Feedback wanted on proposed new main PC configuration.
HamEinar
Posts: 133
I would appreciate it if the more tech-savvy would take a look at this list of components I put together for a new build. I've been given a budget, but since the computer will be located in my home I can cover any excess myself (in this case, we're around $1000 over budget).
It will be used for a host of different multimedia tasks including video editing, photoshop, DAW use and of course 3d applications including Maya, Blender and Daz Studio.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X processor 3,9 GHz 128 MB L3HTTA31
GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI sTRX4 ATX AMD TRX40GTEG43
Corsair Vengeance CMW256GX4M8E3200C16 RAM 256 GB DDR4 3200 MhzIIIG5U2M
Corsair H115i Water Cooling Processor
Samsung MZ-V7S1T0 M.2 1000 GB PCI Express 3.0 V-NAND MLC NVMe, Solid state
Samsung MZ-76P1T0 2.5" 1000 GB Serial ATA III V-NAND MLC, Solid state-drevIMKM4Z
2 x NVIDIA TITAN RTX 24 GB GDDR6
NVIDIA RTX NVLINK
Corsair Crystal 680X RGB Midi-Tower Sort, TQXV6642
Corsair HX1200i 1200 W ATX Black
4 x be quiet! SilentWings 3 PWM Cabinet Fan, Sag fanTL9V3U
Datafiles including Daz Studio libraries will be on external drives.
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Comments
Looks like a solid build which will be more than enough for the types of work that you specified. Everyone will have their own preferences for a pc build, and you may not want to make any changes but my thoughts are:
Instead of the second SSD, get a couple of 2GB 7200RPM drives. When you are editing video, have your source files on one drive, then render the output files to the other drive - faster than reading and writing from one drive and a lot faster than doing it from externals.
Take a look (and read some reviews) of the options for CPU heatsinks and air cooling. My current pc uses an H100i water cooler. It is 4 1/2 years old and I am on my third cooler. Corsair were great about RMAing the first two, but I currently keep a spare just in case, and on my next pc I'll probably go with air cooling. If you're using this pc for work then you can not afford any downtime.
Not sure about Maya and Blender, but for Iray in Daz Studio, NVLINK doesn't currently allow you to pool the VRAM (though that shouldn't be an issue with the titans).
Thanks for the feedback - there is definitely room for a couple of HDDs, and that's not a heavy investment either :-).
You touched base on my primary consern with the cooling - I am actually a bit hesitant towards AIO water cooling due to the larger size of the 3690X (most solutions don't cover the entire surface of the processor), but then again I am also not too happy with obstructing airflow by installing a huge HSF cooler (AND potential issues with space for both RAM and GPU) as I would imagine the two GPUs will generate some heat as well, and I am not sure how good the stock fans on those are.
I'm pretty set on the cabinet though; currently have a Corsair Carbide Air 540 and love the separate chambers and general airflow. It's big and bulky, but that's no issue.
See this post of mine from a little while ago regarding the inherent flaws of the Titan RTX's cooler. Long story short, while two of them in their default air-cooled state is technically doable, it's not ideal from a performance standpoint - especially in a production system running intense workloads. I actually ended up going full custom water-cooling on my main production system in no small part because I wanted to future-proof against the added ambient heat load adding a second Titan RTX to it would otherwise entail.
Without know which specific apps you're using I can't say for sure but all the prominent apps like Premiere and PS cannot use/get no benefit from graphic cards connected by Nvlink.
The coolers on the Titans is more than adequate as long as you have actual airflow in the case. If you don't use the connector, and you probably don't need to, you can put the cards in the top and bottom slots which will mean more than enough room for both to breathe.
The case comes with 4 fans. If you intend to just replace them all I'd get better fans than the BeQuiet's. Noctua fans are superior. I'd get NF-A14's instead.
Also depending on available room I'd get a full tower case. Mid tower cases tend to get pretty crammed over the lifetime of a workstation.
On using external drives, if you need to move your assets on a regular basis or mean a NAS fine. Otherwise get a decent sized internal HDD.
The 970 EVO is a very good m.2 drive for a PCIE gen 3 one. Your system supports PCIE gen 4. Corsaid and Gigabyte both have good 1Tb models.
Personally I wouldn't bother a 1Tb m.s boot drive and a 1Tb SATA SSD as well. I'd just get a 4 or 6Tb HDD instead.
Well if you ask me I'm surprised you aren't insisting on 2TB or 4TB SSDs, whether via M.2 NVMe, Sata III, or another HW bus interface giving all the graphic compute throughput you have configured for that machine.
Now that was a VERY interesting read - and definitely confirmed my initial fears..
V-Ray does, hence the Nvlink - it gives me 40+GB to play with at a cost of about 10-12% performance (which is still immensely faster than CPU)
I intended to supplement top / bottom to the included fans - thanks for pointing me towards Noctua, I just chose the BeQuiets due to their throughput.
I actually rely on moving the bulk of my data at regular intervals, and have 2 Synology DS1819+ and 3 DS718+ for storage. Stocking the case with drives can be done too though; it's almost twice as wide as a regular tower with a compartment for drives "underneath" the MB (dunno how to explain it X-D).
Didn't realize it was a gen 3 on a gen 4 system (hence my initial post - wanting to get it right :-D) - Figured a 1 TB boot drive would give it room to breathe with some applications and then the inevitable OS refresh installations would be a breeze, while keeping other essential files on a second SSD (again, no real need for storage which is taken care of by the NAS')
In that case I'd just get a good 1Tb gen 4 m.2. I have a NAS and my home rig only has a 1Tb SSD for storage and that hasn't been a problem.
Adding fans to the top and bottom could be very counter productive. In a case what you want is a fairly direct line of flow, front to back or bottom to top, not air being sucked in a pushed out all over the place. There testing that shows that adding lots of fans is either pointless or counterproductive. What matters almost more than anything is an unobstructed airflow intake.
Considering that the 680X has closed off tempered glass almost everywhere I doubt adding a bunch of fans would be a tremendous help. Gamers Nexus reviewed the case and found its "High Airflow" clams lacking.
I'd recommend, if you're sticking to mid tower, either a Lian Li o11 dynamic (or the XL variant) or the CoolerMaster H500m. Both cases have actual high airflow. The Lian Li comes with no fans so adding some would be needed while the CM comes with 2 200mm's front and a 120mm exhaust which is more than enough.
Thanks for all the inputs - from this and google I am starting to doubt the whole Titan RTX route.. Will have to take it back to the drawing board and look at alternatives with a couple of Quadros (RTX 6000 is probably out of reach, but maybe the 5000...). The last thing I want to end up with is an unbelievably expensive system performing sub-par or not being able to work more than an hour at a time..
Two titans will be fine in a case with actual airflow. [...] RTX Titans have a TDP of 280W, rendering in iRay or Vray should put out less heat. So 2 would be 560W. That is not an excessive amount of heat for a system with decent airflow. Titans are meant for professional use and that does include using multiples in one workstation (they make the Nvlink for it after all).
Do not spend a lot of money on low end Quadros, which will perform substantially worse and don't actually put out much less heat (265W TDP versus 280).
Get a case with real revies saying it has good airflow and you'll be fine.
+1 for Noctua fans, the best you can get.
Steve.
You will not bang you head against the wall when 30X0 series will come out this year?
But will they be supported in Iray this year? The last two new families have taken a while for full support, or any support in the case of the 10x0 series.
The 3080 RTX is rumored to be coming with 10Gb/20Gb configurations, the 3070 with 8Gb/16Gb. Going to be awesome for creators if true and should give us access to high VRAM counts without having to spend insane amounts.
If the 3080 has 20Gb it will cost $1000 or more. GDDR6 is in very heavy demand. These early leaks are very unlikely to be correct. keep in mind that Nvidia still hasn't actually formalled announced the name ofthe new microarchitecture much less shown it to the datacenter world, we usually get previews 6 months or more before consumer cards get released). We might see Ampere this summer but i wouldn't be shocked if we didn't see consumer cards until Christmas 2020 or later.
Be careul with Gigabyte mobos. My Gaming 7 X399 did not support two Titan RTXs; I could remote in to the box, they were wicked fast, but no video output. Upgraded the bios and then only half the ram vanished. Opted for 4 2080tis instead, and all my SATA ports vanished. ZERO help from Gigabyte, and their forums are full of people at their wit's end. I think that high-end systems like your proposal just don't get the testing that other configurations do.
Holding a $2750 part in your hand that you can't figure out why it doesn't work with the other $2750 part, or finally getting everything crammed into your system for the fourth time, seeing everything finally work and letting out a sigh of relief that the ordeal is over and you can get back to rendering just to realize that $500 worth of RAM is undetected, finally resolve that, and then realize that the drives with all your content suddenly don't show up anymore, and you are so tired of it that you actually say "well, I don't actually, really, need local SATA drives" and you build a NAS just so you don't have to deal with this crap anymore and just want to get back to rendering... are not feelings that I would wish on my worst enemy.
Consider a system from a review page that gives you a much higher chance of everything working like they are supposed to... I am literally NEVER opening my case again.
Sounds like a PCIE lane issue. I paid out the nose a few years back for a workstation board with XEON support and even it has PCIE lane issues. I've been holding off on upgrading again because I can't find a currrent generation motherboard with the PCIE slot configuration I need for less than $700 (US).
What do you need? There are some good pro qualityboards for both x399 and TRx40 (that's where lots of PCIE lanes are available outside server parts).
I'm sure you are absolutely correct. When I configured two of the four PCIE slots as 8x instead of x16, it just hung write after POST. The status LED indicated that it got stuck in PCIE lane resource allocation. x8 x16 x8 x16 worked, but with no SATA ports, and x8 x8 x8 x8 just hung. Just one of the corner cases that I'm sure they didn't test.