What case for 4 GPU rendering machine?

[johnny_rigs]

This machine won't be for gaming, but CUDA rendering only attached my network. The best bang-for-buck card will be the GTX 780 6GB when's it's released. But if it only comes in the ACX style cooler, I'll probably opt for 3 Titans and add a 4th later. I'm also going to stick with air cooling, as I don't want to get into liquid. The board would likely be an Asus RIVE with a 4820K or 4930K because of the extra PCIe lanes of LGA2011.

With the right case, air cooling 4 blower-style 780s is possible, I think. But what case is best? I really like Fractal's Define XL R2. It has room for two140mm fans in front, one on the bottom, one on the side, two on top, and one in the back. Plus the drive cages are removable to increase airflow. Would that case work? Any other recommendations for a non-gamer looking case?

 

[Deleted member 1300495]

I would go for a full tower case, like a corsair obsidean 750D, that's what I have in my gaming setup. Also, why don't you want liquid cooling? With 4 gpus, there will be a lot of heat, so you should definitely consider a custom closed water loop. If not, then for the cpu, I would get a coollermaster 212 hyper evo

 

[johnny_rigs]

I would go for a full tower case, like a corsair obsidean 750D, that's what I have in my gaming setup. Also, why don't you want liquid cooling? With 4 gpus, there will be a lot of heat, so you should definitely consider a custom closed water loop. If not, then for the cpu, I would get a coollermaster 212 hyper evo

I'm not a gamer or PC builder, just a freelance 3D artist, so adding a custom water loop puts me on the other side of comfortable. Plus I'm not looking to add maintenance to this machine. I was thinking of a Noctua cooler for the CPU, but either way air for that as well. Would the Fractal be a bad idea? To me, a box is an inefficient volume for air to move around in, so the less "dead space" the better the air flow, thus the cooler the components remain. Am I off in that?

 

[Deleted member 1300495]

No you are right! Sorry, I was speaking from a gamers point of view. But, you should have the cages removed in the Fractal case and put in some noctuas. That will blow over the gpus and will provide maximum efficiency. Also, you should keep some of the cages for your storage devices.

 

[i7Baby]

Most Open GL rendering people recommend Radeon Cards. I don't think VRAM memory size is that important. But apparently DRAM size and speed is.. For 4 cards you'll need a full tower case and an E-ATX mobo to help separate them and keep them cool. With rendering you usually also want as many core CPU as you can afford and some good CPU cooling - all of which needs room in the case. And quite often you'll want to put in SSDs not just for OS but as 'scratch' disks for rendering. Plus multiple 4TB hard drives.
My PC (see my signature) is built for amateur video editing. Hardware acceleration doesn't seem to make much difference to rendering times.

 

[Deleted member 1300495]

Yeah, i would go with 4 radeon 290Xs, an i7-4960X, and 32GB of RAM

 

[johnny_rigs]

Most Open GL rendering people recommend Radeon Cards. I don't think VRAM memory size is that important. But apparently DRAM size and speed is.. For 4 cards you'll need a full tower case and an E-ATX mobo to help separate them and keep them cool. With rendering you usually also want as many core CPU as you can afford and some good CPU cooling - all of which needs room in the case. And quite often you'll want to put in SSDs not just for OS but as 'scratch' disks for rendering. Plus multiple 4TB hard drives.
My PC (see my signature) is built for amateur video editing. Hardware acceleration doesn't seem to make much difference to rendering times.

I probably didn't word it clearly, but this will not be a workstation with me in front of it. It will be a GPU 3D rendering node attached to my home network. I use MODO with Octane Render, which is CUDA-only. With GPU rendering, the whole scene needs to fit in VRAM, so size is definitely important. But having scratch disk space is not, it wouldn't get used. Other than handling the PCIe traffic of transferring the scene into VRAM initially, I'm not sure what the 6-core i7 would do.

 

[i7Baby]

The CPU is the primary rendering engine. The more (good) cores, the faster the process. 6 cores actually have 12 - counting threads/logical cores. The 4 core 4820 has 8 in total and so would do about 3/4 the work of a 4930k or 4960k. The 3930k is from the previous generation of Intel CPU's. The GPU's then assist the CPU. But I'm not sure by how much for various hardware and software.

 

[johnny_rigs]

The CPU is the primary rendering engine. The more (good) cores, the faster the process. 6 cores actually have 12 - counting threads/logical cores. The 4 core 4820 has 8 in total and so would do about 3/4 the work of a 4930k or 4960k. The 3930k is from the previous generation of Intel CPU's. The GPU's then assist the CPU. But I'm not sure by how much for various hardware and software.

I don't think you understand. The CPU will not be used for rendering. Octane uses only the GPUs for rendering. Either way, I was asking about specific case recommendations.

 

[i7Baby]

You'll need a full tower case loaded with fans. See: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=25_547&vk_sort=4