Old Workstation for HPC
 

Hey everybody,

I am doing my PhD at the moment for which I need a lot of CFD calculations (OpenFoam SU2 and Star-ccm+). I am looking for a hpc workstation to work at from home, but I am on a very tight budget. There is a company that refurbishes old workstations, such that they are very cheap. The one I am looking at is:

HP Z800 Workstation with:

- 2 x Six Core L5640 2.26 – 2.8 GHz with HT (24 threads)
- 48Gb Ram ECC Reg. 12 x 4 GB in Triple Channel
- 2TB SATA HardDisk
- ATI FirePro V3700 + 2 x DVI
- DVD-ReWriter
- Gigabit Lan 2x
- 850 Watt Voeding
- Refurbished

The above configuration only cost 899,-. Now my question is if this is a good pc? And moreover will the performance of the xeon's be poor compared to for instance an modern i5 or i7? Will the above computer be usefull at all? I am running unsteady simulations with mesh deformations with around 1-2 milion cells. But I would like to increase the amount of cells to account for the Kolmogrov lengthscale, hence needing a lot more computing power.

Please let me know if this is a usefull configuration! Thank you in advance!

Hi, Considering the price this system worth to buy a lot (24 thread with 48GB ram = 900$), but if the speed of calculation is important go for a overclocked i7-6700k. good luck

Hey HyperNova!

Thank you for your reply! If I have the system at home I will post some of the results and dicuss if the system was indeed good. These old workstations apear good on paper!

i have worked with a workstation in my university, it is double xeon E5620 with 12 Gib DDR3 1066 Ram. Of course the system you have mentioned is better than this.
i use that system when i want to simulate several cases together because it has 16 threads. but when i want to have a fast simulation i use another system which was a core i7-4770.
so in my opinion these kind of workstations are suitable for several simulations or a simulation with huge number of cells. a system which is fast and have enough number of threads is definitely core i7-5960x which in my country (Iran) it costs almost 3000$. the workstation you have mentioned worth 900$ and if had the chance (as yours :)) i would buy it.

I have worked with the machine for some time, the specs are:

2x Xeon X5650
48 gigs DDR3 RAM (don't know the speed but i think the 1366).
1x ATI Firepro V3700
price 899,- euro

Today I have benchmarked it against some other systems including a i7-4770 and a single Xeon e5-2630v2. It outperformed both systems. The i7 was outperformed by at least 2x and the other xeon around 1.3 times.

The one drawback about the system is the power usage, it is around 370 watt when it is computing, so be warned for a high energy bill!