Currently I am learning / working in CFD on a single Desktop PC.

Here is my PC specification:

Intel Pentium Dual Core 3.40GHz, 3.41GHz 1.5 GB of DDR-2 RAM 256 MB of VGA

Does anyone here can advice me what Hardware I should add to enhanced the performance of CFD both the Display and the Calculation?

Please advance

Dais Raim

Memory Memory Memory

It is hard to give general advise. Requirements are depending upon the questions what software you run (preprocessing, solving and postproccessing) and what kind of models and problems you want to calculate. The operating system is also important to know. In generalt to speed up calculation time you should consider doing parallel calculations on more than one CPU/core. Handling of large and complex models require a suitable amount of memory for both pre- and postprocessing. To speed up graphics it is important to use direct hardware accelleration wherever possible.

Can anyone suggest me the best DDR2 RAM manufacturer for CFD?

I am planning to add my PC memory at least 2 GB.

Do you want to add additonal 2GB? This does only make sense on 64 Bit OS not on 32 Bit OS. How large are your modells? As I mentioned before best equipment is dependig on many factors, for better support please answer the questions from my previous thread. Memory can be important, however it will not speed up your calculation, it onyl enabels you handling larger models.

I've already told that the platform I am using is PC, not Macintosh. I think my PC can handle up to 8 GB of DDR2 RAM memory.

When adding memory to a pc you need to know

(1) what is the fastest ram the motherboard will accept, & (2) how fast is the ram already in the pc.

There is no point in adding memory which is faster than the slowest of (1) or (2). Furthermore you don't want to add memory which is slower than you've already got.

Question is now just PC but also operating system (WIN/LINUX 32 or 64 Bit?) More questions can be found in my previous thread. More memory in general enables you to build and calculate larger cases (more cells) or more complex models. However it will not speed up you calculation.

Regards

Get as much RAM as you can afford - the more you go above 2 Mb, the better. You will always find that you end up running out of RAM - especially for very large cfd models. This is human nature.

The last thing you want is to have your system disk-swapping.

Yes, I already know that.

I can read the information from my mainboard manual.

I just not really sure which manufacturer produce best DDR2 RAM memory for PC.

Say, Kingston and Corsair are, as far as I know, the general 2 manufacturer of RAM memory for PC nowadays.

I wonder if there available any better RAM memory manufacturer beside them.

I not really good on building PC.

I don't really have much known about it.

I have found Kingston RAM to be exceptionally stable - especially with bleeding-edge Intel-based chipsets.

mw...

<www.adthermtech.com/wordpress3>

momentum_waves is right on two counts - get as much memory as your system can handle (memory is so cheap now), BUT, get the best quality memory you can. Kingston has a good reputation, and there are other good ones, but avoid "cheap" brands. Most enthusiast web sites test and "benchmark" systems using synthetic benchmarks and games. None of these stress the memory system anywhere near as much as CFD. One assumes that if you are using this much memory you will be using a 64-bit OS. An example of just how memory-hungry CFD can be is the polyhedral mesh conversion in Fluent 6.3. It's great, but it requires enough memory to effectively hold two complete meshes in memory while it does the conversion. If you're not running distributed parallel, memory for this process becomes your biggest constraint.

> Does anyone here can advice me what Hardware I should add to enhanced
: the performance of CFD both the Display and the Calculation?

In general, the most cost effective way of performing CFD calculations is with a small cluster of computational nodes using the cheapest processor that can use the fastest memory system (often a function of the motherboard).

The amount of memory required follows from the types of CFD simulations you wish to perform. Memory stores 1s and 0s and so it either works perfectly or it is broken. Quality does not really come into it. If you buy memory for CFD then test it by running memtest86 or equivalent for many hours overnight and swap it if any of the tests fail. Bad memory sticks seem to be a fact of life these days and, for what it is worth, I returned a defective Kingston memory stick 6 months ago and so paying more for named brands does not remove the need to test.

One more addition - if you're going gor more memory you'll probably want a CPU with bigger cache.

> Kingston has a good reputation, and there are other good ones, but avoid "cheap" brands.

What the "other good ones" than Kingston is?

I think I want to used it early with my Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6800, if there is really available any better than Kingston.

Amazingly there has been no good answer to his original question.

He asked for increased performance. Adding extra memory will probably not increase performance unless we define performance as how large models we can run.

Suppose original poster is running the simulations he wants to run already but they are somewhat slow. In this case the biggest leap in performance is to get rid of that old CPU and upgrade to e.g. a core2 cpu. This will increase performance enormously.

Finally, the original poster does not seem to understand that just because a mainboard supports some given amount of RAM it does not mean that you will actually be able to use it. It is limited by the operating system. This has been pointed out however by other posters.

And the question about memory performance is a bit irrelevant. Memory tweaking gives relatively little performance benefits unless we are thinking about doing some overclocking of the system. So here I would suggest going with a memory that the mainboard manufacturer has tested for stability.

I can give you a list of what we use to model cases with 1-3 mio polyhedral cells:

Dell precision 490 CPU: 2xDual Intel Xeon 5160 (3.0GHz, FSB 1333Mhz, Cache 4MB) Memory: 4x2 GB DDR2 667 Quad Channel Graphics: 256 MB Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 OS: WinXP 64 bit

When we bought the pc we went for high CPU frequency, high FSB, a lot of ram for the future, graphics that where tested with the software (star-ccm+). A note is that we ordered 1xDual CPU but got 2x.

To enhance your calculation speed you should go for parallel processing. Just stay with your present dual cpu and get som 64 bit OS installed. Get some new 2x2GB memory. Ask your software provider for advice on what kind of memory and what kind of graphics you should go for. They will probably say Nvidia 512MB FX(something). This is obviously provided that you can run in parallel (that you have the number of licenses required).

Best Regards Kasper Skriver

Absolutly, I agree. That is what I tried to point out in my postings before. That is why I asked the poster for more details about used hard- and software and problems he wants to run. This will enable us to give him better support. However he did not supply this information so far and he seems to be so fanatic about as much memory as possible.