~9000 € Workstation => 2X18 cores Xeon + 4 titan X

Hi every one !

I’m looking into making a new big workstation for both GPU and CPU rendering.
Why both ?
I think GPU rendering is the future, but unfortunately it’s not mature yet. I experienced a lots of issues with cycles GPU on heavy scenes (With one titan X). At some point it becames nearly as slow as CPU rendering or becames just out of memory.

However Octane with 4 titans is looking awesome (4-5 mins per frame) :

But… I would like to work on other renderers like MaxWell, Renderman and maybe Corona. Also on some simulations (fur, fluids with realflow…).


So… I’m not an expert into assembling workstations and I need you experts, in order to be sure every thing is OK.

- XEON E5-2696v3 X2

Graphic cards TitanX (X4) (I already got 1)
http://www.amazon.fr/Gigabyte-NTITANXD5-12GD-B-Graphique-GeForce-PCI-Express/dp/B00UVQL386/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1453754707&sr=8-3-spell&keywords=titanx+gigabyte

RAM M393A2G40Db0-Cpb - Samsung Mem 16Gb Ddr4-2133 Cl15
http://www.fnac.com/mp26138351/M393A2G40Db0-Cpb-Samsung-Mem-16Gb-Ddr4-2133-Cl15/w-4

Alim Corsair CP-9020057-EU 1500W

1 Titan = 250W http://www.nvidia.fr/object/geforce-gtx-titan-x-fr.html#pdpContent=2
2X E5-2697 v3 = 290 watts.
Total : 1300 watt. Can anyone confirm that ?

Hard drives :

1TO SSD + 7TO SATA 6Gb/s

Computer Tower :
I have to find an EEB. If you have ideas, I would be glad to hear them :slight_smile:


Finally :

Concerning the GPUs :
=> Nvidia is going to release this year the new Pascal Architecture and I would like to wait to see the prices and real specs.

Concerning CPUs :
The E5-2696v4 is going to be released soon :


If I choose this CPU instead, it’s 22 cores (for the same price as dual E5-2600v3 => 36 cores)
Do you think the new generation worth it ? (even with less cores).
A test of dual E5-2696v3 on Vray :

What’s your opinion with all of that ? Am I crazy ? :yes:

Thanks for any help,

Cheers !
Seb

Am I crazy ? :yes:
Yes! And filthy rich, too! LOL!
Are you doing it for fun, or to heat your home, or just trying to set a Guiness record, or all three? :stuck_out_tongue:

BTW, be sure to have a fire extinguisher handy when you turn it on!

Just jealous…have fun with it, mon ami. :wink:

Haha yeah maybe all three :wink:
Well I touched some money (family story) and I decided to enjoy my passion without compromise :wink:

Thank you my friend.
Well a guy on a forum told me that 1500w were not enought in order to run 4 X titanX.
Anyway I’m waiting to see the new GPUs PASCAL from NVIDIA (faster and with less consumption).

For the tower I’m thinking of this one :
http://www.cdiscount.com/informatique/boitiers-pc-alimentations/cooler-master-cosmos-ii/f-10766-rc1200kkn1.html?refer=zanoxpb&cid=affil&cm_mmc=zanoxpb-_-1758281

Why go with 2x18 core CPU if at the same time you’re going for 4 Titans?
Personnally I would go only for one of those two setup options depending if I was going to render on CPU or on GPU, not both…
GPU rendering is nice but you’re limited by the single card vram at the moment (this will change with Vulkan/Directx12 which give the possibility of vram pooling).
As for the 1500w PSU thing, some case have the space for two PSU.

So, 9000 dollars on a machine and you’re only putting 16 gigabytes of RAM in it, seems like that could become a major weak spot if you’re planning to have insane detail in your projects?

As for the rest of the specs, it’s not uncommon for such high end stuff to start depreciating fast after a year or so (since Intel for instance continually adds more cores to their Xeon line of chips and Nvidia’s Titan line gets big annual bumps in performance). Your machine could be worth less than half as much a couple years down the line.

Educate yourself, get to some honest hard practice.
Think of upgrading gradually as this tech gets outdated and depreciated very fast.
Let the shock wave pass, think and invest in your future.
Smart thinking is the way to free…

Just put 250€ euros to commercial render engine and what you will learn is much more usefull in the future (likely possibility companies/people you are working with). Many people use a lot money for hardware (hey, blender is free) and stick with Cycles = totally waisted hardware acquisition compared to speed/quality vs money.

Plus (I just looked at the specs. of those Xeons), the fact that they only go up to 2.3 ghz means you might be disappointed with their performance in single-threaded tasks (and since a lot of 3D in Blender and other apps. are still single threaded, your massive increase in rendering speed may get canceled out by the lower performance of the individual cores).

Beside, plenty of 3D artist here or on CGSociety makes do with a simple “gaming” PC equiped with an i7 and only one high end GPU (GTX980Ti or Titan). More than this is only justified in a business setting or as a penis size compensation device, like car tunning…

Better to get yourself a nice PC and invest in some off site rendering when the need arrise and invest the rest of the money toward either education or for your retirement fund.

Hi and thank you for your answers !

Well as I said I want to work with both CPU and GPU renders.
CPU power for Maxwell, Renderman, realflow, various simulations etc…
So I would go mainly CPU, BUT GPU technology will always offer more speed on specific scenes than 100 CPUs.

As a result I’m really waiting to see what will offer PASCAL from NVIDIA. If it’s really 10X faster, one card will be more than enough…
But I really doubt about it.

You’re totally right, I will change this for 32Gb per CPU instead (should be enough for the moment)

Hard to upgrade gradually this kind of config… I you want a dual CPU mother board, you have to pay it, and then all the rest will be expensive. The only thing is about GPU’s (don’t worry, i will wait for the moment).

Yep, I answered your question (Maxwell, renderman, realflow etc…) ^^

That’s true for certain kind of calculations… but the renderers are multithreaded, as realflow and others :wink:

Not about penis size ! Just about having instant feedback on huge scenes (and focus on creativity rather than wait months for a calculation).

Some PC configuration types, I think, now allow you to cram in up to 128 gigs of RAM. If money is really no object here and if you don’t mind spending the same amount every 5 years (if you want to have what amounts to a good upgrade) then you might as well just max out on everything.

Workstation motherboards that support dual xeons can even go up to 1.5 TB and 512GB RAM capability should be pretty common at the moment. How much is needed to do what one wants to do is the real question.

Be smart and ask what you want to build the pc for. If you’re going for render time increase on GPU, 4 titan X’s on one machine wont give you as good price to performance as multiple machines or a gpu server with a bunch of cheaper cards running software such as GPUBox.

For simulation you’ll benefit from 2 xeons as long as you use good software for it with good multi threading (REALFLOW, MAINLY HOUDINI) but the kind of simulations you’d want to run on that kind of CPU power you’ll want a lot of ram we’re talking 64gb at least, probably 128gb. So will you really be regularly running those kind of simulations, because why waste money if you’re not, and spend a little extra time on the rare occasion that you do.

Rendering on CPU you’ll also get the benefit from 2 xeons but it’s been pointed out before that any kind of single thread process will be considerably slower than a consumer grade CPU i7.

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of an ‘ego pc’ if you’ve got the money to spend. But if you really want as much performance as possible for the money you want to spend, packing it into one machine is a bad idea.

And if money is no object and you want to seriously do some heavy GPU rendering , why not replace the Titans with some Quadro M6000 which have twice the ram than the Titan X and superior floating point support.

Because I’m waiting for Pascal just like you :wink:
And the titan X is better/cheaper for 3D rendering
https://render.otoy.com/octanebench/results.php?sort_by=avg&singleGPU=1

You have to read the fine print when looking at benchmark. In this case: “These values are calculated from the averages of all submissions and may not be representative of actual performance.”

We don’t know what computer setting those user used… The Quadro M6000 has more core and faster memory bandwith than the Titan X. It also has better floating point support.

I know, but GPU rendering is single precision and the GTX series are usually equal or faster than Quadros.
The only + is about Vram.

Anyway, no body forbids you to buy a Quadro if you really really want to ;D

i think if i had $9k going spare i’d be better of setting up a render farm than building one machine, each to their own though.

$10k also buys a lot of time on a render farm. Ive thought about buying a few giant cards, too, but i just couldnt justify it with PixelPlow or Amazon pricing schedule (no affiliation). This would really depend on your workload.

if I were going to build something I would get a big server motherboard with a bunch of pci slots and buy a used CloudEdge with all sixteen slots occupied and install all four HIC cards to one host. I dare say sixteen old teslas would perform at least as well as four teslas, and prob better for about the price of one.

but really. At this price point you need to start thinking about if its cost effective. I know that the badass factor is worth somethjng, too, but be sure you are not over-evaluating how much its worth else you will go broke fast.

Btw, nvidia is planning their next gen cards with truely outlandish memory figures, something like 16gb in the first round of cards, with plans for 32gb or more. I would wait.

Also I do not knw what version of realflow you are using, but as of the latest version there is openCL support for their dyverso/openvdb particles. Though as of right now dyverso seems to have limited scripting (or I just dont know how to script dyverso, whicb is entirely possible)