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four cards is not the limit to connect on a mother boardboard, but if You want to connect 7-8 pcie cards on a higher end mobos, but then You need whether a server case with pcie extending cables,backplane or single slot moded cards.. atx, etc has no more than 8pcie expansion slots (so four dual slot cards).

4cards gives the best value & least amount of headache..- good case, enough airflow & You're ready to go.. have an extra 1k$ down the road for an upgrade & worry bout temps - get a custom loop =)

eisberger wrote:Hi Again.

Please completely ignore my previous post, I've changed my mind to the point where I'm in agreement that building a quad-card PC to serve both as a network render slave and a potential back-up machine is the most sensible option both from the point of view of cost (those pci boxes are really expensive!), and ease of installation (I've built a lot of PCs but pci boxes would be entirely new territory for me).

So I'm going to check the availability of the parts for the build that was mentioned earlier. My configuration would then be; my current machine with one of the 580s removed in favour of a middle-of-the-road Quadro card, the second 580 still there doing its thing, and a second PC squirrelled away with 4x 780Ti and nothing installed on it but windows, octane and teamviewer. Does this seem like the most sensible way forward? And just to ask again, is four cards really the limit for a single machine?

Thanks for all of your help you're a great community.

Yes, I think that's the sensible route. Only comment I would have is if you're set on the 780Ti's, be sure that 3GB memory is enough for your project. The 780's now have 6GB which offers some future proofing. Or even 4 (original) Titans with the reference coolers from Nvidia IF you can still get them.

Another consideration regarding memory might be to go for a 2x GTX 780Ti + 2x Titan Black rig. The Titan Blacks are brilliant and they give you the 6GB just in case you run out of mem on your scene (in which case the 780Ti's will sit idle). If you have the dosh, go 4 Titan blacks if you're only gonna build one machine. Just stay away from fancy ass coolers that replace the Nvidia coolers, they're not designed for tight packed multi-GPU setups.

Best,
Seeker

Get a mainboard with thunderbolt, so in any case you need more speed you could attach something like a netstor box

Seekerfinder wrote: Just stay away from fancy ass coolers that replace the Nvidia coolers, they're not designed for tight packed multi-GPU setups.

wise words =) I've had non reference coolers that were very silent, very efficient, if You have enough space to breath - I was running cards with one slot gap without any issues - 70 something & pretty silent.. once I've stuffed those cards side by side..one card went up to 100C.. - so yeah.. do You homework.. some coolers might cause a bit of issues..- or You need a lot of air to pass through case..

whersmy wrote:Get a mainboard with thunderbolt, so in any case you need more speed you could attach something like a netstor box

wasn't some issues with external GPU via thunderbolt..- think PCIe is way better solution..-at least less troubles with that..

I have yet to here if thunderbolt extension boxes work with GPU and CUDA on Win PC. (Not sure why you would need to try it with PCI being so easy to do..... but still would be interested.

I know it does not work on the MAC. It is an OSX issue. All the thunderbolt Extender box manufacturers are waiting to here if the new OSX Yosemite addresses the issue. One manufacturer says he gets a request every day wanting to know if Nividia GPU CUDA cards will be recognized over thunderbolt on MAC OSX and he has to say no for now.

Has anyone got a thunderbolt extension box running with Octane on a PC? Would love to know. If the answer was yes it would then be worth trying it on bootcamp. Why you ask... why not just build a cheap PC that works... Oh lets just say you had one of thoses new trash-bin Desktop Macs with bloody non-interchangable graphics cards in them...

Thunderbolt should work just fine I think. I once ran a gtx 750ti over expresscard and it got about 2ms on benchmark, which is still pretty good. No hassle with drivers too

Hi! I've compiled a quick list of a possible build based on components that are actually available for delivery in the next few days.

https://www.digitec.ch/de/ShopList/Show ... 215E6B9073

Sorry, it's all in german

It's based on socket 1150, not 2011 as the earlier suggested build was, due to those motherboards not being available here.
Please keep in mind that this will not be a primary workstation, but a box that sits in a corner and is purely a network render node.

Thanks a lot for any advice you can give!

eisberger wrote:Hi! I've compiled a quick list of a possible build based on components that are actually available for delivery in the next few days.

https://www.digitec.ch/de/ShopList/Show ... 215E6B9073

Sorry, it's all in german

It's based on socket 1150, not 2011 as the earlier suggested build was, due to those motherboards not being available here.
Please keep in mind that this will not be a primary workstation, but a box that sits in a corner and is purely a network render node.

Thanks a lot for any advice you can give!

Looks good except for those cards for the cooler reason explained above. This is much better: http://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B00GJEL4GK ... SY165_QL70

Best,
Seeker

I am also interested in finding a good gpu render rig.
But I am kind of wondering if I would ever need more than 4GB VRAM on the graphics card. For film studios it kind of makes sense when they are packing half a district worth of buildings into a scene and then have a car drive through iz for 10secs. But most scenes fron private users do not do this and scenes are much smaller. I think of all scenes and images submitted here for example, none require more than 3-4GB graphics memory, especially because octane supports memory friendly instancing. I tjink I will by a external cubix and 4 GTX 780 or some other card in that range which has 4GB.
Then I am about 20x faster than right now on my laptop with gtx690m. Then my landscape renders will take about 20-30mins at 1920x1080 with good quality path tracing. I am good with that and I should get away with less than 5000$

I had Gigabyte cards with such coolers..if the backplate on this card is included & You don't have extra slot of space You're in serious trouble.. even 460 reached 100C =).. however if You manage Your layout efficiently (from cooling perspective) than this cards is very fast! & Silent enough - been very happy on the board with extra gap..

for inspiration : here's what alienware made on their Area51 rig
https://twitter.com/tomglimps/status/50 ... 69/photo/1

as for power supply I'd take this:
https://twitter.com/tomglimps/status/51 ... 08/photo/1
if You're going for mobo with 4x GPU support - then 1200W power supply might be bit too little
& start causing problems on the long run.. (already been measured 780ti might sip up to 300W - so, 1200W for GPUs alone if You go for 4..

as for mobo, if this is Your render node only, I'd take this board from Gigabyte http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... x?pid=4949 if 3x cards enough.. - You can get a fourth if You want but it would be seated on a slower PCIe 2 connection..

As for CPU simple anniversary edition pentium (dual core) would cost less & should be enough to feed cards =) put an AIO on it & it will last long =)

case is nice, but too big if You're not planing any water-cooling =) as for cards, would better be to go with ref coolers..or You can do with tuned ones.., but then try to provide loads of airflow as these would circulate heat in a case =) I'd drop some insane fans like those Noctuas spinning up to 3000rpm's - You can tune them down for silence, but if needed to make a hurricane inside Your case =)