Recommended computer for OpenFOAM simulations
 

Hi, anyone can give me some advice about the recommended computer? I need a computer do OpenFOAM simulations, with generations of millions cells, multiphase and turbulence modelling. I still want to visualize the 3D OpenFOAM simulations fluently.

So, what kinds of computer configurations do you recommend? I will install a linux system, but I guess that the memory is important for mesh generation, and the video card is very important for visualization, is it?

Thanks in advance.

John

Indeed memory is important for mesh generation and again the memory plus the video card for visualizing. However, today's gaming video cards pack a lot of punch, so even a mid-range card will satisfy your needs I think. I'd rather spend the cash on a decent CPU and additional memory. AMD has CPUs with 12 and 16 cores (6000 series), I believe those to be a pretty good deal in terms of power and cost.

Is this for home or work and how much budget do you have?

I'm running an i7 2600K at 4.5ghz, 16gb of ram and a Nvidia 5600ti graphics card.
It'll mesh a 7.3m cell mesh in 2349 seconds apparently when going 4 way parallel, I used to do 8 way parallel, which was faster but the machine was unusable for anything else whilst it was running a job.
Whether that's good performance or not I don't know, mostly I run jobs overnight 1000 iterations on the mesh above takes about 7.5 hours.
Clearly though there are many variables which'll effect the time to run a simulation.