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I need to replace my really old desktop so that I can work faster and also render with Octane much faster. I have a newer laptop but the GT 650M card in it doesn't do much better than the GTX 460 that I have in my desktop. I don't have a big budget (about $2,000), so I can't afford a separate render box.

One option appears to be to get a motherboard like the ASUS X79-Deluxe, which has four video card bays [will this work? it has 3 x PCI E3.0 x 16 (dual at x16/x16, triple at x16/8/8 plus 1 PCI E3.0 x 16 (at x4 mode)] and put in four GTX 750 ti Video cards (which are available for $150 each). I would need to get the other components, case, etc. and put the machine together myself, which is doable.

OR,

Should I get a regular mid tower PC with two video card slots, upgrade the power supply and put in two more expensive video cards (either two for about $400 or so each or one for about $800 -- any recommendations here?). I am assuming no special cooling would be required.

In either case I would use an Intel i7 with 16 GM RAM and a solid state drive. The X79-Deluxe MB works best with quad sets of matched ram (it has 8 memory slots), which are more difficult to locate but may be doable. The GTX 750 ti cards are attractive since they are low cost and very power efficient (does a more power hungry card really cost much more to run over time?) and run cool.

I need to improve my render times significantly within my budget. A client needs me to hurry up and get something. Any recommendations will be much appreciated.

I don't know too much about the way You work, how big are Your scenes, what other software You're using, etc..sop it's hard to give You recomendation. However If I would have this budget now, I'd probably spend it a bit different way.

X79 is ageing, X99 is just around the corner (memory surfaced, mobos too..& new CPUs are coming..) - to buy one of them isn't the best deal..unless You need as much CPU power as You can get. For a price of six core CPU (500$), You can get nice Z97 (200$) & Quad-core CPU(300$). If You can live with a bit lower CPU performance (overclocked it will probably come 15% shy of six core out-of-the-box). Add 100$ for good AIO cooler, get a nice case (that's another 100$). PSU depending on Your needs (let's say in a range of 700-1200W would cost 100-250$) - so that's in total bit less than 1k$ (You probably already have storage: HDDs, SSDs..).

So in this case, You would be left with 1k$ for GPUs =) well, You can go second hand route & look for 580 or even 590 (if You can live with 1.5gb of vram) or..step toward new cards =) one of the best values for a while were 670 & then rebranded 680 (with small tweaks), a.k.a 770 - 4Gb of vram, with twice the speed of 460 (price should be ~300$ =) Then came 780 6gb - price 600$

If You can live with 460 for the screen - use it. For rendering two 780 6gb will give You a lot of vram & enough speed bump to fell..(probabalty around 6times faster than 460, but take my word with a grain of salt & check it for a benchmark comparisons before to get better picture =)

Considering X97 it will be compatable with Broadwell CPU's that will probably get 10-15% speed bump compared to existing generation (if intel will keep the way they are going =) so basically, You'll get the system tht is almsot as fast as x79 now. & if You don't need 64gb of RAM, (going for 16GB now) x97 (for quad) will give ability to upgrade to 32GB later if You find a need - so it's ore than enough.

There's no silver bullet solution, as we all have completelly different needs =) I'd expressed my personal view & opinion with a bit explanation. Hope it helps You out, but if You have any more questions - simply drop a line =)

Thank you so much for the helpful advice!
I've built my own PCs in the past but it's been so long and everything has changed, so I felt a bit lost with all the model numbers, technologies, etc. that don't always correspond to performance. I actually once animated the complete assembly and disassembly of a PC and a laptop, down to the last screw and the thermal silver, but that was a while back.

Your expert recommendations helped steer me in the direction that I am now going.
It's always tempting to wait for the next technology to arrive, but a client is willing to pay for the machine (in return for all the free work I have and will be doing for him) and I'll need it now to get his project done in time. It also sounds like the X99 and DDR3 RAM may be expensive to begin with.

I found some great deals on used cards but my client will only do it through BestBuy since he has an account with them. That limits things a bit. They don't have any towers with more than two video bays, so I am gravitating toward getting one GTX 780 Superclocked EVGA card and leaving in the lower spec GTX 750Ti card that the machine comes with (since they don't give me a rebate for taking it out). Later on I can upgrade it when it makes sense. Since the GTX 780 requires a minimum 600W PS I'll need them to swap it with a 1200 W PS (the highest wattage they have), so that I have the option of running two 780s down the road (hopefully they won't max out the 1200W PS). How directly does the number of cores correlate to performance? The GTX 780 with 2304 cuda cores (plus the installed GTX 750Ti with 768 cores) is almost 10x more than the measly 336 cores that my GTX 460 has. Plus the new PC will be a lot faster.

My scenes aren't that large. Mostly consumer products with simple materials rendered on a uniform background. I'm not sure what benefit an upgrade to 32GB RAM will give me over the 16GB it comes with. The machine includes a hybrid drive, and the sales person said the 32GB on it will hold the operating system, so perhaps that helps reduce RAM usage. . .

Other than that, the sales guy is recommending a Dell XPS 11 (I think) with an Intel i7 CPU. They haven't emailed me the specs yet, so hopefully the machine has a recent edition motherboard as you suggest (the PC is listed as a new arrival).
Thanks again!

System RAM has almost no effect on Octane, and I can't imagine needing 32GB unless you're using other renderers or you need to do some complicated, large stuff in your host application (larger than Octane can handle). Some host applications do run faster with more & better RAM, but Octane doesn't benefit, as far as I know.

Octane's speed scales almost exactly linearly with additional CUDA cores (actually, if you're using a card for both display & render, it will scale better than linearly), so you should expect a very large increase. Keep in mind that your VRAM will be limited by the smallest VRAM card you have. So, for example, if you have a 2GB card and a 6GB card, you can only render a 2GB scene unless you tell Octane to exclude the smaller card.

Re: power supplies, I've been running two GTX 780s with a slight overclock on an 850W PSU with zero problems whatsoever. 1200W should be fine for a 780 + 750 + 460, but make sure it's a high quality unit from a good manufacturer.

Thank you Dysee.
I'll stick with the stock 16MB RAM on the motherboard then, since it's a pricey upgrade to 32 bit.
I'll also see about a lower power Power Supply since they want $330 to upgrade to a 1200 Watt unit (by contrast, an 850 Watt PS is $150).
There's only room for two video cards in the machine so the 460 will have to stay in my old PC.
if an 850 Watt PS can handle two 780's then that should be good enough for me once I finally upgrade the 750Ti to a 780 or whatever is a good deal (who knows, by then the Titans may be half the price they are now, given how infrequently I seem to upgrade things ).

Well the hardware arrived but BestBuy messed up. I wanted a machine with 3 or 4 slots for double-wide video cards, but they didn't carry any so I settled for a machine that would hold two (per their confirmation). It turns out that the PC only has one PCIe x16 slot plus two small PCIe x1 slots and one slightly longer PCIe x4 slot. The x16 slot is populated with the GTX 750Ti, so there is nowhere to put the GTX 780! I had already swapped in the 850W power supply (barely fit).

Since the PCIe x4 slot is open at the back it looks like a larger card can be put into it (for lowered performance?). I wondered if I could move the stock GTX 750Ti to this slot, but since the slot is at the bottom of the case there isn't room for the fan on the wide card, unless I cut a round hole in the bottom of the case and elevated it a bit. Would this card work in this x4 slot if I did this? If so, what kind of performance hit would it take and would it be worth it?

I could return everything, but they don't seem to have alternatives. I found one machine on their site that has extra x16 bays (3 of them with space between them), but it says it is sold out:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerp ... cp=1&lp=13

Even if it were available, I don't know how good a choice it would be. It looks like an X79 motherboard, which you had indicated is aging (I'm not sure what the Dell XPS uses).

I could just keep everything and use the higher end 780 card, and later on build a render box and move the GTX 780 over to it. This will end up costing me a lot more than simply adding cards to a PC that has room to expand, plus I would have to get a slave license for Octane (not too thrilled about their network render pricing structure -- I think at least one slave PC should be included, but that's another matter). Or, is there is some inexpensive way of splitting the x16 with a ribbon out of the box to two or more cards in some kind of mini case, possibly powered by the PC's power supply?

Any recommendations are welcome

Just quickly; your 'aging' x79 is still better than an oem motherboard with pcie16, 4, 1, 1.

If returning suites your timeline with your client I'd consider that; x79 will also get you quad-channel memory architecture, but will eat into your budget. There are other high-end motherboard options though which afford you mor pcie slots than you have: Z87 or Z97 for example.
Also, unless your primary software(s) are optimised for multi-threaded workflows (not cpu rendering, the actual content creation workflow & calculations) then forgoing x79 to wait for x99 architecture is misguided at best. Sorry, but on modern hardware our work is certainly only gpu constrained (by a large margin).

In summary; check your software: if not optimised for multi-threaded calculations then go for highest ghz you can get: i5 or i7 : overclocked higher still ideally.
If it is fully optimised for multi-tread: considering your budget, go i7, the premium you'd pay for xeon on x79 (if you got x79) would eat into precious gpu fundage.
Check out z87 or z97 as a cheaper-than-x79 option for more than 2 pcie 16x slots (as discussed before, even pcie 3.0 at 8x is way fast enough).
Ram @ 16gb is fine. Don't go super-cheap. Don't pay extra for MHz (paying for CL rating is ok if you have the bdget)
Case is personal, so long as it all fits.
PSU you have sorted.

If returning isn't an option then perhaps use the 750 in the 4x slot. The performance hit will occur during the loading of the scene only; rending will not be effected.

EDIT: i saw you are most active in the 3ds max forums; so I Just did some quick research to that end.
Based on a few reputable reviews it seems even the max 2015 is single-thread heavy(ignoring rendering, since we use octane obviously). So go for i5 quad with highest Ghz (+overclock perferably) or i7 with highest Ghz (+overclock preferably).

Thank you. That was very informative.
I think I will return the Dell and wait to get something expandable along the lines of what you recommended.
I'll hang onto the GTX-780 6GB card and install it in whatever I end up with.
Hopefully the return goes smoothly (it was their mistake).

Does this look like a good choice? It has four PCIe x16 slots (hopefully double-wide).

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerp ... &cp=1&lp=2

What kind of wattage on the Power Supply would be needed for it to support four GTX 870's? I have just one but over time would like to add more.

buggy wrote:Does this look like a good choice? It has four PCIe x16 slots (hopefully double-wide).

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerp ... &cp=1&lp=2

What kind of wattage on the Power Supply would be needed for it to support four GTX 870's? I have just one but over time would like to add more.

It looks good; definately says four PCIE 16x ... Might be worth checking the exact motherboard used in that build to verify its slow spacing.

Regarding the power supply, i ran your specs (inc. 4x GTX780's) into the outer vision PSU calculator, came out at 1063w (with some assumptions about your HDD's). So if you had a 1200w you would have headroom to spare, and likely be in the 'efficiency zone sweet spot' since octane generally taxes GPU's fully while not taxing the other components much (with the exception of voxelising taxes cpu, but before GPU's are used).
I believe you mentioned there is a 1200w available from best buy?

Feel free to check yourself: http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine