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Balanced build for ae and c4d (redshift)

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Ben

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Hello,
Thankyou for all the effort that goes into maintaining this site.
I am a freelance motion designer working mostly with AE and C4D with Redshift and given that home working is going to (hopefully) be the way forward I was hoping to build a machine that is capable of handling complex aeps as well as particle sims and redshift renders.
Would you advise pairing 2 rtx 3080s (availabilty permitting) with a ryzen 9 5950x? Which motherboard would be best for this?
Cheers,
B
 
xbigcheezx

xbigcheezx

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Consider pairing a couple of 3070's instead of the 3080's, much lower power requirements, lower cost, and they are easier to find. The Zotac twin edges are 1.5 card widths, so there is more space for cooling as well. They perform equivalent or better than a 3090 when paired.
 
B

Ben

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Consider pairing a couple of 3070's instead of the 3080's, much lower power requirements, lower cost, and they are easier to find. The Zotac twin edges are 1.5 card widths, so there is more space for cooling as well. They perform equivalent or better than a 3090 when paired.
Thanks
 
Alex Glawion

Alex Glawion

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The Asus WS Ace x570 can run 3x GPUs at x8 pcielane bandwidth. If 2 are enough you might consider the MSI Unify x570.
 
B

Ben

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Thank you For getting back to me. As a supplementary question, in your opinion would using a single 3090 at x16 be any different from running two 3080s at x8?
 
Alex Glawion

Alex Glawion

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You'll have much better performance with two 3080s at x8. You really only need x16 in special cases and most scenes are small enough to fit into the GPUs VRAM, making the pcie bandwidth less important.
 
B

Ben

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Hello,

Below is my build as it stands. I'm thinking given the shortages of 30 series nvidia cards i'll launch with a 2060 super and then upgrade and add more card(s) when availability improves (here's hoping).
This all presumes that the Ryzen CPU's stock is any better obvs.

And to reiterate - i'm currently all AE, C4D (redshift) and prem

The PSU is so I can add (upto) 3 cards down the road (hopefully before Trumps get back in) and the 3080 will hopefully be added later.
Do you envisage any issues with dimensions and the case in relation to multiple 3080s?


CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor (£871.51 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler (£58.84 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Pro WS X570-ACE ATX AM4 Motherboard (£275.60 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (£322.55 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£125.10 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£125.10 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: *MSI GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB VENTUS 3X OC Video Card (£763.67 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£121.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair HX Platinum 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£214.99 @ Corsair UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit (£165.18 @ Newegg UK)
Total: £3044.53

Thoughts?

Thanks again in advance,

B

PS. Here's some daft questions that will serve only to highlight my ignorance regarding building pcs...

Microsoft windows - Pro or normal? I am not planning on doing any OC.
Would I need a wifi card as well - as i'm currently nowhere near an ethernet socket.
 
Alex Glawion

Alex Glawion

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Looks good to me. The only thing: Is the CPU Cooler the Pro variant of the beQuiet dark rock 4? That one is a lot better than the non-pro.

Yes you'll need a wifi stick as this Motherboard does not come with inbuilt wifi. The normal version of Win10 is fine.
 
B

Ben

Guest
pro it is then :). Thanks again, your advice is much appreciated.
 
B

Ben

Guest
Hello,

I've approached a 3rd party company to build the below rig for me and explained that I would like to add more GPUs in the future (possibly 1-2 more 3080s).

Their response to the question of multiple GPUs was, "Unfortunately this would not be possible currently as we would have to use 2 slot blower style cards that don't currently exist for the 3000 series other than the Gigabyte 3090 Turbo." Is this true? Could you elaborate on their response? Would open air cooling alone not be enough even if I paired it down to 2 3080 cards and spaced them out? A lot of commentors appear to be extremely dismissive of the Gigabyte 3090 Turbo 2 slot blower - would a 2 slot 3080 turbo be any better?

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor
CPU Cooler:
be quiet Dark Rock PRO 4 250W Intel/AMD Air CPU Cooler
Motherboard: ASUS AMD Ryzen X570 Pro WS X570-ACE AM4 PCIe 4.0 ATX Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 64GB 3600MHz DDR4 Dual Channel Memory Kit, AMD Ryzen Optimised

Storage: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
Video Card: MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB VENTUS 3X OC Ampere Graphics Card

Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D Full Tower PC Case
Power Supply: Antec Signature 1300w Platinum Fully Modular PSU/Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit
Case Fan:
Noctua NF-A12x15 FLX 120mm Slim Fan

Thanks in advance,

B
 
Alex Glawion

Alex Glawion

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Yes it's true. There are no dual-slot blower-style GPUs below the 3090 available yet. You can use triple slot cards though and space them out, which is possible on the Asus WS Ace x570. Open-Air cooled cards do tend to perform slightly worse though as they don't do a good job at pushing out the hot air out of the case, as blower-style GPUs do.
 
B

Ben

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Thanks for getting back to me. So in theory could I proceed with a single air cooled 3080 now and then add a second blower style 3080 later if and when they become available? Are these blower style cards likely to be made in your opinion?
 
Alex Glawion

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Well we usually see them earlier in the launch cycle, so it is a bit weird why they are not showing up yet. Then again, RTX 3xxx stock is abysmal and that might be delaying everything. I would expect at least a 3080 blower style GPU to show up eventually.

The Asus WS Ace has enough spacing for running a triple slot and a dual slot simultaneously, yes. Though I'd add the blower style in the top slot once you get your hands on one.
 
B

Bjoern

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The Asus WS Ace x570 can run 3x GPUs at x8 pcielane bandwidth. If 2 are enough you might consider the MSI Unify x570.
Hi Alex,
are you sure about his? I got this mainboard with a 3900x cpu, and I want to run 3x 1080tis, but only 2 of them are recognized. Updated bios, all gpus are fine (unless i wanna use them all with this mainboard").
I thought this mainboard can handle 3x8 Nvidia Cards but In my case it doensn't work. So I'm wondering if my maiboard is broken and doesn't work as it's supposed to do.
Nividia support says that the mainboard can handle only 2 Nvidia Cards (as it's written somewhere in the manual when using SLI. I don't wan't SLI) They say it can run only 3 AMD Gpus (Crossfire).
 
B

Bjoern

Guest
The Asus WS Ace x570 can run 3x GPUs at x8 pcielane bandwidth. If 2 are enough you might consider the MSI Unify x570.
Hi Alex,
are you sure about his? I got this mainboard with a 3900x cpu, and I want to run 3x 1080tis, but only 2 of them are recognized. Updated bios, all gpus are fine (unless i wanna use them all with this mainboard").
I thought this mainboard can handle 3x8 Nvidia Cards but In my case it doensn't work. So I'm wondering if my maiboard is broken and doesn't work as it's supposed to do.
Nividia support says that the mainboard can handle only 2 Nvidia Cards (as it's written somewhere in the manual when using SLI. I don't wan't SLI) They say it can run only 3 AMD Gpus (Crossfire).
 
B

Bjoern

Guest
I've also read the dripple vga option on the manual's page 16.

Got a 1300w psu... which worked fine on my previous build with these 3 gpus.

There's not really something to configure in the Bios. For the pcie slots there's only two options which is "auto" or "raid", I went for "auto".
Latest Bios driver, latest chipset drivers, latest nvidia rivers for 1080.

what is also weird is, that I can't say for sure 2nd pcie slot ist broken: if i put in 3 Gpus, 2nd slot isn't recognzied, i I take out the one gpu from 3rd slot, Slot 1 & suddenly slot 2 aswell are working fine.

That's why I am concerned that I'm dealing with a hardware issue.

Thx for your help so far!!
 
Alex Glawion

Alex Glawion

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Do you have any m.2 nvme drives in there? I think if you have too many, one of the slots might not work.
 
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