 instead of one Titan,
But then you can not easily expand later.
When wanting to fill slots optimal longterm, two titans instead of two 780 is 29% more renderpower!