Artist Builds an Extreme 15-GPU RTX 4090 Workstation for 3D Rendering
A professional 3D artist has built one of the most extreme single-workstation rendering systems ever seen, packing 15 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards onto one motherboard. Designed for high-end 3D visualization and GPU rendering, the machine pushes far beyond what most workstation platforms are typically built to handle.
Modern workstation motherboards usually offer up to seven full-length PCIe slots, which already makes a seven-GPU build a serious technical achievement. This custom setup more than doubles that number, creating a rendering powerhouse built around 15 RTX 4090 GPUs working together in a single system.
The project was created by Simone Marulli of Marulli Studio, a 3D visualization studio with roots going back to 1999. To mark 25 years in the 3D industry, Marulli set out to build a workstation that could dramatically reduce rendering times and handle demanding professional scenes with far more speed than a conventional setup.
According to the project details, the idea began after Marulli discovered GPU rendering through FStorm. What started as a practical upgrade slowly evolved into a major engineering challenge. The system grew from one GPU to two, then four, then eight. At eight GPUs, the first major obstacle appeared.
While the exact technical limitation has not been disclosed, it is easy to see why this stage would be difficult. Most motherboards are not designed to run so many high-end graphics cards at once, especially cards as power-hungry and physically demanding as the RTX 4090. PCIe lane distribution, system stability, power delivery, cooling, driver behavior, and software compatibility can all become major hurdles in a multi-GPU workstation.
After solving the eight-GPU barrier, the build continued to scale. Another serious challenge appeared around 11 GPUs. Marulli then spent nearly two months experimenting before reaching 12 GPUs. From there, the system advanced to 13, then 14, and eventually the final 15-GPU configuration.
The entire project took almost a year to complete. Many of the most important design and implementation details remain private, including the custom architecture used to make all 15 GPUs operate together on a single motherboard.
From the available system images and descriptions, the workstation appears to use 15 MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM Liquid graphics cards. These liquid-cooled cards help manage the enormous thermal output produced by such a dense GPU configuration.
With 15 RTX 4090 GPUs, the workstation delivers a total of 245,760 CUDA cores. Since each standard RTX 4090 includes 24GB of VRAM, the full setup provides a combined 360GB of graphics memory across all cards. For GPU rendering workloads, this gives the system an extraordinary amount of parallel compute power.
Powering the machine is another challenge entirely. The workstation uses five 1600W power supplies, and during heavy 3D rendering tasks, total power consumption can approach nearly 8kW. That is far beyond the power draw of a normal desktop PC and even higher than many multi-GPU professional rendering systems.
The benchmark results show just how powerful this machine is.
In OctaneBench, the 15 x RTX 4090 system reportedly achieved a score of 21,171.80 using OctaneBench 2020.1.5 with RTX enabled. A separate result from a newer 2025.2.1 benchmark run was also found at around 21,003.10.
In V-Ray 6 Benchmark, the workstation reached 172,615 vpaths using the V-Ray GPU RTX engine. The configuration was listed as 15 x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 running on Windows 10 Pro with NVIDIA driver 552.22.
These results place the machine at the top of the displayed benchmark rankings, making it one of the most powerful single-workstation GPU rendering systems currently known.
What makes this build especially impressive is not only the number of GPUs, but the persistence required to make them work together. Multi-GPU systems at this scale are rarely straightforward. Every added graphics card increases complexity, from motherboard communication and driver handling to cooling, power balancing, and physical layout.
For 3D artists, architects, visual effects creators, and animation studios, rendering time can be one of the biggest production bottlenecks. A workstation like this is not aimed at everyday PC users. It is a specialized tool built to turn long rendering queues into much faster turnaround times, allowing complex scenes to be processed with far greater efficiency.
Simone Marulli’s 15-GPU RTX 4090 workstation is a remarkable example of what can happen when professional need meets technical ambition. Instead of relying on standard workstation limits, he pushed the platform far beyond its expected boundaries and created a machine that redefines what a single 3D rendering workstation can achieve.
