Work Station Build -- Intel i9 7900x
 

Hey Everybody! Was hoping to get a quick opinion/advice on a work station build of mine. I am graduate student that will be using Fluent and OpenFoam for combustion modeling and fluidized bed research. I am curious the thoughts on my set-up:

CPU: Intel - Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz 10-Core Processor -- $1049.99

CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler --- $88.15

Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X299-DELUXE ATX LGA2066 Motherboard -- $489.99

RAM: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory -- $544.99

Boot Drive: Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive -- $234.00

Storage Drive: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive -- $83.61 (I am debating the efficacy of this versus external drives or RAID)

GPU: PNY - Quadro P4000 8GB Video Card -- $819.61

Case: Phanteks - Enthoo Pro M Acrylic ATX Mid Tower Case -- $79.99

Power Supply: Corsair - RMx 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply -- $99.99

Optical Drive: Asus - DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer -- $22.99

Total: ~$3500

I have a $4000 budget, but would like to leave a little room to spare. I am most curious of the opinion on the i9 vs an older i7/Xeons.

Thanks in advance!

Since I haven't seen any simulations based on core i9, because of its recent first time introduction in CPU market.
It'll be really interesting to see the results of turbulence generated over basic grid in FLUENT or OpenFOAM.


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I have seen this in terms of it's performance to Xeons:

https://hothardware.com/reviews/inte...-review?page=6

Though, that is a lofty comparison (in my books anyways) as Xeon ED-2697 v4 (18core) cost ~$2500 and they are using dual processors. Thus, one would hope that $5000 outperforms the $1000!

FYI: It does look like a typo at "hothardware" as they keep calling it a i7-7900x versus i9-7900x.

https://hothardware.com/reviews/inte...-review?page=6

How many parallel licenses do you have for Fluent?
With 4000$ to spend on parts for a CFD workstation, I don't think X299 is the best platform to choose.
If you need to buy right now, a dual-socket build with two lower-end Broadwell-EP Xeon processors will provide better overall performance. Reasonable CPU candidates are the E5-2650v4, E5-2640v4, E5-2630v4 or even E5-2620v4.
If you can wait a few more weeks, AMDs Epyc processors might provide a much better value for your money. Same thing should apply to the Skylake Xeon processors launched a few days ago.

Thanks for the response flotus1.

I don't think I am limited as far as parallel licenses for fluent (colleagues have ran 24 core simulations), though I could be missing something, I'll look into it.

As far as the X299, that's what I was curious about in terms of it's performance to the older Xeon dual sockets. I don't need necessarily need to buy now (it's either buy today or I can wait weeks/months), thus I could wait for the AMDs Epyc or even longer.

As a side question, will the i9 7980x (18C) still be a reduction in performance compared to dual socket Xeons? (Though it is $900, I can easily do some shifting of parts to keep it under $4000).

The Core I9-7980XE is not a good upgrade since it has the same 4-channel memory controller as its 10-core counterpart. The additional cores will be pretty useless without enough memory bandwidth to feed them.
"Fun" fact: the IPC of Skylake-X is not higher than Broadwell-E. So the older architecture is not really an issue.