Need some CFD workstation tips

yadolph · February 4, 2020, 00:49

Hi everyone!
I've been tasked by my managament to search for components for our new workstation that will run mostly ansys Mechanical and CFD (fluent, thermal, etc). The budget is about 15-20k USD

Currently I'm thinking about getting an Epyc 7542 system with eight 64 gig sticks of samsung ECC 2933 RAM.
Is there any benefit in getting a dedicated GPU (Tesla, Quadro) for these kinds of simulations? What should I look into while selecting RAM and so on?
I'm kinda new to buying these kinds of systems, what shoud I keep in mind in this case?

flotus1 · February 4, 2020, 03:39

Quote:

what shoud I keep in mind in this case?

That you probably have a limited amount of parallel licenses when working with Ansys products. Find out how many, this will determine what a suitable workstation could look like.

yadolph · February 4, 2020, 07:12

The license hasn't been bought yet and will be configured accordingly.

flotus1 · February 4, 2020, 07:46

That is the wrong order to go about this decision.
Are you aware that the annual license costs will be higher than the price of the workstation?
Imagine buying a 64-core workstation, only to realise later that your budget only covers 8 parallel licenses.
Or what if you buy a workstation with 8 fast cores now, but you would have needed 32 cores to get your simulations done fast enough.

With expensive software on a per-core licensing scheme -like Ansys- it has to be the other way round: check how many parallel licenses you need and can afford, then buy the fastest possible hardware to put them to use.

February 4, 2020, 00:49	Need some CFD workstation tips	#1
yadolph New Member Anonymous Join Date: Feb 2020 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	Hi everyone! I've been tasked by my managament to search for components for our new workstation that will run mostly ansys Mechanical and CFD (fluent, thermal, etc). The budget is about 15-20k USD Currently I'm thinking about getting an Epyc 7542 system with eight 64 gig sticks of samsung ECC 2933 RAM. Is there any benefit in getting a dedicated GPU (Tesla, Quadro) for these kinds of simulations? What should I look into while selecting RAM and so on? I'm kinda new to buying these kinds of systems, what shoud I keep in mind in this case?

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Opinion of this self built workstation for CFD modelling	Hajart	Hardware	28	December 14, 2016 17:18
ASME CFD Symposium - Call for Papers	Chris Kleijn	Main CFD Forum	0	September 25, 2001 10:17
What is the Better Way to Do CFD?	John C. Chien	Main CFD Forum	54	April 23, 2001 08:10
PC vs. Workstation	Tim Franke	Main CFD Forum	5	September 29, 1999 15:01
Which is better to develop in-house CFD code or to buy a available CFD package.	Tareq Al-shaalan	Main CFD Forum	10	June 12, 1999 23:27

February 4, 2020, 07:12		#3
yadolph New Member Anonymous Join Date: Feb 2020 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	The license hasn't been bought yet and will be configured accordingly.

February 4, 2020, 07:46		#4
flotus1 Super Moderator Alex Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 3,399 Rep Power: 46	That is the wrong order to go about this decision. Are you aware that the annual license costs will be higher than the price of the workstation? Imagine buying a 64-core workstation, only to realise later that your budget only covers 8 parallel licenses. Or what if you buy a workstation with 8 fast cores now, but you would have needed 32 cores to get your simulations done fast enough. With expensive software on a per-core licensing scheme -like Ansys- it has to be the other way round: check how many parallel licenses you need and can afford, then buy the fastest possible hardware to put them to use.