[TomK]

Asking what kind of computer you should buy is like asking advice on what boyfriend/girlfriend you should choose - most of it is personal choice as long as they have the right parts. I know nothing of ANSYS, but I do know STAR-CD and STARCCM+, so I will assume they are similar. I have a machine set up at home that I use for STAR-CD & STARCCM+. It is a DELL XPS Gen 5, so it isn't new. It has dual hyperthreaded processors and I upgraded to 8 gig memory. I have dual 500 gig hard drives that I have set up for dual booting LINUX (CENTOS) and XP Pro. When I am working I use LINUX because STAR was written for LINUX and therefore performs faster with it. I use the Intel fortran compiler. My company requires a VPN client to get into the corporate network, so I have installed VIRTUALBOX on which I run XP Pro. This allows me to run the VPN and PRO/E, since they do not support LINUX either. Then the Microsoft Office suite rounds out my programs to be compatable with work. I run both STAR-CD and STARCCM+ and my company has paid for hpc licenses so I can use all processors. When not working I boot to XP Pro and so anyone in the house can use my machine and I don't have to worry about anyone accidently screwing up my work. I also have an ALIENWARE M17X10 laptop that has quad processors and 8 gig running 64 bit WINDOWS 7. On it I have STARCCM+ and the licenses to run all 4 processors. I have a 1 terabyte NAS on my home network for backup. These are sufficient for models of about 1 million cells. Anything larger I need to run at work.