Re: New Workstation - Suggestions ?
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 4:15 pm
The other guys here likely have more PC building experience than I do, but I have to disagree a bit on the PSU. A 3 x Titan + Titan Z is going to need more than a 1500W PSU in my opinion. A complete system with CPU, cooler, RAM, SSD and HDD, plus those cards is going to eat up ~1400W, and that's if everything goes according to stock numbers. Just go to PCPartsPicker and check the config for yourself. Factor in PSU efficiency loss and any spikes in power draw (which really can happen), and you could find yourself in the middle of some unwanted hard shutdowns with expensive gear.
On the motherboard and CPU side, even though the X99 chipset had some more cost around it at the moment, the one very nice feature is that more flexible assigning PCI lanes to your graphics cards. Which means instead of 4x4x4x4, you could get 16x8x8x8. That means your primary Titan (x16) could load the scene into memory and start rendering quicker, then the other cards would join in as they loaded up the scene. If you do a lot of lighting and material checking, that could be worth the investment.
Whatever you decide, seems like it will be a beastly machine. (I love the idea of a dual Titan Z setup personally
On the motherboard and CPU side, even though the X99 chipset had some more cost around it at the moment, the one very nice feature is that more flexible assigning PCI lanes to your graphics cards. Which means instead of 4x4x4x4, you could get 16x8x8x8. That means your primary Titan (x16) could load the scene into memory and start rendering quicker, then the other cards would join in as they loaded up the scene. If you do a lot of lighting and material checking, that could be worth the investment.
Whatever you decide, seems like it will be a beastly machine. (I love the idea of a dual Titan Z setup personally