Most Possible CUDAs On A Limited Budget
NotAnArtist
Posts: 411
Hello experienced computer folk! May I also probe into that experience a bit?
Since I'm staying safer 24/7 at home, there's time to plan for a new machine. Top priority would be a GPU combination with the most CUDAs possible with my limited income. That may be one of these two: (I don't need VRAM beyond 8GB. I like small scenes).
-Three RTX 2060 Supers [6528 cores for ~$1200].
< or >
-Two RTX 2080 Supers [6144 cores for ~$1450].
But I want to avoid liquid cooling and I don't know if it would be wise with either option. For example, one article stated that the 2080 Super used 254W (hotter than the non-Super version).
So, do you triple the watt rating with 3 cards? At 163W each (from a gaming article I've now lost), 3 2060S's would be less wattage than 2 2080S's.
So maybe the three lower-watt 2060 Supers would be about as easy to cool(?). The question being, having 3 cards vs 2, what does that add to the calculation?
Another idea is to just get two 2060 Supers now & add an RTX 30XX in the future... Is it a certainty that they'd be compatible, and ditto the MB?
The only experience I have is from building my i5-2500K, GTX1060 6GB, 8 GB RAM system. It runs cool and fast with simple Iray scenes, never going to CPU, but even then, some hair items, etc, add too much time to the otherwise quick scene.
Your observations/opinions in these threads have been very helpful for getting the general perspectives people need. Later I'll study your ideas for a Ryzen CPU & MB for quicker 3DL animating, etc. Thanks!!!
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Comments
I'm not sure water colling is even necessary, and I was told by a guy at System76 that for multi-GPU setups, blowers are essential. After seeing their design, I think I understand why: physically they're like a closed system; only venting the hot air *outside* of the case, instead of out the top and sides, inside the case. I run 4, 3 of which have minimal space between them, and don't have any problems, even with overnight renders.
There's also an argument for two GPUs instead of three. If it is supposed to work, but doesn't (like mine initially didn't), Google will find a lot more people with 2 GPUs instead of 3, that might have had the same experiences and can help you out. It was a NIGHTMARE getting mine to work, after spending a small fortune, and now I am afraid to even open my case. Consider that... if it all works, wonderful, but if it doesn't, the vendors will be of ZERO help and are just going to blame each other if they don't outright ignore you altogether.
Avoid Gigabyte like the Biblical Plague, and frequent the vendor's message boards BEFORE you throw down your money to see how they treat their customers, how long it takes for them to answer, how long it takes for them to update their BIOSes, and whether people complain about the updates fixing one thing but breaking something else. Also note that one vendor may support one product of theirs very well, while another is plagued with problems and the forum for it is full of curse words from users.
I'm not trying to scare you, it just doesn't seem like the vendors test multi-GPU configurations very well and I wouldn't wish the feeling of "I spent a lot of money, I waited for the parts like a kid on Christmas morning and... it doesn't work and I have no idea why."
When the 3080ti is available, or AMD meets expectations, my next system is going to be a prebuilt, or exactly what was in some reviewer's system.
Good luck.
I went from 3 1080tis to 2 2080tis and it was a much better solution. With fewer cards I was able to have more space between the cards, increasing airflow and decreasing heat buildup. My system runs a lot cooler now.
Blowers, sounds like a very good point. Plus large case, fan on top, etc.
I've had great luck with Evga so far.
I'm stubborn, though, about getting those CUDAs up. But you've given me some reality here I'm very thankful for.
OK, I guess this is why I didn't find much about 3-card systems in the forum. I thank you. In fact, time to re-group. Maybe I can use the extra money from two cards for upping some other useful part of the system.
There were some other questions I asked above, but whew, it looks like I wasn't as ready to put things together as I'd thought. Back to the drawing board!
Still, any further advice that anyone might have would be greatly appreciated. As you can tell, I'm not just inexperienced, apparently, I'm naive... Makes me feel young again! :-)
One other thing to consider is that the GPUs are not running at full tilt when rendering. Yes, the CUDA and RTX cores are going flat out, but the rest of the card isnt, so the actual power draw is a bit less. And really, good 1000 watt PSUs are pretty inexpensive.
I went with Founders Edition cards straight from NVidia. They're not as fast as some of the aftermarket cards, but they are only 2 slots wide, while a lot of the third party cards are 2.5 and 2.75 slots wide and really tall, meaning you can't fit as many on a motherboard as you might want and you'll need a wide case to fit them.
If you want to see insane configurations look at the forums for Octane. Those guys are nuts. Saw a guy with seven (yipe!) water-cooled 1080tis in his system. It was a damned scary looking computer.
So it might not be so much a problem with the 3 RTX2060Supers, heating-wise, but configuring them could be the caveat, as the two previous answers mentioned. I don't have much PC building experience.
I'll look at card sizes, for sure. Hadn't even thought of that!
Looking at the Octane forums. Sounds like fun, at the very least!
I'm only sure of one thing - I'm stubborn. I will get the machine I've waited so long for. Only a natural crisis will stop m... eh, I'd better be careful with my hubris!
Thank you very much for your answers!
Blowers are not needed if your case has decent ventilation and you have a proper fan setup.
In regards to which cards to get, I'd get the 2080 Supers. With 2 cards in the system you will have more volume of air which always means better cooling. Also if you ever do want scenes bigger than 8 Gb the 2080 Supersupports NVLink and Daz has VRAM pooling being worked on in the current beta.
Hi Kenshaw! Your many posts account for many of my headaches, but that's because they're so info-filled!!
Yes, the 2080 Supers, fewer CUDAS at more cost, but other advantages compensate. Clearer to me now that I see I should avoid having 3 cards.
And the NVLink thing interests me more now, ironically, because I just spent a day with an image I thought would be easy, but ended up having to split it into 3 images to composite over each other! The most guilty of the props turned out to be Annika Demon. Hiding body parts under clothes, etc, wasn't good enough. So, lesson learned. Must plan better for future possible needs.
Thank you very much for your addition here.
*Take care everyone, and study what's needed for protection from the virus! I worked in healthcare, and I know this isn't exaggerated! I'd rather have more headaches in the future from studying your advice! We all need your expertise! Cheers!