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Hello, the company I'm working for is wanting to move to a 3rd party render engine for C4D and we are trying to figure out the best solution for our needs.

Octane looks like a very promising engine but unfortunately we haven't been able to test it due to our hardware setup.

We have 3 Mac Pro Cylinder computers with AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB GPU, 64GB RAM. I know this is not compatible with the current version of Octane as it only runs on Nvidia CUDA architecture.

We have been thinking about getting one of these boxes - http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpress3d.html to connect a Nvidia CUDA card to the Mac Pro via thunderbolt.

Would this setup work for using Octane? What graphics cards would be recommended?

Could we get multiple boxes for each Mac Pro Cylinder and use them with Team Render with Octane?

Most of the power supplies on Sonnet boxes are too low power
The one you pointed to has a 300W power supply and space for a double wide card and one single. Most of the cards that would serve you well would need 450-600W to run one card under full load.

I ended up building my own box using two of these

http://www.akitio.com/accessories/thunder2-pcie-box

And my own power supply.. yes I had to butcher the box it came in to use it but other than that I am running two Titan Z's with my Mac Pro Cylinder and it cranks away on Octane all day.

Has an 1100 Watt power supply and a bunch of well situated fans. A bit mickey mouse but it works.

You will need to alter some system files to get it to run cuda... but there is a link somewhere that does a fantastic job of explaining just what you need to do.

Best of luck

now here are few thoughs on the topic:

Apple is not very friendly. eGPU is a possibility via Thunderbolt, but it's far from being dead easy - You still need some work to do & in the end might run up into issues after update (like limmit of 3-4 GPUs). So what's the best solution then?

From my point of view the best & most logical way to spend the budget is: get small Thunderbolt powered expanders with something like 980TI & SFXL PSU (little footprint, but enough power) for every MacPro. Then, add a custom build or two with something 4 to 8 GPUs on Your network.

In this case You can work on any MAC in Your studio & leverage node(s) on the network to speed up tests (or final output when needed) & this would save You quite a lot of money. Why? If You buy expanders (for 4GPUs) only barebones are going to cost You 1-2K$ each.

Having one (two or three, whatever You need) render node(s) would allow You to deliver the power for those who need it most. Custom builds would cost You less than expansion boxes & keep everything neatly in one place.

4 GPUs (980Ti or TitanX) OC'ed properlly cooled could give You ~600in terms of OctaneBench.
Something custom (7-8 GPUs) in the rack or "open rig" will go close to 1000 in a single "box".

You can read more' bout eGPUs on Mac here

Thank you guys for your input, this is all making sense to me.

p3taoctane - Is this the link that you were referring to? https://xellers.wordpress.com/articles/ ... d-systems/