[DJARA]

Dear All,

I am not sure what is the best option for an acceptable PC for carrying out simulation. I am between 2 options:


First One:
FUJITSU CELSIUS M7010
1x Intel Intel Xeon W2223 4C 3.90GHz
1x 8GB DDR4-2933 rg ECC
4x MiniDP / DP adapter cable
1x NVIDIA Quadro P620 2GB
1x DVD SuperMulti SATA slim (tray)
1x HDD SATA III 1000GB 7.2k HDD SATA III, 1,000 GB, 7,200 rpm, 3.5 inch
1x SSD SATA III 256GB SSD SATA III, 6 Gb / s, 256 GB, 2.5 inch
1x front panel USB 3.1 (gen2) /SD4.0/M.2
1x country package, power cord, safety manual
1x Keyboard KB521 DE Standard USB Keyboard marble gray German layout cable 1.8 m
1x Lic Win10 Pro Workstation <(> <<)> = 4 cores
1x Load Win10 Pro WS (64) NEE + Off 1mthTrial
1x optical USB mouse gray

Extras:
with an additional 1TB HDD
Surcharge to a total of 64 GB of RAM


And the price would be around 2000 euros

Second One:
FUJITSU ESPRIMO P9010
1x Power supply Platinum 300W
1x Intel Core i5-10500
2x 4GB DDR4-2933
1x DVD SuperMulti SATA slim (tray) 1x mounting kit for first 3.5 '
1x SSD SATA III 256GB 2.5 '
1x cable for 2.5 'SSD
1x No WLAN E
1x country package (DE), power cord, safety manual
1x Keyboard KB521 DE USB marble gray
1x Lic Win10 Home Plus
1x Load Win10HomeDM ML (64) MAIN + Off1mthTrial
1x optical USB mouse gray

Extras:
Delivery with 1TB SSD instead of 256GB SSD
OR Delivery with 512GB SSD instead of 256GB SSD
Surcharge to a total of 32 GB of RAM
upgrade Intel Core i7-10700


And the price would be around 1200 euros OR 980 euros.



Here I have two questions. To me it is clear that the second option is way better than the first one, but I am unsure if the first question would be an acceptable computer to do simulations. I think it is also an ok computer what I would like to know what you think.

And also I would like to know between the first and second option which one is better in terms of cost and performance?


Thanks for your help

Best regards
Dani

[flotus1]

General recommendations for CFD hardware [WIP]
Please try to answer as many of the questions in section "0".

In general, neither of the two options is particularly good value.
The first is am ageing HEDT platform with bottom-of-the-barrel CPU and GPU. Charging 2000€ for that is questionable.
And the second one is a bog-standard desktop system without discrete GPU. And a CPU that is 2 generations old by now, since Alder Lake desktop CPUs were released last week. That's not worth anywhere near 1000€.

[DJARA]

Regarding the questions of General recommendations for CFD hardware [WIP]

Which software do you intend to use?
Any in particular: Comsol, Ansys family, Openfoam, etc


Are you limited by license constraints? I.e. does your software license only allow you to run on N threads?
As far as I know no, there is no limitation on the number of threads

What type of simulations do you want to run? And what's the maximum cell count?
Several sort of simulation, probably most of them will be related to reactive transport in porous media, but not limited to them. Number of cell can vary from problem, some might be just a few cells 40, 100, but a catchment or reservoir will certainly contain millions of cells.


If there is a budget, how high is it?
Let's say 2000 euros would be the maximum but around 1000 euros would be better.

What kind of setting are you in? Hobbyist? Student? Academic research? Engineer?
Academic research

Where can you source your new computer? Buying a complete package from a large OEM? Assemble it yourself from parts? Are used parts an option?
Assemble myself or used part options should be ruled out. The source should be the university but I do think that a large OEM should also be allowed.

Which part of the world are you from? It's cool if you don't want to tell, but since prices and availability vary depending on the region, this can sometimes be relevant. Particularly if it's not North America or Europe.
Europe

Anything else that people should know to help you better?
I do not know to much about hardware so sorry for my dumb questions and thanks for your time

[DJARA]

Ok, so apparently neither option is good. not nice new to me.
Is there any option between 2000-1000 that is already set and is recomendable?

[flotus1]

You should definitely check if your university has access to a cluster. That's the easiest and cheapest way to get tons of computing resources for your larger models.
2000€ for a prebuilt PC is below the threshold for a higher-end workstation. So realistically, I would rather recommend something in the the 1000€ range. Turns out, the offer you found is not that bad for an OEM system

[DJARA]

Yes, it has a cluster. Actually I use the cluster, and I have a laptop to do the set up of the models. Buying this new computer is not for me, but rather a new person that will work soon in our group.
When I start to use the cluster, there were not many users, but now there are more and more people who uses the resource, and therefore, for certain simulations it might be quicker to do it in your own computer than in the cluster. That is also why I would expect to buy something more or less acceptable, in case the queue of the cluster is long at the moment of launching the simulation.

Why is not that bad now the second option? (just for curiosity)



Thanks again

[flotus1]

I quickly checked some prices with OEMs like Fujitsu and Dell. Turns out, that is about what you currently get for 1200€.
I was under the impression that 1200€ should buy you a similar system, but with a 400€ graphics card on top. Haven't bought anything in that price range for a while.

[DJARA]

Ok, thanks for the quick check.


Might I ask you, between different brands what do you recommend?


I was also thinking in buying a personal laptop for gaming and do some CFDs. But I think there is enough information in the forum: Picking a laptop for CFD


Thanks again for your help

[flotus1]

I don't have a large enough sample size, or one that is very recent, for OEM desktop PCs.
But they are all more or less the same in my opinion. Cutting corners wherever possible has resulted in very similar solutions for all larger brands.

For laptops, I would avoid Dell right now. I am not the only one who noticed a decline in quality, and lack of attention to detail over the past few years.