Rig Setup Help

[zinogino]

So, today I was talking to my client where he wanted a 3D animation and focus on realism on the end product. I told him with my current setup(GTX880M) it's gonna take weeks to finish the render. So, he told me he can help me buy solving the hardware part and gave me 1420USD budget to get a decent setup to finish the animation and I get to keep the PC. MInd sharing what setup can I get and is future proof where I can upgrade it. Thanks!

[mib2berlin]

Hi, all about is memory consumption of this and future projects.
I f you are fine with 6 GB fastes card is GTX 980Ti 6 GB, when not only TitanX with 12 GB is needed.
The Titan X is ~37% faster than the GTX 980Ti while costing 80% more.
You can buy a gaming PC with SLI board and change GPU to suitable one.
Make sure power supply is 850 Watt or more to drive a second card when needed.

Cheers, mib

[zinogino]

Hi, all about is memory consumption of this and future projects.
I f you are fine with 6 GB fastes card is GTX 980Ti 6 GB, when not only TitanX with 12 GB is needed.
The Titan X is ~37% faster than the GTX 980Ti while costing 80% more.
You can buy a gaming PC with SLI board and change GPU to suitable one.
Make sure power supply is 850 Watt or more to drive a second card when needed.

Cheers, mib

Hi, Thanks for the reply. I'm kinda confused with

If you are fine with 6 GB fastes card is GTX 980Ti 6 GB, when not only TitanX with 12 GB is needed

, so meaning to say 980TI is good to go and TitanX is not needed? I'm definitely getting and SLI board which I can upgrade to 2 or 4 cards in the future.

[FrankPooleFloating]

You could slap together a decent, cheap workstation for that amount, with one new gpu...

Or you could build a beast with new mobo, case, psu, etc, but with all used GPUs off eBay. This is definitely the way to go, if on a budget. You can yank GPUs at any time later and upgrade. GTX 580s are still monsters. You can get a 3GB for $150 or so, or a 1.5GB for less than $100. Two 580s yield an OctaneBench of 126!!!... Guess what.. a single GTX 980Ti gets 125 in bench!.. so if your animation could fit in 1.5GB, you could have the power of a 980Ti ($650+) for less than $200. If you needed 3GB, you could get two for around $300. And GTX 780Ti can be had for around $300 each on eBay.

Look at my sig for case and psu. Any X99 Asus or Gigabyte mobo with quad-sli ability should do the trick. Some are better than others. Do homework.

Edit: Okay, I just realized you are in Malaysia, so maybe eBay is not as much of an option.. but really, if you can somehow get your hands on a couple used 580s or 780Ti(s) for cheap, do it. This is what any smart budget-minded bloke in your situation would do.

[mib2berlin]

The problem is GPU VRAM is not added in GPU render engines, if you have two 6 GB cards it is only 6 GB for Octane.
Your scene has to fit in each card, this is different in gaming.
The Titan X is 35% faster, 80% more expensive but it has 12 GB VRAM.
It depends on your needs, if you have multi million poly scenes and need 4K resolution 6 GB is may to low.

Cheers, mib

[zinogino]

The problem is GPU VRAM is not added in GPU render engines, if you have two 6 GB cards it is only 6 GB for Octane.
Your scene has to fit in each card, this is different in gaming.
The Titan X is 35% faster, 80% more expensive but it has 12 GB VRAM.
It depends on your needs, if you have multi million poly scenes and need 4K resolution 6 GB is may to low.

Cheers, mib

Thanks for your feedback, for now I'm going with Seahawk 980TI and I am aware of the vram issue regarding about the scenes. Our final render is gonna be just HD. Buying 2nd hand is not gonna happen as it's so hard to find in my state unless eBay(which is gonna take few weeks). Getting an i5 processor for now.

[zinogino]

Update:

Hi, after much work I've finally have some budget for building my first workstation. Here's a list that I've gathered from some research (prices are in Malaysian Ringgit):

Processor : Intel Core i7-6700 - RM1350
Motherboard :
GPU : GTX980 TI x1 3181
: GTX980 TI Sea Hawk x1 3912
: GTX980
Ram : Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 2133Mhz 8GB x 2 - RM480
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM - RM225
SSD : Kingston HyperX Fury SSD 120GB - RM230
PSU :
Chasis : CM Master Case Pro 5 - RM545
CPU Cooler :
Custom Loop : N/A

Here's a few question;
1) Can my chasis selection will be able to fit 3 way SLI in the future if I do so?
2) If i were to do 3 way SLI with this chasis will I be able to fit custom water loop due to it being mid tower?
3) What motherboard should I get which is not too expensive?
4) I'm still debating between either GTX980 TI or the Sea Hawk version, I'm definitely gonna go SLI in the future but not sure water cooling or not due to inexperience. How many cards should I need for animation in Octane? (2k max resolution)
5) Should I invest in CPU AIO cooling or CPU air cooling or just forget about it?

My overall budget is 8000MYR (1 GPU for now)


Thanks !