Looking for simulation computer

[f.scholz]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a new simulation computer. Usually we run CFD simulations with up to Million cells.

I want to spent about 3500 Euro, can anyone suggest a good powerful computer?

Which CPU is good and how much RAM would you suggest for this?

Thanks

fabian

[Jon.Wilde]

Hi Fabian,

Take a look at the requirements here. I would aim for at least 4 cores, 8 if you can (remember we used 2^n cores only). It seems pretty easy to pick up quad core i7 chips now. There are even 8 core chips around. The clock speed will be crucial here also, aim high.

As for RAM, I would suggest 16GB. 4 or 8 might be OK if you only ever run 1m elements but RAM is cheap.. 

Kind regards,

Jon

[f.scholz]

Hi Jon, thanks for the answer.

I had a look on the requirements before, but this is more or less what we use today. With up to 8 Million cells this is not powerful enough. Even with 16 GB RAM we run out of free space...

[apolo_vanderberg]

For reference we will use ~2.5Gb per million elements.
So if you are shooting for ~8M elements you will need a minimum of 24GB RAM, you can error on a larger side if you like to allow for future growth.

As far as the speed of the calculations this will be dictated by the number of physical cores (not hyperthreading) and the speed of those cores.
Currently there are machines with 16cores @3Ghz+ available.
Buy the fastest and most number of cores you can. 4cores at 3.6Ghz will be faster than 8cores at 2Ghz, so go for speed and then grab as many as you can at that speed.

With 8M elements you might start generating large filesets, so be sure you have a decent sized harddrive (preferably a 15k SAS drive or SSD, then a 10k SAS drive, followed by the more typical 7200rpm drive)