Building a DIY external GPU box for Iray Rendering....
ScarletX1969
Posts: 587
Looking for ideas on this. Want to do it because...and I'm sorry Pret-a-3D...I just find IRAY more enjoyable to work with than Reality/LuxRenderer. And out the box, I can do a decent render. I love Reality/LuxRenderer....I just love IRAY more.
So, I don't want to spend $1000+ dollars on an external GPU box (or even $500+). I have a couple of i5 machines lying around and I would love to leverage those into DIYs.
Any suggestions will be helpful. I'm gonna also post this in the Members section, too (if the Administrators don't mind). :)
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Looking for ideas on this. Want to do it because...and I'm sorry Pret-a-3D...I just find IRAY more enjoyable to work with than Reality/LuxRenderer. And out the box, I can do a decent render. I love Reality/LuxRenderer....I just love IRAY more.
So, I don't want to spend $1000+ dollars on an external GPU box (or even $500+). I have a couple of i5 machines lying around and I would love to leverage those into DIYs.
Any suggestions will be helpful. I'm gonna also post this in the Daz Studio Discussion section, too (if the Administrators don't mind). :)
Looking for ideas on this. Want to do it because...and I'm sorry Pret-a-3D...I just find IRAY more enjoyable to work with than Reality/LuxRenderer. And out the box, I can do a decent render. I love Reality/LuxRenderer....I just love IRAY more.
So, I don't want to spend $1000+ dollars on an external GPU box (or even $500+). I have a couple of i5 machines lying around and I would love to leverage those into DIYs.
Any suggestions will be helpful. I'm gonna also post this in the Members and Daz Studio Discussion sections, too (if the Administrators don't mind). :)
My laptop runs AMD. I think it's RAM that matters next after CPU and CUDA cores.
If you're just remoting in for a render, just max out the RAM and let it go.
If you want to spend more, then there's a list of NVIDIA cards that will maximize your Iray power. Just look for something with CUDA cores, although I think there's lists on this forum that will be more informative.
Merged duplicate threads. Please don't post the same topic in multiple forums.
Okay, so how can I get others who don't frequent the other forums to answer my question without posting multiple times? And you might as well delete two of those posts since it's the same question.
What I'm looking to do is just have one box with say 16GB of RAM, two video cards, and an i5 processor just for external GPU. That type of setup.
Iray needs CUDA cores (NVIDIA), otherwise it's CPU only. So if you want actual NVIDIA magic to happen, you need a newer card with CUDA. The big Titan cards would be very spendy, but there are other NVIDIA options with CUDA.
If I weren't on my phone, I'd post a link that shows NVIDIA cards with CUDA, but it's not too hard to find.
If you're happy with CPU rendering, then the RAM is all I'd spend on.
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/493847/iray-needs-neither-sli-nor-cuda-/
I'm talking about a box kinda like Netstor's GPU box.
If you could be a little more specific about the specs of your i5 machine, that would be helpful. Are you just looking for recommended GPU's? With what you said earlier that would mean less than $250 each? Is there room between the PCIe slots for dual slot cards? Is the existing power supply sufficient? Is there sufficient room between the drive cages and rear of the case to accommodate longer graphics cards?
Its a very interesting idea. I think a lot of people would be interested in a low cost box.
I've only seen the proprietary boxes like the high end Netstor TurboBox and of course nVidia's own VCA boxes.
The Thunderbolt based solutions, like Sonnet, are all Mac only.
People have been using 'eGPU' parts to make there own but that's mostly for adding a GPU to a laptop.
It's a Dell Optiplex 7010, 16GB of RAM, two slots for Video cards, so I'm thinking about getting another NVIDIA GT 740 card for it, 750W power supply. Box will accommodate. However, I did research on the PCIe link cable and host adapter cards and I didn't find anything under $600. So, if someone else knows something better for DIY, post here. :)
two 740's and 750W PSU running at full demand. I'm curious to see how that turns out, you may be fine but that may calculate ideal conditions, two cards running at sustained peak is a very different scenario.
The 740 has about 384 cuda cores, 768 cores total may be low-balling. Many of the 4GB cards start at about 1200 cores for a single card.
Also some of the Dell's have a very unfriendly PSU cavity and may require a proprietary unit that fits in that enclosure. Check whats in there now and what you can fit.
I know you want to keep this cheap but you should look before you leap is all i'm saying.
Thanks for the heads up, StratDragon. I currently, believe it or not, have a rebuilt XPS 410 with 8GB of RAM, a 750W PSU, running 3 monitors with an 740. Although I have to disable my screen saver, it still renders pretty good with Daz Studio 4.8 (it did the IRAY test render test that was posted in this forum in about 11 minutes). When we talk 1200 cores, now we're entering into the $300+ range for video cards, which as an enthusiast at this point, may not be in my budget (but maybe later).
But the box I described I just want to use as an external, not even a desktop, although now what I'm thinking is getting a bigger PSU for it, putting a PCIe adapter card/extender in it, some additional cooling, and just having three video cards in it, using it as my 3D workstation.
Okay, so how can I get others who don't frequent the other forums to answer my question without posting multiple times? And you might as well delete two of those posts since it's the same question.
It's always bad form to post the same question shotgun style across different subforums. ALWAYS. When I see that, I think the poster may be a bot or completely clueless, so I don't even bother to read them, let alone respond.
Besides, EVERYBODY comes to the Commons. :lol:
So this business about building other boxes. Why bother? That's just a long path to a more expensive clutter of disparate systems/parts-of-systems that don't work well together, cost more, generate more heat, and make a lot of noise.
Just start with a reasonably powerful i7 computer system and one or two GTX 970's or 980's. You can probably put two or three GPU cards into most reasonably modern motherboards and then be done with it without making your build a bigger life-project than your kids are.
Hmmm, I didn't realize that this had grown into such a perception thing as far as posting on multiple forums, but okay I guess. I'll keep that in mind for next time. I usually don't frequent the Commons, just Members Only, but I guess that was me being too much of an "elitist"...lol.
As far as building the box, why I would bother is,
1.) Doing it your way may be a bit expensive right now, even if eventually I go down this road. I don't do this that much to justify the expense while trying to do other things like buying a house (which I'm currently in the process of doing).
2.) I'm in IT, so I'm a tinker, always have been and probably always will be. I believe in re-purposing what people may consider "junk or out-dated" into something else.
3.) I figured someone throughout the many forums would've done something like this already. I have some ideas, but I'm not trying to blow anything up. I may have 15+ years of IT experience but I never prescribe to saying "I know everything", so I figured I would get some ideas on this from my fellow Daz-ennaires. Plus, building is fun! :)
But Subtropic Pixel, you did give me an idea. I'm gonna buy one of those PCIe expansion boxes, place two video cards in there (a 970 and a 740, both overclocked with 4GB of DDR5 video ram) and see if Iray recognizes them. That way, I'm not being bothered with building out a separate desktop.
I think a lot of people would be interested in this, so check back in the next few days and I will provide feedback on my experiment. Speaking to your comment, this setup is going to run me over $600 (could've just gotten a higher end card for that, huh), so it didn't come without expense, but I still think for what I'm going to do, it's a more acceptable option.
We shall see. Amazon has a 14 day return policy, thank goodness.
For an external GPU box keep in mind the following.
It must be well grounded.
The PSU must be the right size for the cards.
It must be very well cooled.
GPU rendering uses your card(s) flat out for extended periods of time. Issues with any of the above will cause your cards to fail, and most card warantees will not cover you in this type of configuration.
In some cases this failure will be rather spectacular, we had a tester fry three cards in one of these boxes, to include real flames.
Everyone is under the mistaken conception that video cards run on electricity...they don't. They run on smoke. And when you let the smoke out you break the card...and it doesn't get much more broken than when you let the flames out, too...
Uhm, thanks DAZ_Spooky, but I thought of all of that first. :) I had to laugh about the tester story, though. I burned two cards and a motherboard messing around with crazy configurations. Sparks were flying and everything. My son thought it was cool though.
Anyway, I've abandoned the box idea and has kinda started leaning more toward Subtropic Pixel's idea of just building a new desktop. Apparently the expansion box I was looking at only expanded to PCI cards. The PCIe expansion boxes were $400 and up. However, I did not know they made motherboards to handle 3 video cards. So, I'm looking into building my ultimate workstation centered around that.
Uhm, thanks DAZ_Spooky, but I thought of all of that first. :) I had to laugh about the tester story, though. I burned two cards and a motherboard messing around with crazy configurations. Sparks were flying and everything. My son thought it was cool though.
Anyway, I've abandoned the box idea and has kinda started leaning more toward Subtropic Pixel's idea of just building a new desktop. Apparently the expansion box I was looking at only expanded to PCI cards. The PCIe expansion boxes were $400 and up. However, I did not know they made motherboards to handle 3 video cards. So, I'm looking into building my ultimate workstation centered around that.ASUS has a couple X99 boards that will handle 4 PCIE cards at X16. Most X99 boards will handle 4 (2 at X16 and 2 at X8) or 3 at X16.
I've always wondered what something like this would be capable of...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157350
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117455 (x2, of course)
at least 128 GB RAM and a pair of
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121923
(and, yeah, it costs more than my last car...)
Whoa! That's way too much right there. Luckily, I got some ideas. Looking at this...
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-LGA1150-Dual-Channel-Motherboard-142-HR-E977-KR/dp/B00K2KMOZ2/ref=cm_wl_huc_item
I've always wondered what something like this would be capable of...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157350
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117455 (x2, of course)
at least 128 GB RAM and a pair of
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121923
(and, yeah, it costs more than my last car...)There are a couple of server boards that will handle 4 x 16 core Opteron processors and 256 GB Ram. But with Iray in the mix how about one of these: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/workstations/thinkstation/p-series/p900/
If you are going with a Z97 board. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KBCO3XM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1432678033&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX200_QL40
That is a nice looking board, but that's more beef than I need. I do like that board though.
That is a nice looking board, but that's more beef than I need. I do like that board though.Never buy a Motherboard for what you think you need now, but what you might want in the future. (Which is why I currently recommend an X99 board over the Z97 boards.)
I might have to disagree with you a little bit on the first part of this statement though. Working in IT, I've almost never think about the future when it comes to technology because clever marketing will have you believe the future is today or immediately tomorrow.
In the long run, if you don't wish to upgrade in said future, I can see your point. But, I'm kinda the Fred Sanford of technology in that I can still get use out of "outdated" tech. I do like the board though and will keep it in mind for future purposes.
I approach this stuff almost like buying a car, I never buy what I want unless I can (I want a Bentley convertible, but had to settle for a Pontiac G6 convertible. :)). I always buy what I need, even when it comes to this.
Now if I ever decide to start making money from this and wish to stay competitive, then my tune will change.