Please help to find motherboard for 8/8+ GPUs : nvidia rtx a2000 (6/12gb pci 4.0)
Secondhand motherboard or brand new? Is pc/“render farm” cost really much?
2 CPU vs 1 CPU for cycles GPU rendering?
Is 2 CPU server motherboard faster than 1 CPU in cycles GPU render ?
*cases like simulation can be done only on CPU?
PCI 2.0 Mining motherboard
b75 LGA1155 motherboard with G630 Celeron seem to be bottleneck for rendering in cycles (even with 256 tiles settings) Why rendering slow? (even after it is compiled and cycles settings tweaked) CPU loading ±50% + have 16GB RAM
Info links :
PCI 2.0 vs PCI 3.0
PCI 2.0 vs PCI 3.0 = same render time for bmw benchmark
Do i really need PCI 4.0 motherboard instead of PCI 3.0 or even 2.0?
If I understand correct this speed need only once for project compiling after that render time even on 2.0 will be same
x1 riser are not bottleneck for rendering
Test explain that PCI x1 speed is enough for rendering (rendering slows for ±6% instead PCI x4/x16). Same author thread
So many possible ways to do this, likely none are cheap or easy.
I see three general overall configs options.
Server type setup, so special motherboard, 4RU rack case, matching server based CPU, etc. Should be pretty robust, but far from cheap, dealing with the likes of Dell, HP and others.
Crypto mining setup, using some ‘cheap’ basic motherboard made with a mass of CPIe slots and or ‘splitters’ with a matching ‘case rig’. All of that will have to be via Ebay or Aliexpress and hope it works, etc.
If you can find a cheaper board (could be second hand, old style 3 way crossfire when GPU SLI, etc was still a thing), combine with a general last gen CPU, some basic RAM and 450-500W PSU and good to go. Need to make sure it will all fit/work, but it’s an option, tho 3 tower cases will take up a bit of room, but then 8 GPU long mining rigs or 4RU servers aren’t totally small either.
An advantage of the desktop PC’s is that its all general parts, so easier to source, replace, upgrade as need be. Also if something dies on one PC, you still have the other 2 as part of a mini render farm, so things can still keep going, plus you have parts, etc you can swap around to determine exactly what has died.
No matter what, it’s going to take a fair bit of thinking/planning and research/pricing to decided on a final solution.
@mtbiker I think you will be much better with selling A2000 and going with 4xA4000. Or 2xA5000.
Mining motherboards are not the best for a tasks that involves a lot of shuffling between CPU cache ↔ RAM ↔ VRAM ↔ NVMe drives.
And if you want to do 3D you will be doing it quite often.
Also before purchase check if you will be able to power all your GPUs with one PSU. Having two PSUs is counter productive as your system will draw a lot more power even on idle.
In the case of the A2000 I don’t think that would be a problem, since they are only 70W cards and from what I can tell, don’t have a power connector, so it’s all PCIe slot powered.
Mind you, if the OP mostly only has the 6GB version, then for Cycles I’m not sure it would even be worth it depending on what one was rendering. Also, depending on how its all setup, I’m not sure what would happen if you mixed 6 and 12GB versions of the cards, especially on the same system. Blender may think all cards are 6GB or the 6GB cards crash out as soon as it goes over.
Why rendering slow? (even after it is compiled and cycles settings tweaked) CPU loading ±50% + have 16GB RAM