[jychang]

Yeah, this page seems to be not great for beginners and also useless for people with experience.

A 2x 3090 build is okay for inference, but even with nvlink you're a bit handicapped for training. You're much better off with getting a 4090 48GB from China for $2.5k and just using that. Example: https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?keywords=4090+48gb&pric...

Also, this phrasing is concerning:

> WARNING - these components don't fit if you try to copy this build. The bottom GPU is resting on the Arctic p12 slim fans at the bottom of the case and pushing up on the GPU. Also the top arctic p14 Max fans don't have mounting points for half of their screw holes, and are in place by being very tightly wedged against the motherboard, case, and PSU. Also, there's probably way too much pressure on the pcie cables coming off the gpus when you close the glass.

[someperson]

What an indictment on NVidia market segmentation that there's an industry doing aftermarket VRAM upgrades on gaming cards due their intentionally hobbled VRAM.

I wish AMD and Intel Arc would step up their game.

[writebetterc]

Intel Arc Pro B60 will come in a 48GB dual-GPU model. So yeah, hardware is gonna be there, and the 24GB model will be $599 from Sparkle. I assume 48GB will be cheaper than a hacked RTX 4090.

Look at this: https://www.maxsun.com/products/intel-arc-pro-b60-dual-48g-t... https://www.sparkle.com.tw/files/20250618145718157.pdf

[magicalhippo]

Keep in mind that the dual-GPU is done via PCIe bifurcation, so that if you use two B60's on a similar motherboard to what's in the article, you'll only see two GPUs, not the full four. Hence just 48GB VRAM not 96GB.

[mertleee]

Yeah, but the B60 is basically half the speed of a 3090... in 2025. I'd rather buy 5yr old nVidia hardware for $100 more on eBay than an intel product with horrendous software support that's half the speed effectively. This build is so cool because the 2x 3090 setup is still maybe the best option 5yrs+ after the GPU was released by nVidia.

[Gracana]

$2.5k is about $1k more than you'd spend on a pair of 3090s, and people I know who've bought blower 4090s say they sound like hair driers.

[dotnet00]

Blowers are loud, but they're easier to pack together, particularly given how most motherboards don't seem to space their two slots sufficiently to accomodate the massive coolers on recent GPUs.

[mertleee]

I can't wait for blower 3090s from China / MSI to get cheap (although I fear this may never happen)

[tacomagick]

Simply replacing the 3090's with 4090's would provide a major performance uplift assuming your model fits. (I have rented both 3090 and 4090 systems online for research, this comment is based on my personal experience, it is well worth the price increase and the hourly rate for the inference speed you get)

[tryauuum]

I am not a lawer, but shouldn't 4090s be worse since they don't have nvlink?

there are patched drivers for enabling p2p but if I remember correctly, they are still slower than having an nvlink

[Aurornis]

Don’t those modified cards require hacked drivers? I would not want my expensive video card to depend on hacked drivers that may or may not continue to be available with new updates.

[nxobject]

Are the Alibaba 4090s modded to reach 48GB VRAM? (I ask only to figure how why they're that cheap...)

[noboostforyou]

Yes, they are modded by replacing the individual VRAM modules. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/usd142-upgra...