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Workstation config. for the CFD lab

Hello everyone

I need your help for my configuration. We will buy a workstation for our CFD group at the university. We will model mostly two phase flow

CPU 2xIntel Xeon Gold X2 6140 (18C) 2.3 GHz or 2xIntel Xeon Gold X2 6148 (20C) 2.4 GHz
RAM: 64GB LRDIMM Samsung DDR4-2666, CL19, reg. ECC (8x 64GB = 512GB) or 8X32=256GB
NVIDIA Quadro P2000 5 GB GDDR5
Mainboard: ASUS WS C621E Sage, Dual So. 3647; E-ATX
SSD: 512GB Samsung 970 Pro, M.2 PCIe (MZ-V7P512BW)
HDD: 6TB Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS, SATA3, 7200RPM (ST6000NE0023)
And some questions:
1) Do you have a suggestion for the cooling system?
2) Does the GPU provide additional performance for academic studies? Or should the money for CPU?
3) I've searched the AVX512, but I don't really understand. It seems that it has both negatives and positives?
4) Should I use SSD for the ANSYS installation? If so my chose is enough?

Many thanks

Quote:

1) Do you have a suggestion for the cooling system?

Quote:

2) Does the GPU provide additional performance for academic studies? Or should the money for CPU?

For most CFD solvers: no. You would have to spend MUCH more money on GPUs to get a benefit for solvers like Fluent. I can't recommend it for a general purpose CFD workstation with a limited budget.

Quote:

3) I've searched the AVX512, but I don't really understand. It seems that it has both negatives and positives?

:confused:
In theory, AVX512 can crunch numbers more efficiently than lower instruction sets.
In practice for bandwidth-limited CFD the difference is negligible. Anyway, all of the CPUs you listed have AVX512 capabilities. There is no real downside.

Some additional comments:
1) The CPUs you picked all have 6 memory channels. To leverage their full performance potential especially for CFD, you need 6 DIMMs per CPU. So 12 in total. Maybe avoid LRDIMM as long as you can get the amount of memory you need with one dual-ranked DIMM per channel. I.e. using 12x32GB DDR4 RDIMM.
2) 512GB Samsung 970 Pro, M.2 PCIe (MZ-V7P512BW)...You probably get no benefit from the pro variant of this SSD. The 970 Evo (Plus) will do just fine at a lower price point.
3) NVIDIA Quadro P2000 5 GB GDDR5: Depending on the operating system and the software you intend to use, a GTX 1060 6GB or GTX 1660 6GB could save a few bucks without anyone noticing a difference.
4) Regarding the CPUS: Skylake-SP got a little refresh. You basically get the same CPUs with slightly higher clock speeds, e.g. Xeon Gold 6240

Please avoid posting to 3 different threads ;)

Thank you very much for the answers and I wanted to delete the others but I could not :)

One more thing: Should I work with SSD for CFD, if so 500GB is enough? What is the difference between SSD and HDD for the CFD simulations?

Thanks

Quote:

Originally Posted by flotus1 (Post 731930)

Your motherboard uses LGA3647 Square ILM sockets. Source: https://www.servethehome.com/asus-ws...credible-over/
Noctua just released the first set of decent aftermarket CPU coolers for this form factor. I would recommend the largest one that fits in your case: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=cpucooler&x...octua~817_3647
There are other cooling solutions, but none of them can be used in an office environment due to the noise.

For most CFD solvers: no. You would have to spend MUCH more money on GPUs to get a benefit for solvers like Fluent. I can't recommend it for a general purpose CFD workstation with a limited budget.

:confused:
In theory, AVX512 can crunch numbers more efficiently than lower instruction sets.
In practice for bandwidth-limited CFD the difference is negligible. Anyway, all of the CPUs you listed have AVX512 capabilities. There is no real downside.

Some additional comments:
1) The CPUs you picked all have 6 memory channels. To leverage their full performance potential especially for CFD, you need 6 DIMMs per CPU. So 12 in total. Maybe avoid LRDIMM as long as you can get the amount of memory you need with one dual-ranked DIMM per channel. I.e. using 12x32GB DDR4 RDIMM.
2) 512GB Samsung 970 Pro, M.2 PCIe (MZ-V7P512BW)...You probably get no benefit from the pro variant of this SSD. The 970 Evo (Plus) will do just fine at a lower price point.
3) NVIDIA Quadro P2000 5 GB GDDR5: Depending on the operating system and the software you intend to use, a GTX 1060 6GB or GTX 1660 6GB could save a few bucks without anyone noticing a difference.
4) Regarding the CPUS: Skylake-SP got a little refresh. You basically get the same CPUs with slightly higher clock speeds, e.g. Xeon Gold 6240

Please avoid posting to 3 different threads ;)

I can't tell you whether 500GB is enough for you. Depends on how much space you need.
You absolutely need an SSD for the operating system. You can then use the remaining SSD to store the most recent simulation files. They will load and store faster on the SSD compared to a spinning drive, reducing wait times. You can also speed up storing transient result files, increasing overall execution speed for this kind of simulation.