[SOLVED] What motherboard do I need for a 3 RTX 3090 setup

[GomTang]

Hello,

I'm designing a deep learning workstation to accommodate 3xRTX3090 (when I can eventually get them).
I am having trouble finding a motherboard that will fit three triple-slot GPUs (RTX3090 FE).

My setup (so far) is as follows:

• CPU: AMD Thread ripper 3960X 3.8 GHz 24-Core Processor
• CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler
• RAM: G. Skill Trident Z RGB 128 GB (4 x 32 GB) DDR4-4000 CL18 Memory
• Motherboard (not sure if this will fit 3 GPUs): Gigabyte TRX40 DESIGNARE XL ATX sTRX4 Motherboard
• GPU: 3xNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB Founders Edition Video Card
• Case: Corsair 760T ATX Full Tower Case
• PSU: EVGA P2 1600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Here is the PCPartpicker list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kHpN7X

Is there such motherboards that can accommodate three triple-slot GPUs and a thread ripper? Or should I use a intel Xeon chip and an appropriate motherboard?

 

[Jstonez]

Hello,

I'm designing a deep learning workstation to accommodate 3xRTX3090 (when I can eventually get them).
I am having trouble finding a motherboard that will fit three triple-slot GPUs (RTX3090 FE).

My setup (so far) is as follows:

• CPU: AMD Thread ripper 3960X 3.8 GHz 24-Core Processor
• CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler
• RAM: G. Skill Trident Z RGB 128 GB (4 x 32 GB) DDR4-4000 CL18 Memory
• Motherboard (not sure if this will fit 3 GPUs): Gigabyte TRX40 DESIGNARE XL ATX sTRX4 Motherboard
• GPU: 3xNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB Founders Edition Video Card
• Case: Corsair 760T ATX Full Tower Case
• PSU: EVGA P2 1600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Here is the PCPartpicker list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kHpN7X

Is there such motherboards that can accommodate three triple-slot GPUs and a thread ripper? Or should I use a intel Xeon chip and an appropriate motherboard?

You have no need nor will you see any advantage with a 24 core processor as all your game performance will be handled by the card. While this is not strictly true there are systems that rigged up 10 state of the art cards and the user still got killed by three year old girls with a decent system. I do not care what that cpu cost because it is a waste of money. I have 6 cores each with 2 threads and most everything is done on one or two. I might buy AMD stock before I bought a cpu from them, my son actually did buy the stock

Will the 2 grand on the cpu increase your internet bandwidth?

Nope not one bit.

 

[USAFRet]

You have no need nor will you see any advantage with a 24 core processor as all your game performance will be handled by the card.

Degree of difficulty from the OP - "I'm designing a deep learning workstation ..."
I see no mention of 'game'.

 

[GomTang]

I chose the Threadripper to accommodate PCIe lane requirements, I think it is still overkill, but wanted to have to not worry about it.
Any advice on the motherboard would be greatly appreciated !

 

[Jstonez]

Degree of difficulty from the OP - "I'm designing a deep learning workstation ..."
I see no mention of 'game'.

LOL this is only used for gamers, please be real

• GPU: 3xNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB Founders Edition Video Card

I actually have a three 32 inch monitor gaming computer, however my games are all played on various stock exchanges.

 

[Jstonez]

I chose the Threadripper to accommodate PCIe lane requirements, I think it is still overkill, but wanted to have to not worry about it.
Any advice on the motherboard would be greatly appreciated !

If you bought a 100 cpu chip with 4 threads on each cpu you would see no advantage. Again remember your speed is controlled by on and off network stream speeds. Young people get caught up in the thrill and miss that little fact

 

[USAFRet]

LOL this is only used for gamers, please be real

Right. Because of course, the processing power in a GPU can't be used for anything BUT games.
https://developer.nvidia.com/deep-learning

 

[Jstonez]

Right. Because of course, the processing power in a GPU can't be used for anything BUT games.
https://developer.nvidia.com/deep-learning

Sure it can, I play Wall Street hardball with mine. LOL I reread his post and he is
having trouble finding a motherboard that will fit three triple-slot GPUs (RTX3090 FE).


LOL because no one wants or needs that motherboard, because there are no advantages to it. Sheesh

Do cars have three engines? You can do it but there is no practical advantage because the extra weight slows the thing down and combining the power to the trans is difficult. You can not enter and exit the internet any faster with more cards. The young who are easily lessened of their cash miss this FACT

 

[USAFRet]

Sure it can, I play Wall Street hardball with mine. LOL I reread his post and he is
having trouble finding a motherboard that will fit three triple-slot GPUs (RTX3090 FE).


LOL because no one wants or needs that motherboard, because there are no advantages to it. Sheesh

Do cars have three engines? You can do it but there is no practical advantage because the extra weight slows the thing down and combining the power to the trans is difficult. You can not enter and exit the internet any faster with more cards.

Are 3 of these needed? Maybe not.
Is there an issue trying to find a motherboard to accommodate 3x 3090? Absolutely.

That does not negate the fact that GPUs can be used for things besides gaming.

If he had said it is for a game system, I would completlay agree with you that it is a silly config.

 

[Jstonez]

Are 3 of these needed? Maybe not.
Is there an issue trying to find a motherboard to accommodate 3x 3090? Absolutely.

That does not negate the fact that GPUs can be used for things besides gaming.

If he had said it is for a game system, I would completlay agree with you that it is a silly config.

I would love to test one card opening an 8k high def photo vs 3 of the same cards. In order to use all three cards the task would need to be split up which might add time at any rate the difference would be a time differential that would require an atomic clock to record as no human could notice the difference, and with that being said no human could respond any different to the two systems. Again I saw a ten or twelve video card system years ago, certainly Nvidia has done this in their labs. It was a failure, trust me or it would be on the market now. My kid bought himself a new computer for Christmas and bought a new case for his brother, he built two systems in my living room, he had some funky water cooling pipe system in the thing until he watched it then ripped it out for the old cooler. Anyone who thinks a water cooling system belongs in a computer full of electricity might actually be prone to hosing the dust off the board. Not sure what this guy is using but I also ripped out my water cooler for a Noctua double fan cooler.

I love computers but hate to see kids get relieved of their money because the only thing that really means anything is the pipeline in and out of the house. Verizon fiber optic is useless even though fiber optic is radically faster, the problem, the wires are not all fiber optic. Verizon skips that little fact.

 

[USAFRet]

I would love to...

Lets not take this any farther off-topic.
Deal?

 

[Jstonez]

Lets not take this any farther off-topic.
Deal?

Ok back to the topic, what is this computer with the imaginary motherboard going to be used for? Because I can get the specs of the computers designing spacecraft and submarines if need be?

The Hardware and Software Used in Space

One of humanity’s highest achievements involves exploring the cosmos above us, pushing our technology to its limits to perform inspiring

thenewstack.io

 

[USAFRet]

Ok back to the topic, what is this computer with the imaginary motherboard going to be used for?

As said in the original question, and multiple times later:
"deep learning"

Not games, and not CAD.

 

[Karadjgne]

Afaik, there aren't any motherboards that'll fit 3x triple slot gpus.

Best option around that restriction is in the case. Use Gen4 riser cards and mount the gpus seperate from the motherboard, eliminating physical slot depth restrictions. You can find mining cases that'll handle them.

 

[carocuore]

I don't think that mobo will be able to fit 3 triple slot cards at once, the problem is the spacing between the slots
Look into something more workstation/server oriented rather than gaming like the Designare, from the same brand you could get the WRX80-SU8, the problem is that the CPU won't fit and it'll be more expensive, same with Xeon or Epyc chips.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/WRX80-SU8-IPMI-rev-10

Edit: My thought was this: #1 card in slot #1, #2 card in slot #4, #3 card in slot #7

 

[Karadjgne]

Not enough space. The width of the gpus requires there not be a pcie slot underneath, or it hits the shroud on the gpu. And you'd need to leave a decent amount of space between the cards for airflow. Even E-ATX mobo's aren't tall enough to accommodate that total requirement.

If you figure a 3 slot gpu is in reality 4 slots worth of space, 3x for card and 1x for air, youd need a workstation board with a minimum of 12 slots worth of height, just to clear the psu or case floor.

Gen4 Risers. Only way. Ask any miner.

 

[Jstonez]

As said in the original question, and multiple times later:
"deep learning"

Not games, and not CAD.

Well actually in my opinion as I have expressed, anyone who buys that particular system including the three video cards that can not be used in one system effectively, sure does have a lot of deep learning to do.

 

[Karadjgne]

While I'm certain you are fully entitled to your opinion, it carries about as much validity as a screen door on a submarine, in My opinion. Further justification is neither wanted nor warranted. Again, in My opinion.

 

[GomTang]

XD Thanks Karadjgne and carocuore,
I found this article https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Quad-GeForce-RTX-3090-in-a-desktop---Does-it-work-1935/
I may try a build following something like this...

 

[Zerk2012]

XD Thanks Karadjgne and carocuore,
I found this article https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Quad-GeForce-RTX-3090-in-a-desktop---Does-it-work-1935/
I may try a build following something like this...

I would probably even question the power supply being adequate. The 3090's can have a rather large power spike and your looking at like 1050 watts just on the video cards not counting power spikes.

EDIT 250 more on the processor then another 100 watts for the rest.

I'm not that skilled on a dep learning PC but have a lot of years building PC's Actually have never built one in all these years so not sure if the power draw is actually maxing everything out.

I would agree top slot, bottom/3rd slot then a rise for the 3rd card. You might need to mod the case a bit for the riser card, With a case mod you might even mount it outside the case depending on the riser.

EDIT AGIN I think riser is the wrong word since it would still need to be PCI-E x16 it would be more like a vertical mount.

 

[Karadjgne]

Unsurprisingly, the 280W TDP 3990X demands the same amount of power as the other 280W TDP Threadripper chips – around 400W under heavy all-core load. https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3990x-cpu-review/9/

So even a 1600w psu may not be enough unless absolutely sure your cpu and gpu are not pushing 100% workloads simultaneously. The tests run by Puget ran just gpu, very little cpu and barely squeeked by with 300w power limits on 4 cards, 1200w being roughly the same as your 3 cards wide open. 20w to spare indeed.

 

[Jstonez]

While I'm certain you are fully entitled to your opinion, it carries about as much validity as a screen door on a submarine, in My opinion. Further justification is neither wanted nor warranted. Again, in My opinion.

Unlike you however I do not help people throw their money away on nonsense computer parts that are nothing but a waste of money because the internet pipeline is the most important factor in game performance, and this has nothing to do with the 2000 dollar cpu or the 2000 dollar video card, TIMES three so there are six grand of video cards. AS for workstation NASA uses far better machines to design and launch spacecraft, that cost one fifth of the price of the make believe system quoted in the OP here.

 

[USAFRet]

Unlike you however I do not help people throw their money away on nonsense computer parts that are nothing but a waste of money because the internet pipeline is the most important factor in game performance, and this has nothing to do with the 2000 dollar cpu or the 2000 dollar video card, TIMES three so there are six grand of video cards. AS for workstation NASA uses far better machines to design and launch spacecraft, that cost one fifth of the price of the make believe system quoted in the OP here.

For the last time...this system has nothing to do with games.
Drop it, OK?

 

[GomTang]

So even a 1600w psu may not be enough unless absolutely sure your cpu and gpu are not pushing 100% workloads simultaneously. The tests run by Puget ran just gpu, very little cpu and barely squeeked by with 300w power limits on 4 cards, 1200w being roughly the same as your 3 cards wide open. 20w to spare indeed.

Yes, I heard 4 cards may be dangerous to do since the max power draw allowable in an outlet is somewhere around 1800W (for NA), unless I use an outlet designated for dryers which allow for 2,400 max power draw.
If I opt for 3 cards instead of 4, I think it may be doable with a 1600W PSU or am I wrong?

 

[Karadjgne]

The 3090 has a TDP of 350w. From nvidia. The AIB partner cards like the Gigabyte Puget used, can breach 400w+.

So if you got a 2 slot blower style, like the Gigabyte, you could manage 3 on a mobo, but you'd be looking at a potential 1200w+ draw that, plus another possible 400w from the cpu. That's well beyond a 1600w psu, so power limiting the cards would still get you serious horsepower, but enable you to be far more comfortable under that psu limitation. It'd have to be a balance of workload, see exactly how much cpu you are using while taxing the gpus. Total power draw on the pc.