B250 mining Expert for Rendering

[Carbix]

Would it be practical to use an Asus B250 Expert mining board for rendering CG images and CG video in 3Ds Max with Vray RT. The only caveat I can find is that loading a render via the usb riser will take longer.

 

Build idea:

(if I get something wrong let me know)

 

i7 8700k

Asus B250 Mining Expert

 

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-Core

 
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-D15

Motherboard: Asus - B250 Mining Expert LGA1151

Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory CAS 14

Storage: Samsung - 850 Pro Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Video Card:

7x PNY - Quadro P4000 8GB

11x  AMD - Radeon Pro WX 710

 

(current loads are fine with 8gigs of memory. Leaving the full PCi slot open for options like 10g lan)

 

Power: TBD (lots)

 

Case: TBD (8U case? Lol)

 

OS: W10 Pro

 

Did I miss anything?

[Herman Mcpootis]

the 8700k isn't supported by the B250 board, so in the first place it wouldn't boot anyways.

[Carbix]

I read that it was. 

[brob]

I wonder about the impact of using a single PCIe lane for communications with each gpu. I suspect this might be far from optimal.

[brob]

2 minutes ago, Carbix said:

I read that it was. 

i7-67XX and i7-77XX cpu, not i7-87XX. See https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/B250-MINING-EXPERT/HelpDesk_CPU/. 

[Carbix]

https://canicompare.com/en/compare-intel-core-i7-8700k-compatible-asus-motherboards/intel-core-i7-8700k/chipset-intel-b250/maximum-internal-memory-32-gb-cbvsm3-pbvsBx-194,197,83-mcompatible.html#product_list

 

if I’m wrong I’m wrong but would be nice to be right. 

[Carbix]

4 minutes ago, brob said:

I wonder about the impact of using a single PCIe lane for communications with each gpu. I suspect this might be far from optimal.

It should slow down the load time. But not by much. Once the seen is loaded on th card the card does the work. Not too much talking back and forth (is my understanding) 

[brob]

3 minutes ago, Carbix said:

https://canicompare.com/en/compare-intel-core-i7-8700k-compatible-asus-motherboards/intel-core-i7-8700k/chipset-intel-b250/maximum-internal-memory-32-gb-cbvsm3-pbvsBx-194,197,83-mcompatible.html#product_list

 

if I’m wrong I’m wrong but would be nice to be right. 

See the Asus link I posted. i7-8700K uses the LGA1150 socket. The B250 motherboard has an LGA1151 socket. They are not compatible.

 

Just now, Carbix said:

It should slow down the load time. But not by much. Once the seen is loaded on th card the card does the work. Not too much talking back and forth (is my understanding) 

Soi the job is split into n sub-jobs, where n is the number of gpu? 

[Carbix]

10 minutes ago, brob said:

i7-67XX and i7-77XX cpu, not i7-87XX. See https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/B250-MINING-EXPERT/HelpDesk_CPU/. 

Ok so a 7700k

[Herman Mcpootis]

1 minute ago, brob said:

See the Asus link I posted. i7-8700K uses the LGA1150 socket. The B250 motherboard has an LGA1151 socket. They are not compatible.

they use the same socket, but they're not electrically compatible(unless you know how to go dicking around the bios to make it work).

[Carbix]

3 minutes ago, brob said:

See the Asus link I posted. i7-8700K uses the LGA1150 socket. The B250 motherboard has an LGA1151 socket. They are not compatible.

 

Soi the job is split into n sub-jobs, where n is the number of gpu? 

No sure 100%. I have tried to read into how Vray handles it but all they will say is they their system will take into account different cards. Only factor is memory size. It will go with the smallest. 

[Carbix]

1 minute ago, herman mcpootis said:

they use the same socket, but they're not electrically compatible(unless you know how to go dicking around the bios to make it work).

I do not lol. 

[brob]

13 minutes ago, Carbix said:

No sure 100%. I have tried to read into how Vray handles it but all they will say is they their system will take into account different cards. Only factor is memory size. It will go with the smallest. 

You will probably have to ask about the impact of using single PCIe lanes for gpu communications in some vray forums. 

[Streetguru]

1 hour ago, Carbix said:

 

You would be far better off on like X399 with a 1900X

Otherwise you likely don't have enough bandwidth for those programs. You could buy a single USB riser card just to test it in your current system, but that's likely a waste.

Or get an EPYC server with 128 pci-e lanes.

[HomeBoi]

I know this might be farfetched but did you ever try this setup? Would love to see how it did perform

[quadray]

I have a mining expert rig with (6) RX580 and (7) 1070 ti cards. I tested GPU rendering with DAZ3D. The CPU installed is only an I3 with 2 cores and 4 threads total. With 8 GB RAM it crashed trying to render anything complex. I then increased the RAM to 16 GB. Worked better but it would crash if the scene was too complex. But it does seem to render simpler scenes with IRAY. I did not max the RAM to 32 GB to see if that would prevent the rendering from crashing with more complex scenes.

 

Only catch is it could only utilize a maximum of (3) 1070 ti cards. Looks like the CPU has to dedicate 1 thread per GPU and one for the OS. Since the CPU only had 4 threads total DAZ3D only saw (3) 1070 ti cards. A 6 core would have 12 threads that could utilize up to (11) GPUs.

 

I am not sure if VRAY can mix AMD and Nvidia cards when rendering a scene. DAZ3D with IRAY only works with Nvidia cards.

 

Since it looks like the B50 only supports up to 4 core CPUs you would be limited to rendering with a maximum of (7) GPUs I believe. Perhaps newer BIOS releases can support the 6 core CPUs? It would be nice to convert these boards to rendering rigs.