OTOY Forums

I've been loving octane with my 1080FE for a couple years. Now I'm ready to build an upgrade, and am considering my options. Some of my machine concepts include 3 or even 4 GPUs, and I'm not very interested in water cooling.

For anyone currently using a multi-card octane machine, do you have any regrets? Are there any unexpected frustrations or technical challenges?

For bonus points, what is your preference when balancing # of cards vs. number of cuda cores? It's pretty cheap to load up on 1070ti these days, but I'm sure that comes with thermal implications. Thanks in advance for the help!

Hi,

No regrets using multi-gpu : for me many technical challenge !
All I can advice is multi-gpu (4 or more) = watercooling.
And yes, 1070Ti seems to be today the best to choose (ratio performance/price)

3-4 GPUs is rather easy. All You need to do is to choose good motherboard, fast CPU and reference cards (if You're not interested in watercooling).

also keep in mind that thinking ahead might give You a possibility to expand past physical space on motherboard using eGPU enclosures:
this is one of the build community made a while ago, think with original Titans. Friend of mine tested with 7x TitanXs as well - works like charm if Your mobo is capable to boot with more than 4GPUs.
I've also got the same box fitted with quad 1080tis, easily scoring 200/GPU with reference cards and fan curves tweaked.

in general 3-4cards is perfectly fine. I would opt for something like hybrids though to lower the noise system makes and get really good enclosure to have plenty of airflow. otherwise You can hit pretty high temperatures & start loosing performance. Quad 1080ti results scatters from 550 to 912 - that's quite a lot of a difference for the same amount of GPUs.

Hello,
I'm considering a similar type of build. Not into the custom water at this point and Hybrids seem like the best option for a 4x 1080 Ti to ensure I get good cooling and performance as well as a fairly quiet build. I can't seem to figure out what type of motherboard to settle on. I thought I should leave possibilities for future expansion but it seems like I would have to build another tower all together if I go with the hybrids. I believe I want at least four pcie 3.0 x16 lanes for quick response in viewport but is there something else I should be considering? In terms of a case I was considering the phanteks enthoo luxe. 1st time builder over here. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks in advance

- Dave