Octane build mid-2020

[grain]

Hi all,

it's that time again, my 2015 machine has been great but it's time for an upgrade. Looking at platforms, I'm excited about the new threadrippers and PCIe 4, but not sure how much that will actually help with Octane. A cheaper alternative would be to base a system around the X299 WS Sage motherboard which apparently can run 7 GPUs.

I have been using Netstor NA255A expansion boxes to add more PCIe slots and GPUs to my render machines and they work fairly well. Transfer speed is slightly slow, and some motherboards can only run an extra 1 or 2 cards, but it's been a big help rather than buying full new systems. I'd like to use as many of my old legacy GPUs as possible, and keep using these boxes if I can. At this stage I have a lot of old GPUs, from 780s, Titan z, 908ti, 1080ti hybrids, 2080ti and an RTX titan which I got recently for machine learning tasks.. so my system is always a bit of a frankenstein really.

I found this guide that sounds reasonable - https://www.topflightpc.com/blog/recomm ... r-quad-gpu

Happy to hear any opinions!

Thanks.