[timk]

Hello. I am currently specifying new computer. I am looking at a mid-range machine for initially developing some simple models fast in ANSYS (14.0) and then developing some more interesting models, involving more complex 3D flow arrangements, in a few months.

I am limited to a machine that can be bought easily “off-the shelf”.
Thus far and looking at the ANSYS website I have found the HP Z820 workstation to be the most suitable machine.

And have selected the following technical specifications:

Operating system Windows® 7 Professional 64
Processor Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 20 MB cache, 1600 MHz memory, Eight-core
Standard memory 64 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 ECC
Memory slots 16 DIMM
Internal drive (2) 2.5-inch SATA solid state drives: 300 GB, 1.8 TB max (configure for mirroring on RAID)
Optical drive SATA SuperMulti DVD+/-RW
Graphics AMD FirePro V7900 2GB GFX
Drive Bays Four 3.5"
Network interface 10/100/1000
Storage controller Two Integrated SATA 6.0 Gb/s; Four Integrated SATA 3.0 Gb/s; Integrated LSI SAS 2308 Controller; Eight LSI MegaRAID® 9260-8i SAS 6Gb/s ROC RAID Card and iBBU08 Battery Backup Unit

What do you guys think, what would you expect the main bottleneck(s) to be?

Cheers for your help and any suggestions,

[scipy]

It's only worth buying if it's gonna be a dual cpu system (and even then a 2687W is faster, but both are not worth the money over the E5-2670).

However, if you're after a single CPU system then for 4x less money you should buy a i7-3930K desktop cpu. Yes, it has 2 cores less but it's ~500 USD compared to ~2000 USD Xeons, and it will be only slightly slower (or might not even be slower). You can make the i7-3930K work with unbuffered memory up to 2133 MHz (while most server motherboards create problems with anything faster than 1333/1600), and let's not forget that you can easily overclock it to 4.5 GHz - so even with "only" 6 cores, it might be faster than an 8 core Xeon (especially since RAM is a large bottleneck and i7 will work with much faster RAM).

If you are not willing to put together your own pc out of components (or even find them/make a list), I (or someone else) can do it for you and any shop will put the PC together and install Windows for you. There is literally no upside to buying from Dell/HP/etc. Their systems cost a lot more compared to what you can buy in components and generally underperform too.

Even if you decide to buy a dual cpu system, a better system can be put together from "gaming" hardware than can be offered by large companies.. Ask away if you'd like more information/options. It might help if you listed your available budget.

[timk]

Hi Scipy,

Thanks for your response. I completely agree that buying off the self from Dell/HP etc is not at all cost effective. A much better (and cheaper) machine can be easily constructed from parts. But mine is not to reason why in this case.

I need to spec a more expensive “off-the-shelf" machine. approx 3K buget.

It is only the components that are easily avaliable with that machine that I can sadly select. Thanks.

Timk

[evcelica]

If you are using cfx then you are wasting money on the 8 core, as your bottleneck will be memory bandwidth, not cpu.

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/cfx...dware-cfx.html

[timk]

Thanks evcelica - really useful link!