Advice on a new rig

[rad_thundercat]

Hi guys,

 

I was given a pretty large budget to setup a new rig (~$15-20k). It will be used for rendering arch vis elevations and animations. I want to use CUDA. I'm only hitting about $8k with my lists. Are there more professional options out there, or should I just stock up on desktop nodes? What would you guys get?

 

I used the list from the forum sticky to put together what (I think) I need: http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A238V1XTSK9NFE?ie=UTF8&tag=andylynnnet-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

 

The one thing I'm concerned about is that some of these are out of date. Can you guys give me some advice on my list? (I wish I could format this better)

 

Desktop (CUDA) Main use $3391.35

 

Antec Performance One Series P183 V3 Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $175.35

SILVERSTONE ST1500 1500W ATX12V/EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Silver Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Retail $368.97

ATI FirePro V7900 2GB DDR5 4x DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card $628.63

EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3072 MB GDDR5 PCB PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini-HDMI SLI Ready Limited Lifetime Warranty Graphics Card, 03G-P3-1584-AR $599.00

Crucial m4 256GB 2.5-Inch (9.5mm) SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive CT256M4SSD2 $155.50

Western Digital Enterprise RE4-GP 2TB SATA 3 Gb/s 3.5" 64MB IntelliPower Internal Hard Drive - OEM/Bare $110.00

ASUS P9X79 PRO LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $239.00

Intel Core i7-3930K Hexa-Core Processor 3.2 Ghz 12 MB Cache LGA 2011 - BX80619I73930K $569.99

Corsair XMS3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1333 MHz (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory (CMX16GX3M4A1333C9) $169.99

Corsair XMS3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1333 MHz (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory (CMX16GX3M4A1333C9) $169.99

Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit (OEM) System Builder DVD 1 Pack $138.98

Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial-ATA Internal OEM Optical Drive DRW-24B1ST (Black) $23.09

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan (RR-212E-20PK-R2) $34.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5 Grams $7.87

 

Render Node $1690.64

 

(I'm thinking I'd get two of these, and get throw an NVIDIA card in them. You can render iray with multiple computers, right?

 

Antec Sonata IV - ATX Mid Tower Case $203.56

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD5000AAKX $57.04

Intel Core i7-3930K Hexa-Core Processor 3.2 Ghz 12 MB Cache LGA 2011 - BX80619I73930K $569.99

ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $249.99

Corsair XMS3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1333 MHz (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory (CMX16GX3M4A1333C9) $169.99

Corsair XMS3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1333 MHz (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory (CMX16GX3M4A1333C9) $169.99

Sony 24X SATA Internal DVD+/-RW Drive AD-7260S-0B - Bulk (Black) $49.00

Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit (OEM) System Builder DVD 1 Pack $138.98

XFX Radeon HD 6450 625M 1GB DDR3 HDMI DVI VGA PCI-E Video Card HD645XZQH2 $39.24

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan (RR-212E-20PK-R2) $34.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5 Grams $7.87

 

Thanks in advance!

[Dimitris Tolios]

For the Cuda / Main workstation:

 

CPU: Intel i7 4930K 6C/12T - 3930K is kinda outdated and unless you find it in a great price (the one posted above is not), doesn't worth it over the newer, faster and less power hungry 4930K.

 

Mobo: Asus P9X79 WS - CEB sized board with room for 4x double width PCIe 16x cards and the usual Asus quality (best X79 line, by far).

 

RAM: Kingston HyperX 32 GB (4x8GB) PC3-2133 - Decent kit, same price as Corsair's 1866 32GB. Don't go for 8 x 4GB configs, far greater chances for the board to refuse to recognize them all correctly, and zero chance off transplanting them to a 4-dimm slot board or upgrading to 64GB in the future. Stay with 8GB dimms.

 

Viewport GPU: Quadro K4000 or Firepro W7000. This will be used for fluid viewport movement while the CUDA accelerators are firing away. You could go K2000 or W5000 will little to no performance difference for most models. In case of 3DS Max 2014 or latest Maya 2014, you might get away with using a 4th GTX, as viewports are working ok with fast D3D cards, and could also work along the GPGPU dedicated cards in case you would like to leave it crunching @ full speed. The K4000 is pathetic @ GPGPU by comparison, and the W7000 while is pretty good @ OpenCL, iRay is Cuda only and VRay RT is horribly optimized for OpenCL.

 

CUDA GPGPU: 3x GTX Titan 6GB. All are reference designs (i.e. designed and built to NVidia specs, with the same NVidia cooler). Get whatever is in stock, as supplies run short. GTX 780Ti is faster, but still limited to 3GB models. Titan's niche is the 6GB VRam buffer, which you might - or might not - need.

 

PSU: Corsair AX1200i Platinum - Or something equally good (most 80+ Gold/Plat 1200~1300W). Those Titans will be sucking a lot of juice (around 250W each). 1000W could work fine @ stock clocks, but if you would like to leave some room for a mild OC on the CPU, 1200W is recommended.

 

Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D, Corsair 540 AIR - Anything that will fit a CEB/E-ATX board will work really.

 

Rendering nodes: same as above as far as CPU goes. 4930K > 3930K.

Rest looks ok.

Distributed GPGPU rendering is possible, but surely slowed down due to network restrictions. I would not consider it before I had maxed out the GPGPU power I could cram inside my main workstation.

Stick with 4x8GB configurations for those too.

Edited December 17, 2013 by dtolios

[RyderSK]

I fully agree with DTolios, though it's hardly possible otherwise.

 

I would just add, with such ridicuously high budget, if it's not worth doing some math, and seeing realistically for the next 2-3 years, if your scenes will FIT inside 6gb Vram of the TitanGTX. I find it odd...but it seems that most people so fascinated by GP-GPU are not even aquinted with how the physical limitations go. And different renderers handle this very differently (depending on how much features they can swap out of core, for example textures).

 

There is currently new K6000 with 12GB ram available, and similarly specked Tesla around the corner. Pricey...very pricey, but if 6GB won't cut it then what will you do ? 6GB is still serious limitations.

Now next year, Maxwell from nVidia will come out, promising system memory acess, now how that will go and which renderer will pick up on it fastest is up to discussion.

 

My advice is just not to hurry, GPU rendering is very much not Black and White solution and is definitely not a miracle and can lead to lot of wasted money in many situations. I would do some research on what's coming up and whether it's not worth waiting up or dropping the GPU altogether.

It's lot of money.

[Jason Matthews]

With such a high budget, have you given any thought into initiating an IT budget for the upcoming years (2 year and 5 year plans)? Rather than dumping the entire budget on these rigs, maybe bring your bosses a budget that enables you a pot of money each year to upgrade and purchase equipment. I know no one wants to hear this. And further, maybe present your boss with this proposed plan where the remaining money goes to fund that budget. Just a thought.