Budget Dual 980ti Render PC Build - Any Advice?

colekush

Hello all

With the release of the new pascal cards, lately I've been noticing price drops on 980ti cards - particularily on my local classified ads (ie. around $400cdn), so I was thinking about picking up a couple of these cards and building a dual 980ti render box on the cheap. I have a newer imac that I animate on, but obviously mac's AMD card is not much help for rendering, so this build would be a dedicated render PC - just loading scenes into DAZ and continuously rendering.

So I'm trying to find the cheapest motherboard, cpu, cooling & case that would allow for this dual GPU setup. I assume a cpu with 16 lanes is enough, and I obviously need a motherboard with 2 pcie slots (or three if it doesn't have wireless onboard).

Any suggestions for particular components that would be ideal for this? Perhaps some components that are a few years old and have had decent price drops. Also I'm guessing 8gb of ram and HDD storage would be ideal here to save costs?

Thanks for any advice!

colekush

I wonder if a dual 980ti setup possible in a micro ATX board / case?

Would that reduce the cost even more?

mjc1016

coolekush said:

I wonder if a dual 980ti setup possible in a micro ATX board / case?

Would that reduce the cost even more?

Probably not...those are pretty good sized cards and may not physically fit in a small case/have enough room between slots for both of them.

colekush

mjc1016 said:

coolekush said:

I wonder if a dual 980ti setup possible in a micro ATX board / case?

Would that reduce the cost even more?

Probably not...those are pretty good sized cards and may not physically fit in a small case/have enough room between slots for both of them.

 

Ahh good point - thanks for the reply

nicstt

coolekush said:

Hello all

With the release of the new pascal cards, lately I've been noticing price drops on 980ti cards - particularily on my local classified ads (ie. around $400cdn), so I was thinking about picking up a couple of these cards and building a dual 980ti render box on the cheap. I have a newer imac that I animate on, but obviously mac's AMD card is not much help for rendering, so this build would be a dedicated render PC - just loading scenes into DAZ and continuously rendering.

So I'm trying to find the cheapest motherboard, cpu, cooling & case that would allow for this dual GPU setup. I assume a cpu with 16 lanes is enough, and I obviously need a motherboard with 2 pcie slots (or three if it doesn't have wireless onboard).

Any suggestions for particular components that would be ideal for this? Perhaps some components that are a few years old and have had decent price drops. Also I'm guessing 8gb of ram and HDD storage would be ideal here to save costs?

Thanks for any advice!

I wouldn't go below 16GB, and tbh, 32GB would be better. Yes I know it's a budget build.

If you want to save cash, don't get an SSD; it will affect performance in certain situations, but it will make no discernible difference when rendering and general use, especially if you have enough RAM. As fast as SSDs are, they are considerably slower than RAM. If you're not using it for anything but loading scenes already created, then 16GB is ok, but...

TBH, I'd scrap the MAC and put the cash you get from selling it towards a better system. With two cards for rendering (6GB is barely enough though); and another for display, you would be fine rendering and creating another scene on another instance of Daz - providing you had 16GB of RAM as a just adequate minimum; 64GB of RAM is not too much.

You want a good budget system, but if you don't spend enough on the MB, RAM and system in general, the cards will push the system to max, and may not get utilised to the max themselves.

 

Mattymanx

I have two Zotac 980TI AMP Extreme cards.  They take up 3 slots each due to the tripple fan cooling on them.  They are overclocked out of the box and run at 1400MHz.

You will need a large case regardless as its been pointed out, they are big cards

 

3Diva

Go big or go home. lol :P 

My husband and I had to get a really big case to accommodate my cards and water cooling unit. Having said that though, we were able to build my computer pretty cheap since we did it ourselves. 

IMO, SSD is a must if you're doing online gaming, however if you're not, then it's not necessary and can save you quite a bit. 

outrider42

Two 980ti's in a "budget" build??? Man I wish I could call that a budget build, LOL!

However, even after Daz finally supports Pascal, the 1000 series is horribly over priced. I am pretty certain "pascal" is French for "highway robbery."

An SSD is fantastic, I have 2 of them, but I wouldn't call it a must have. Especially with how big a content library can get. Until SSD prices match good old platter hard drives, a big fat hard drive will be fine. But you do want RAM, and you do want a full size quality motherboard, and you do want a decently high end CPU to drive those GPUs. Since you are talking two GPUs, you need to consider the motherboard and CPU need to have enough lanes to properly support them so they can run as fast as they can. Somebody was doing testing and found that a real high end CPU can make a difference with multi-GPU setups in Daz. One GPU, it doesn't matter so much. So you would be doing yourself a disservice if you get two 980ti's and then skimp on other key parts. Go big or go home is legit advice, imo.

JCThomas

Two 980tis will fit on a micro atx board and in a micro atx case, as long as the cards are dual slot width, unlike the zotac cards mentioned above, and as long as the case has four expansion slots in the back. However, it probably wouldn't reduce the cost that much, because there is often a premium to pay for smaller footprints. If you do go the micro atx route, make sure to get cards with blower coolers such as in the reference model 980 ti. What is your exact budget?