Which case shall i buy?

[ChrisVis]

Hi cfrank78,

I just found a review on toms hardware about the NA255A, might be interesting, they tested it with Radeon Graphic Cards (and had some issues because of the little oversized dual-slot cards)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tur ... ,3430.html

They also tested for game performance and have seen some bottlenecks, but for rendering it is cascading the GPU performance just fine, as you see with the luxmark benchmarks.

But I just checked out for the price... it is about 2200$ for the NA255A! I paid 1250€ on the NA250A-PRO (400W PSU), thats quite fair, but about 1700€ isn`t in my opinion. I think the speed of the NA250A should be enough for the Titans and the rendering work with octane, as you can see in the luxmark render benchmark, there is no difference between the PCIe Gen3 of the Turbobox and the PCIe Gen2 of the mobo internal gpus).

Pricely it is a difference, because for 1700€ you might just build another complete PC System and put the 4 Titans in there... only disadvantage (if it is one), that you need more software licences and spread your work on two separate systems.

But maybe you have the possibility to check out both of the expansion, the NA250A and the NA255A, and do a reallife octane performance benchmark comparison would be quite interesting

Keep us updated!
Greetings,
ChrisVis

[cfrank78]

I think i will go with the 4 titans in the main machine and the n255a.

Temjin TJ11 is ordered. I would prefer the temjin tn12 but that thing is not sold jet i tink. could not find it. The 4 titans are ordered too and i will order 4 more when the n255a is here!

Dont you think the 1000Wat psu is enough for 4 titans in the n255a?

But which mainboard shall i finally use? I do a lot of After Effects work too, so i need also great CPU Power. Do you Experts have some tipps for me?

What shall i take?
-Xeon dual core?
-2011 i7 3960 dualcore?

what is better and which mainboard is best for also using 4 titan cards and 1 display card

This is the last part and then the beast can be built!

Thanks Chris!

[ChrisVis]

Hi cfrank78,

I don`t think a 1000W PSU is enough for 4 Titans... the specs or benchmarks say one Titan eats up 250W in full load. I think it is better to have some headroom left... maybe a 1200W PSU is enough... I am guite satisfied with the Antec High Current Pro 1200W, but it comes to its limits with the GTX580 and GTX590s. It delivers over 1200W in practice, so has also quite a headroom, I think my full load is about 1250W while rendering with all cards. Titan of course have less power consumption.
But that is for the turbobox... For the Main PC System you would at least need 1500W, if you want to use one CPU and 4 Titans. Better would be to have a second PSU to connect 2 Titans to, if this is possible with the TJ11 Case.

I am not in depth with actual motherboards at the moment, but in fact that might be the most important part to decide, when it comes to stability and compatibility with lots of gpus!

I PMed with raylab, who had problems connecting 2 Turboboxes to one Server PC System,
but maybe because of driver issues with mixing old teslas and titans or/and problems with his supermicro dual xeon motherboard Super X9DRG-QF.

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... em#p109361

I personally would go for 2011 i7 3960x, not even sure if dual cpu is a must have, nor if it really would work with this cpu. Xeons are made for dual cpu, but I think it is better to orient your hardware on the maximum game performance style than on server grade performance, because high end gaming is more the task we need for running octane than specialized server functions (which might have even more driver issues than more "common" game PC systems).

I know after effects likes the best cpu power and lots of ram and the highest bus bandwidth you can get, that specs the i7 3960 is very good in. It has 40 Lanes instead of normal 16 Lanes to connect devices. So I think it can handle a lot of gpus... but that is speculation, I cannot proof In theory connecting lots of netstors with 4 Titans to one system ist fine, but I think no one tried out to connect more than 8 graphic cards to one system yet in practice here. (Perhaps someone from OTOY could give some advice, how they build up their gpu cloud system? *g*)

Maybe anybody has experiences with a motherboard for i7 3960x? Should be a XL-ATX, I think with socket 2011.

[cfrank78]

Thanks ChrisVis for all your effort. I really appreciate. Also the others here, glimpse and Co!

I know that the mainboard is one of the most important thing to think about. Dual PSU in TJ11 is possible, i saw some setups. I plan to input 2 x 1000W PSU. Should be enough.

But After Effects and Premiere Pro and sony Vegas Performance is really important to me in the new machine. I do about 60% render Jobs and 40% post production. So i really hope some experienced guys can help me out with tipps about I7 or xeon and which mainboard to use! I dont wanna bye the wrong stuff when i put so much money in that beast hehe!

Kind regards Chris!

[cfrank78]

Really no one a Tipp for a good motherboard and which cpu to use?
Are here no octane users that do video editing too?

Please!

Kind regards Chris!

[glimpse]

I would say: get Yourself a 3930k hexacore procesor - 'k' means it's unlocked =) put a closed-loop all-in-one coller if You don't want to mess with custom solution & overclock that beast a bit - realistically You'll probably get 13-14 or more in cinemabench..grab a nice X79 mobo depending on your needs & You're good to go =) that would cost You probably ~1,5-2k$ for CPU, MOBO, RAM, Cooling /varies on parts You take.

If You want more power take two e5 2660 xeons & server type mobo..You're getting extra, but what You have to pay for that?
eight core cpu will cost You twice as much as six core & You need two of them, pluss server boards are not cheap either.. in cinema bench You'll get like 20. so..You'd pay like at least two times more getting 40% increase in raw power..?

well, not exactly..You can put more memory, ecc /if You need/ & other features - do Youself a favour & take a close look what's important for the soft You're using =)

personally, I wouldn't take second route =) better leave some money in the pocket..- but again..it's more about Your needs. just a reminder! There are other bottle-necks in system & as far as I know for editing storage device is important - so, what You'd save from xeons, I'd rather put to good SSD solution..or maybe even PCI card if You're looking to have extender to house additional GPU power.

anyway..drop a line here If You have some questions =) I'm sure Guys could help You quite a bit here =) maybe someOne else has completelly diff oppinion, but these are the thoughts from me =)

cheers

[cfrank78]

Hi Glimpse!

Thanks for your answer!

I use 90%: Octane,Vray,Rhino,Cinema4d,Max,Prem Pro & After Efects via dynamic linking and about 10% Photoshop!

Thats my workflow. After Effects takes about 50% of it cause i have a lot of post production to do too. If only rendering would be my interrest, i would take the x79 but i really need after effct power too. What i wanted is a comparison, if a dual cpu xeon prozessor would give me that more power for cutting than a really good x79 and i hoped someone could tell me that. You are completely right its a hell of a lot more money to buy xeons and i am not sure if the more power is really necessary.

I allready use special SSD workflow. 1 256gb samsung pro for boot and 2 128gb in a raid for sratch files only for photoshop, after effcts and so on. both hang on the sata 6gb/s controller and can shuffle about 600mb/sec. that boosted my workflow a lot. The rest i use raid 5+1 harddrives which can handle about 350mb/sec too. also pretty fast. I know how to find and handle bottlenecks, but my problem is the raw cpu and prozessor power!

Also. The machine i have now, which is listed in my signature, is also pretty fast for modelling and some preview rendering. I will use it for sure for modelling and other things. The new machine shall be the render beast to boost up all the things that take a lot of time like animation rendering and doing the post production stuff.

So if i would go for x77 or x79 - which mainboard shall i use to have a good option for overclocking AND the maximum number of GPU possible. Do you have some tipps?

PS: Just got the confirmation. Temjin will arrive on Tuesday. Starting to get really like christmas here

[p3taoctane]

One thing to remember is that under windows you cannot run more than a total of 8 PCI cards of any kind.

I hope like heck I am wrong... but I have tried and have seemed to hit that bottle neck. So for example if you are running a card for display and one for an extender that leaves only 6 for rendering. You can see more than 8 cards but only eight will actually be involved.

I think it is different on Linux.... but that is not my area.

If you build a cluster under linux you can do more.

I have a server card that has 8 double wide slots and I put an extension card in and added a couple more and they showed up but I could not get windows to use them.

[ChrisVis]

Hi cfrank78,

with which mobo and CPU did you end up for your new system? Is it ready and running now? Did you manage to get more than 4 cards inside one PC?

Just curious what your experiences are and if you got to any limits in terms of PCIe Cards or Lanes or similar problems?

Greets,
ChrisVis

[ASyme1]

Hi Chris-
We have a bunch of these at my shop. They hold Asus motherboards (extreme 4) and either 4 Titans or 4 680's. Great case. Lot's of room. I replaced all the fans with bigger quieter ones. They are nearly silent even while rendering. These are HEATERS though.

Good luck!

http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/P ... 11-146-088

Alec