An idiot's hardware question...

[BBB3]

Folks,
i wonder if the hardware pros could help me with what is probably a silly question.
i have a 2012 water-cooled HP Z820 twin-Xeon workstation whose shelf life I'm trying to extend by boosting the performance for GPU rendering.
Right now I have a GTX 1080 Ti inside. I also have a Titan X (Maxwell) lying idle on my shelf.
i have enough PCI slots to plug both cards in. The PSU should also be enough at 1125w, though it's no longer in its prime.
First problem is I only have three 6-pin cables coming out of the PSU and the cards need 1x6pin and 1x8pin each. Right now I'm turning two 6-pin cables into one 8-pin using the adaptor provided with the 1080 Ti. Which leaves no cable left for a second card, even though I theoretically have enough power.

Question: can I use two 1x6pin-to-1x8pin adaptors and one 1x6-pin-to-2x6pin to give me enough pins in total? My IT guy, whose main experience is building gaming rigs says it's crazy and I will either fry something or underpower my cards. Online reviews seem to suggest it's fine as long as the PSU has enough total power.

question2: the 1080 Ti runs pretty cool (65C) at full load, but the Titan X gets crazy hot (85C) unless I boost the fan power. Would running both cards relatively close to each other in the Z820 be a bad idea to start with?

Question3: I've read somewhere that my 32GB of RAM wouldn't be enough to run two such powerful cards and I would need to raise it to 64GB (and get faster RAM) before I do anything else. I'm not sure I understand why. Any thought.

not sure these questions make any sense but my eternal gratitude for any answer.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Gpu rendering hardware solutions
Is the name of the group on facebook...its extremeky helpful...helped me s lot try there Bertrand

[BBB3]

Thanks. I checked it out but it's a bit too advanced for me. I really have no clue about this stuff... I should hire a full-time IT guy, really.

[JezUK]

Folks,
i wonder if the hardware pros could help me with what is probably a silly question.
i have a 2012 water-cooled HP Z820 twin-Xeon workstation whose shelf life I'm trying to extend by boosting the performance for GPU rendering.
Right now I have a GTX 1080 Ti inside. I also have a Titan X (Maxwell) lying idle on my shelf.
i have enough PCI slots to plug both cards in. The PSU should also be enough at 1125w, though it's no longer in its prime.
First problem is I only have three 6-pin cables coming out of the PSU and the cards need 1x6pin and 1x8pin each. Right now I'm turning two 6-pin cables into one 8-pin using the adaptor provided with the 1080 Ti. Which leaves no cable left for a second card, even though I theoretically have enough power.

Question: can I use two 1x6pin-to-1x8pin adaptors and one 1x6-pin-to-2x6pin to give me enough pins in total? My IT guy, whose main experience is building gaming rigs says it's crazy and I will either fry something or underpower my cards. Online reviews seem to suggest it's fine as long as the PSU has enough total power.

question2: the 1080 Ti runs pretty cool (65C) at full load, but the Titan X gets crazy hot (85C) unless I boost the fan power. Would running both cards relatively close to each other in the Z820 be a bad idea to start with?

Question3: I've read somewhere that my 32GB of RAM wouldn't be enough to run two such powerful cards and I would need to raise it to 64GB (and get faster RAM) before I do anything else. I'm not sure I understand why. Any thought.

not sure these questions make any sense but my eternal gratitude for any answer.

Hi Bertrand,

I would not call myself as expert as some of the others on here, but I have built at least 15 machines over the last 16 years (and so far never had a bad build or a problem I couldn't solve).

Firstly, without knowing all the components in your pc, I wouldn't know if the PSU would be powerful enough - it really ought to be though, would be handy to know the make and model, or I guess it is HP proprietary ? (there is a lot of misunderstanding regarding the amount of watts a PSU should have - you'd be surprised how low your PSU could actually be to run at best efficiency.....)

Q1 - is your PSU a modular type ? i.e. can you remove cables from the PSU unit or do the cables go directly into the PSU unit and you cannot remove the cables as such ? Are the cables labelled (eg PCI-E etc) ?

Cable adapters can usually only go into a GPU card in *one* way, in other words you cannot force push a cable into a card.

So what I'm saying is, a) frying something or underpowering something (said by the same person) are two extremes, anyone worth their salt would say it would be ONE of those. If the adapters are PCI-E specific and they fit and have 'splits' in them to allow you to either use a 6-pin or 8-pin I'd say you're good to go (can you provide some pictures ?).

Q2 - Nope.

Q3 - I can't see how the amount of ram has anything to do with your GPUs. For sure there is a minimum requirement but no where have I seen that (not even on the 1080ti box in front of me which I think says something like 8Gb minimum !).

[BBB3]

Hey Jez,
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
The PSU is modular (like pretty much everything else in the Z820), i.e. one big block that you slide into the box (see photo) but it doesn't have cables coming directly out of it.
The available cables in the enclosure are just three 6-pin cables and they're unlabeled. I currently use all three for one card: two cables that I've turned into an 8-pin with the adaptor provided with the card and the remaining 6-pin cable. (both the Titan X and the 1080Ti need 1x8pin and 1x6pin).
What I was wondering was whether I could turn just one 6-pin cable into an 8-pin cable with the help of a different adaptor (this for instance: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Startech-Ex.../dp/B001TK3TJY) as well as split one 6-pin cable into two 6-pin cables with a splitter cable (like this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Audio-Vid...ter/B004NNTVT6).
Or am I courting trouble by trying to draw so much power through these 6-pin cables?

[Richard7666]

I will leave the question about power cables for someone else, but as Jez said, Question 3, RAM has no bearing whatsoever on your GPU setup.

As for air flow and your GPUs, (assuming they're only air-cooled), is there a fan in the front of the case to suck cool air into the case over them, in addition to an exhaust fan at the back?
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.ne...UWyfdBP.medium doesn't look like a hell of a lot of room for airflow in that thing with the hard drive rack in front, and also doesn't look like there's a fan in there by default?
A quick google reveals the ideal maximum for a Titan X under load is 83 to 85 degC, anything over 90 is danger zone.

[BBB3]

Tx. It's water-cooled.
I'm doing a bit of reading, though, and it seems the paucity of cables mean Z-series workstations cannot really be used with multiple GPUs, at least not the big power-hungry ones. There are multiple horror stories out there with workstations shutting down when people try to power them by using splitter cables.
Well, I guess it's time for an upgrade...

[Pixelcon]

You're probably into an easier solution than building your own, but a few of us in the office have built workstations loosely based around this guide to great success. Then again perhaps the new AMDs are worth a look when a dual socket mobo is available.

[Syclone1]

I use three Z820's where I work and I have yet to find a viable solution for using any power hungry GPU's, Im currently using a GTX760 and its pushing the limits of the PSU. I had a 780 in it for a while but soon ran into stability problems and it all pointed to the PSU not being able to keep up with demand, in the end stuck the 760 back in and called it done. If you can make some mods and have the know how I do know of some people that used a second aftermarket PSU to power ONLY the GPU with success as it relieved the stress on the crappy PSU that HP uses.

[BBB3]

Thanks guys. I think I'm going to pass on the tinkering. This is definitely not my strong suit.

[mitviz]

Folks,
i wonder if the hardware pros could help me with what is probably a silly question.
i have a 2012 water-cooled HP Z820 twin-Xeon workstation whose shelf life I'm trying to extend by boosting the performance for GPU rendering.
Right now I have a GTX 1080 Ti inside. I also have a Titan X (Maxwell) lying idle on my shelf.
i have enough PCI slots to plug both cards in. The PSU should also be enough at 1125w, though it's no longer in its prime.
First problem is I only have three 6-pin cables coming out of the PSU and the cards need 1x6pin and 1x8pin each. Right now I'm turning two 6-pin cables into one 8-pin using the adaptor provided with the 1080 Ti. Which leaves no cable left for a second card, even though I theoretically have enough power.

Question: can I use two 1x6pin-to-1x8pin adaptors and one 1x6-pin-to-2x6pin to give me enough pins in total? My IT guy, whose main experience is building gaming rigs says it's crazy and I will either fry something or underpower my cards. Online reviews seem to suggest it's fine as long as the PSU has enough total power.

question2: the 1080 Ti runs pretty cool (65C) at full load, but the Titan X gets crazy hot (85C) unless I boost the fan power. Would running both cards relatively close to each other in the Z820 be a bad idea to start with?

Question3: I've read somewhere that my 32GB of RAM wouldn't be enough to run two such powerful cards and I would need to raise it to 64GB (and get faster RAM) before I do anything else. I'm not sure I understand why. Any thought.

not sure these questions make any sense but my eternal gratitude for any answer.

i am now running 4 gpus and doing mostly gpu rendering these days, firstly those will work, i have seen other do it with no problems, just make sure you have atleast a 850 psu, usually its recommended to go with the power cables that come with the psu though, usually there are tonnes of them and psu these days are cheap, am now even selling my 850 for idk whatever i can get since i bought a 1500 psu,

for the second one, i found that running two gpus near each other causes problems with heat unless you have really great cooling, best to use extenders, i bought some of the cheapest ones and they work great, most gpus guys use the same ones too

for the third one ram is very important, more polys in the scene more ram gets used up so vram and regular ram go hand in hand, sometimes you will be running a scene of just 20 mill polys and it uses vray of 5mb and regular ram of 40 mb, so regular ram is key and 64 gb is great, its what i have now, with a gpu like the 1080 ti i doubt you will pass 64gb of ram, i work with one guy who does massive scenes and has tis and titans, and has only 64b, not sure how helpful i am with thes comments but i would suggest strongly for the first one use the power cables that came with the psu but i saw others using adaptors with no issues so it should work. if you need a psu dirt cheap link me