12,000$ GPU Rendering Build

#1

Hi

I’m looking for any advice and help regarding the stated build . The main use is Blender 3D Cycles and Adobe After Effects . I’m in between places right know so i don’t wanna go with multiple rendering nodes right now , i can always add later .
I have moderate knowledge of hardware so i may need a little bit more explanation than usual regarding bandwidths and … .
I currently have my eyes on 4x GTX 1080 Ti’s right know just to get the most available punch out of this first node . Is this the best way to go ? Can the motherboards available in my price range use all the firepower ? Are these GPUs going to be the best choice for Blender AND AE ? What CPU is the best choice in my price range ? I’m going to be rendering a full length animation on Blender Cycles , and as i am rendering on a single node , it’s going to be rendering for weeks at best , is the heat on 4X 1080 Ti’s going to be manageable at all ?

Thanks in advance .

#2

Where does the 12K pricetag come from?
You should be able to build a 4x1080Ti system for quite a bit less. The GPUs will cost less than 1/3 of the pricetag you mentioned and as a base i would use a mid size Xeon and matching Motherboard i.e. a E5-1630v4 and a Gigabyte X99-SOC-Champion or similar.
You need a CPU with a few more PCIe lanes than most i7 or i5 offer and a mainboard with 4 full size PCIe slots. Together they might set you back $800 or less + RAM.
Add to that a beefy PSU (<$350), a good case (i like the fractal design towers) (<$150), a good CPU cooler (<$150) and a speedy M.2 SSD (<$300) and you end up in the range of
$4000 - GPUs
$1000 - CPU and Mainboard and 32 GB RAM
$350 - PSU
$150 - Case
$150 - CPU Cooler
$300 - SSD
which is roughly half your budget.

Afaik AE does not support GPU in any relevant way so building a GPU centric system will not help you there. You could switch the CPU for something more powerfull (say i7 7700K), but that would be a less preferable option for GPU rendering due to the very limited number of PCIe lanes.
I would build an own system for CPU rendering based on a single i7 or Ryzen. It would easily fit within the budget on top of the GPU renderclient.

#3

Thank you for your answer .

The project i’m working on right know isn’t so much of a vram hungry one but i wanted to get a powerful cpu as well to throw it at those liquid/cloth/smoke/hair simulations to actually make the process something to be called dynamic . Also to render those heavier scenes and make those AE encodings faster . What’s the best cpu solution in my price range ?

I know i can build a cpu based workstation for majority of work and simulations and AE but as i said , right know i’m looking for a single build .

Thanks again .

#4

You have two different objectives that simply clash. AE is best served with a single high clocked CPU with multiple cores, i would use a i7 7700K for the purpose. On the other hand that exact CPU is a bad choice (as are all other similar i7 or Ryzen CPUs) for a multi GPU rendersystem due to it’s very limited IO capabilities.
Also you won’t be able to utilize both CPU and GPU at the same time.
I am sorry, but there is no single setup that i could recommend in your situation. You can throw money at the problem by boing for a dual Xeon system with high specced CPUs, that will probably use up your budget, but it would very likely be quite a bit worse in every day use than two dedicated systems.

#5

There still is the X99 option at hand. A decently overclocked 6900K would be good in both multi- and single-threaded tasks. A 4.4GHz is manageable with a good cooling solution and the right surrounding parts. With the 40 pcie lanes this platform offers, it’s still the best option for multi-gpu setups imo.

PCPartPicker part list

with 4 of these https://pcpartpicker.com/product/YNVBD3/msi-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-11gb-gaming-x-video-card-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-gaming-x-11g or these https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Yr8H99/asus-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-11gb-video-card-strix-gtx1080ti-11g-gaming , which are pretty cool and quiet.

You can also wait for the Asus 1080Ti Poseidon to come out https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-POSEIDON-GTX1080TI-P11G-GAMING/ , especially if you want to cool your gpus with a custom loop.

#6

It seems that i have to opt for two setups , I’m going to get the gpu setup now and add the cpu one later as composition needs come later in the project . One last question , are the CPUs you mentioned able to get the most out of GPUs or are they the most valueworthy ones ? Thank you for your thorough answer .

#7

I selected the Xeon because it has a sufficient number of PCIe lanes and is not to bad performing on it’s own to make sure the GPUs are beeing fed data fast and reliably. The SSD was also selected for speed not size to allow for fast caching of large data if neccessary.

#8

Afaik, for gpu rendering x8 lanes per gpu are more than enough (even x4 are OK). No need for dual Xeon setups and 80 lanes, imho.

A s2011v3 i7 with it’s 40 lanes is adequate for this job. The 6900K would be the best overall solution for Blender and Cycles. As a Blender user myself, I’ve seen that single core performance is still very important for many operations, ex. simulations (fluids etc.). I hope that the upcoming 2.8 version will rely less on the cpu for simulations, but for now a good single core is essential. The 6950X fits inside the budget but it’s worse in oc’ing and a 4.2GHz is usually the upper limit.

A 6900K at 4.4GHz would be way faster than even the best Xeon right now. I think the highest turbo frequency in Xeons is @3.6GHz, so an oc’ed 6900K would have a clear lead in this field.

#9

I recently added two more render nodes to my small farm:

MSI X99A XPower gaming ti, 6985K, 64GB RAM, 4x 1070

Happy rendering for a fragment of price of 1080ti cards and also 6985K provides nice single core performance as well