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i am interested to hear about your experience with the noctua air cooler - they are great because of low noise (db) and i am surprised that your CPU gone to hot while rendering... might i ask what CPU and overclocked or not are you using?
AMD is supposed to be getting around to lower power requirements with equal or slightly better GPU output for the generation of ATI cards coming in Dec 2016 shrinking the die to I think it was 14nm or 12nm process. I don't know if nVidia has similar plans although you would think they need to to stay competitive.
I'm using a Noctua NHU 12S with one 120 mm fan on the heat sink (there is provision to clip an exhaust fan on the other side) and my cpu hits 56 C maximum during a 12-hour render (3.5 GHz I7 6 core). If I let my case filters get dirty, the cpu temp goes up by several degrees. At this point I only have one 980 ti in the box, and it maxes out currently at 65 C in the same 12 hour render. The real key to air cooling is air flow through the case - it has to come in, get warm, and go out quickly. You need a balanced set of intake and exhaust fans and to keep the filters clean.
It wasn't the CPU getting hot. The CPU never goes above 40-50c, I don't use the CPU during Iray renders. But having 2 GPUs puts out a lot of heat, and having a Noctua in that setup doesn't help at all. When you have a watercooler, its running constantly, and pushing the air out, so it is effectly helping your GPUs. That was my point. A Noctua won't help in that situation. An air cooler strapped to your CPU is just cooling your CPU. The watercooler is really helping the entire case.
With 1 GPU, a Noctua may be adequate, but this whole thread is about multiple GPUs.
Here's my build, I know what I'm talking about, I've worked in the IT field for 15 years before I got into 3D Art/Animation. Those are 3 x 140mm fans as well. I have as much airflow as possible in an well ventilated room, A/C 24/7. (And I vacuum my dust filters probably once a week), I even have a piece of stone tile under the case, to assist with airflow under the unit to the PSU so its not directly on the carpet.
One more thing I've noticed. There is also a slow incremental upward temp creep that happens during really long renders. I'm talking 20-30+ hours. I don't think I ever render under 16 hours, that means I was lazy if thats how short my render time is. These are things that obviously may not affect you if you don't plan to do animation at any time in the future. But regarding that, I never in a million years thought I would be doing animation, I set out originally to just creat illustrations for a comic I was working on, so never say never.
I think a lot of people think that one 980ti or one Titan X is all they need when they are coming from a low-end system. I thought 2 would be enough and I was coming from a low-end Mac Mini. Boy was I wrong. You will quickly utilize everything your card(s) can handle. I don't care what you build. I did a low light dramatic animation scene, a couple weeks ago, it was only a 10 second shot. It took me 7.5 minutes to render 1 frame, thats 30fps x 10 x 7.5 min = 37.5 hours for 10 seconds. Yes it took me nearly 40 hours to render 10 seconds of screen time. Thats the nature of Iray. A well lit scene with little contrast ratio will render beautifully in a minute. I learned my lesson from that. No more dramatic light scenes. And I do what I can in post production as well. My next system will have as many GPUs as is physically possible at the time. If I did this over today, I would for sure have 4 x Titan X even if I had to sell a kidney. Anyway, good luck with whatever you choose.
good arguments - i am convinced.. more space and airflow over the top card is a valid argument.. and that's a nice, clean build above.
@namffuak which case are you using? i see Dominic Tesla has a phanteks enthoo (also on my list)...
the next what i will order is a case.. so any experience and plus and minuses are greatly appreciated.. my current favorit is the corsair carbide air 540
I made a minor mistake that won't affect me that much when I bought the case - it's an Antec 1200 V3; the minor mistake is that it only has 7 card slot cutouts, so I wont be able to put a fourth dual-slot gpu in it. Right now I've got one MSI 980 ti and an EVGA 740 for my monitors. I'm waiting to see where the prices go with the new cards to decide between a second 980 ti, a Titan, or one of the new cards. And next year I'll add the third high-end card.
I'm retired, this is just a hobby, and I don't game - so I'm not dumping lots of money on the hardware.Having said that, I do have about $4,000 in this system - partly because the DDR4 memory was a lot more expensive January of last year. My 64 GB (two sets of 4 X 8 GB) cost just under $1,000; the same meory now would be just a bit over $480.
Hey there,
Thank you all for your great help . I finally settled in with a PC that i feel comfortable with in terms of budget and size.
I tried my first render in Clo3d, the processor was clocked in at 100% , for a simple render. Is this normal?
I was looking at Task Manager. I know it might sound like a n00b, but just wanted to check if there was anything which is wrong.
I've been looking more and here is a almost complete PC with newest Skylake CPU. You just need to add GPUs, more RAM, and move your SSDs or add SSDs.
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BGT69OE/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
A deal like this makes it hard to justify me spending a dime on any upgrade to my old laptop except a bigger SSD that can be moved to a computer like the above link.
@nonesuch00 while this is a very good price for a skylake with DDR4 Ram
For Iray - one must be aware that the board has only 1 PCI x16 slot .. and the cheapest version comes only with a 200 watt powersupply...
But such a system would be perfect together with a GPU expander box. Unfortunately there is no usable expander system which cost less then 2 grands without cards.
Edit: Ok in theory it would be possible to have a second GPU card in a PCI x1 slot... But i still could not find information how much having only 5GB upstream does limit Iray.... as soon as my test system (cheap second hand duo core) is ready i plan to figure out such things closer (passiv splitter).
My goal is using my renderstation over VPN or virtual desktop (on labtops)... just for fun i started right before some renders using my smartphone and google remote desktop... worked.. but dont try to move the camera or zoom :-)
@juzduit .... great CPU! you picked more cores against higher core speed which i think is smart..(great for video work, and cpu renders) if you render on the CPU then a utilization close to 100 % is to expect...
@namffuak.. i checked out your case.. it has very good testimonials. if you dont plan to add 4 cards that's a good buy... i also speculate that the prices for 6gb GPu's drop by the end of the year... saving up until then.
Sounds like your render settings are set to use only your CPU, which would be the same with DAZ Studio if you were rendering in 3Delight. Which is why a lot of people, including myself like Iray, your NVidia GPUs can be set to handle all the processing and you can still use your CPU for surfing the net, etc, while you render.
I'm not familiar with Clo3d, so I don't know what your render options are, but it seems right now, you aren't utilizing your GPUs at all.
I think that this with 2 nVidia add-on cards is the best compromise between costs and nVidea cards being obsoleted by newer technology.
If you are wanting to build a permanent renderstation with upgradable GPUs then this PC is I think the best starter if you can't afford to buy everything at once, which I can't. You can upgrade PS, MB, CPU to handle more video cards later and maybe nVidia Pascal tech makes the current cards cheaper as apprently it require a new i/o bus type to be added to archtitecture.