Some help for a computer build for a customer of mine.

[Locut0s]

So I work at a computer hardware store (NCIX) and build system for customers, well I select the components anyway. Though the bulk of the job is just selling components, HDDs, CPUs, Vid cards mobos etc... Anyway the vast majority of systems that I configure are gaming rigs and home systems and these I'm comfortable with. However I have a guy who I helped build a gaming / game design rig for who is very happy with his system and wants a quote for another system and a rendering box for his company. Now the other system is easy, the rendering box a little harder. I've never assembled this kind of thing before though I know the basics. It's not quite a server though has aspects of one, it will be running 3D rendering jobs for his team 24/7. He wants a dual socket system with lots of RAM of course. The thing is he specifially asked us NOT to use Quadros or other workstation cards as he wants to do this cheaper than that. Instead he wants to use high end gaming cards, possibly in SLI. There are a few 3GB 580s out there that I can use. Thing is these are desinged for gaming workloads, not rendering. They are going to be using Softimage XSI and a bunch of other tools, many of which I think can make use of CUDA even in a 580. How well this will perform compared to a Quadro or FireGL setup I don't know (Anyone know?) So I'm thinking of something like the following:

CPU: Dual Xeon 6 core
Mobo: Dual socket SuperMicro 1366 board, or something equivalent
RAM: As much as he can afford, will probabbly have to be ECC for that mobo
Vid: 2 x GTX 580 3GB SLI
PSU: Corsair AX1200 or something similar
HDD : ?? Not quite sure what will be required here. perhaps a 2TB WD Caviar black
Case: Any solid large ATX case with good airflow
DVD : Anything

Now again this isn't going to be really a server it's just needs the power of one for rendering purposes. So they aren't going to be looking for corporate level stuff, they are a small studio anyway so most of what they are using will be consumer level anyway.

He may even think the above is too expensive. If that is that case then an alternative would be to go with a consumer level dual socket setup with less RAM and i7 970s.

 

[Morg.]

a) not necessarily ECC -there are some non-ecc dual socket xeon boards iirc, you may consider eVga dual slot too
b) I don't get it, two gpus for two cpu's, it's prolly better with 10 gpus and one cpu right ?
c) check out offers on the market for render stations, mimick one maybe ?
d) that PSU might even be overkill, who knows
e) now the disk side looks extremely weak

For the case ... I really am disatisfied with most or all large towers, maybe FT-03 or something can be nice for that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

then an alternative would be to go with a consumer level dual socket setup with less RAM and i7 970s.

I'm pretty certain that you must use Xeon DP CPUs on a DP mobo. Consumer SP 1366 CPUs won't do DP.

 

[Patrickz0rs]

Nvs 450?

 

[Morg.]

I'm pretty certain that you must use Xeon DP CPUs on a DP mobo. Consumer SP 1366 CPUs won't do DP.

IIRc, you can run Xeons on the eVGA 2s board, with a patch or something. Either way I doubt that's any cheaper than a supermicro board

And it seems to me too that the additional QPI link is not part of the consumer dies -

 

[mfenn]

And it seems to me too that the additional QPI link is not part of the consumer dies -

That is correct.

OP, is this going to be a headless box that just does render jobs sent to it from another computer, or is somebody going to be actually working at it?

 

[Locut0s]

That is correct.

OP, is this going to be a headless box that just does render jobs sent to it from another computer, or is somebody going to be actually working at it?

I believe that no one will be working at it most of the time. However I don't think it's quite a headless box. They will likely set it up as a regular station, just one that is used for rendering most of the time.

 

[Locut0s]

Nvs 450?

Those are more 2D business solutions, not 3D.

 

[mfenn]

I believe that no one will be working at it most of the time. However I don't think it's quite a headless box. They will likely set it up as a regular station, just one that is used for rendering most of the time.

Are they sure that their suites will use CUDA? A lot of non-technical people seem to think that a GPU will magically make everything better.

 

[Locut0s]

Are they sure that their suites will use CUDA? A lot of non-technical people seem to think that a GPU will magically make everything better.

Well he claims the following.

Max, XSI, Mental Ray, VRay, various GPU based render engines, Mudbox, ZBrush, Adobe Master Suite. Max can use cards in SLI format, as can After Effects and most of the softwares we would have to worry about

 

[Morg.]

Let him claim away then
No kidding, check out a review about these in order to really help your client

Also, if GPU is useful, rearrange the config for a simple quad SLI 580 on a good quad board, or find something else, because dual CPU sounds massively useless for your business case.

 

[Locut0s]

Let him claim away then
No kidding, check out a review about these in order to really help your client

Also, if GPU is useful, rearrange the config for a simple quad SLI 580 on a good quad board, or find something else, because dual CPU sounds massively useless for your business case.

I'm sceptical on the gaming GPUs being useful (hence why I am asking here) but not on the dual CPUs. If you look at just about every other render box available out there from third party companies almost all of them use dual xeons.

 

[Locut0s]

I'm sceptical on the gaming GPUs being useful (hence why I am asking here) but not on the dual CPUs. If you look at just about every other render box available out there from third party companies almost all of them use dual xeons.

Also if the Gaming GPUs are not going to be of much use the CPUs will matter all the more. Traditionally rendering is an extremely CPU and RAM intensive application. Before Workstation GPUs appeared on the scene rendering apps would use all the CPU power and RAM you could throw at them.

 

[Morg.]

The "gaming gpu's" as you call them are almost the same as Tesla . the architecture (fermi) is the same and their cuda performance is (iirc) quite close.

There is in fact no real "workstation GPU" it's mostly repackaging, talking and naming, ..
And I went to read a bit on that, confirms my belief that I'm correct on this one :
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=199056

Clearly, if you can confirm that these are GPU-accelerated in any decent fashion, you will NOT want to spend 1000 bucks on a CPU when you could spend it on 3 GPU.

My two cents, if you really want to have 2 cpu's even if they're useless (gpu-accelerated workload), then go ahead

 

[VirtualLarry]

The "gaming gpu's" as you call them are almost the same as Tesla . the architecture (fermi) is the same and their cuda performance is (iirc) quite close.

The architecture may be the same, but NV cripples the consumer cards in the drivers when it comes to double-precision floating-point operations. They either operate at half or quarter speed on the consumer cards.

 

[Locut0s]

The architecture may be the same, but NV cripples the consumer cards in the drivers when it comes to double-precision floating-point operations. They either operate at half or quarter speed on the consumer cards.

If it's 1/2 then it would still be okay as the cost of the high end quadros are crazy.

 

[mfenn]

Well he claims the following.

Max, XSI, Mental Ray, VRay, various GPU based render engines, Mudbox, ZBrush, Adobe Master Suite. Max can use cards in SLI format, as can After Effects and most of the softwares we would have to worry about

I did a quick check on those apps, and Adobe Premiere CS5 is the only one (that I saw) that can take advantage of CUDA. Thus, the SLI cards will really only help when looking at the preview, which I assume won't be happening very much on a dedicated render box.

 

[Locut0s]

I did a quick check on those apps, and Adobe Premiere CS5 is the only one (that I saw) that can take advantage of CUDA. Thus, the SLI cards will really only help when looking at the preview, which I assume won't be happening very much on a dedicated render box.

This is what I thought as well. Don't you love it when a customer comes to you 100% convinced about something and you think, umm yeah... I'm not so sure about that.

 

[mfenn]

This is what I thought as well. Don't you love it when a customer comes to you 100% convinced about something and you think, umm yeah... I'm not so sure about that.

Happens all the time! But in my case it's usually my boss.