System Upgrade with GTX1080

leastop

Reputable
Jan 23, 2015
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4,510
Hi All,

I'm an architect and often do a bit of VRAY rendering. I'm looking to move into GPU rendering with Octane and planning a system upgrade. I don't have the cash to upgrade the whole system and was wondering if the following upgrade will be ok? My concerns are the compatibility of the motherboard (PCIE x2) and the two 1080 cards (PCIE x3) and the inverse case.

Currently have the following system:
Intel Core i7-950 3.06Ghz LGA1366 CPU
ASUS P6X58D-PREMIUM X58 LGA1366 DDR3 Motherboard
24GB Single DDR3 1333
500GB SAMSUNG SSD

Current components to be Upgraded
ASUS 1GB GTS450 PCI-E VGA Card
SHAW Titan-G7 Tower Case with PSU (Tower is shit, noisy, LED lights fallen off and PSU failed last year)

New Components:
2 x MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X
Corsair Carbibe 600Q Inverse ATX Tower
EVGA 1000 GQ Power Supply

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Liam
 
Solution
Whether the case layout is normal or inverse doesn't really matter functionally.

PCIe revision doesn't matter, they're backwards compatible.

You don't need a 1000W PSU, an 850W will be fine even with two GTX 1080s.

A single GTX 1080 would probably be fine, but I wouldn't go with two, at that point it's pretty likely the CPU will become a huge bottleneck. My advice is to buy a single GTX 1080 now, see how big the improvement is (judging by your old card it'll likely be gigantic with GPU rendering), and then once AMD Ryzen is out weigh your options for a CPU upgrade.
Whether the case layout is normal or inverse doesn't really matter functionally.

PCIe revision doesn't matter, they're backwards compatible.

You don't need a 1000W PSU, an 850W will be fine even with two GTX 1080s.

A single GTX 1080 would probably be fine, but I wouldn't go with two, at that point it's pretty likely the CPU will become a huge bottleneck. My advice is to buy a single GTX 1080 now, see how big the improvement is (judging by your old card it'll likely be gigantic with GPU rendering), and then once AMD Ryzen is out weigh your options for a CPU upgrade.
 
Solution