Desktop for Inventor 2024 and Beyond

[iamerm]

Me again.  Ever ready to disturb others that are way smarter than I am on this subject...

Trying to spec a new desktop primarily designed to run Inventor.  Some particulars:

• It's not uncommon to work with assemblies of 30,000 parts or more, as well as drawings with multiple sheets/views (these big assemblies/drawings really tend to make things sluggish on our existing systems)
• It would be nice to get 3 years or more out of this machine
• I wouldn't go so far as to say that money is no object, but management is very supportive & wants us to have the tools we need to do our job
• In this particular case, I need to get the machine from HP.  But otherwise I'm not set on any specific GPU manufacturer or other components.

Here's a configuration I'm currently considering:

Processor:  Intel® Xeon® Silver 4215R Processor (3.2 GHz, up to 4 GHz w/Boost, 11 MB cache, 2400 MHz, 8 core, 130W)

Memory:  64 GB (4x16 GB)DDR4-2933 ECC Registered Memory (1 Processor)

Internal M.2 storage: 1 TB HP Z Turbo Drive TLC M.2 SSD 

Internal storage: 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.5" HDD

Graphics card: AMD Radeon™ Pro W5500 (8GB GDDR6, FH, 4x DisplayPort 1) Graphics

QUESTIONS:

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Undersized or overkill?  Any other considerations?

As always, thanks in advance.

P.S.  @Neil_Cross  are you out there, ole buddy ole pal? 😁

[DarrenP]

all the top 10 performers here all using nvidia cards: https://invmark.cadac.com/#/

[Frederick_Law]

Don't get Xeon unless you have reasons to use ECC RAM.

Like running sim/render for days.

Get more cores for sim and render.

Otherwise Max clock speed is priority.

Cooling is very important.  CPU throttle down when it get hot.

Get latest gen CPU.

Old CPU running software security patch are much slower.

Fastest SSD you can get.  Not much reason for HDD.

USB3 SSD are faster then internal HDD.

Put backup on network or external drive.  Use hardware encryption drive for backup.

[mrB_Young]

One thing I've been doing for a few years now to really speed up the systems, is to have at least two physical M.2 SSD drives.
One of my machines as three M.2 drives.

Drive C stays the disk that the operating system, applications and users are located on.
Drive D is the disk that I've dedicated to the Inventor workspace. Nothing else.

On my photo editing machine, I have a 3rd drive.  ( I edit with Photoshop and Lightroom)
D drive is dedicated to the users folder (I configured this during Windows install. And no, I've never had any issues locating the users folder to a separate disk)
E drive contains the Lightroom database.

By offloading things like the Inventor workspace to it's own physical disk, it's guaranteed never to be contesting with whatever else the operating system is doing on C drive.
It makes a difference!

Just my 2 cents.

[Frederick_Law]

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@DarrenP wrote:

all the top 10 performers here all using nvidia cards: https://invmark.cadac.com/#/

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I'm 1000% against ATi (AMD) video card.

AMD CPU are ok.

[iamerm]

@DarrenP, @mrB_Young , @Frederick_Law 

Thank you all for your input!  I hope to revise the configuration & post an update.

[iamerm]

@Frederick_Law   Is avoiding a Xeon processor simply a cost issue, or is it also a performance issue?  Because we are purchasing this computer from a specific vendor (& not building it ourselves), it appears that there are certain pre-defined component sets that we may have to work with.  In other words, my ability to customize may be somewhat limited.

[iamerm]

Once again, I appreciate everyone's input.  I'm taking another crack at this.  Please openly share your opinion:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i9-10900X Processor (3.7 GHz, up to 4.5 GHz w/Boost, 19.25MB Cache, 2933MHz, 10 core, 165W)

Memory: 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-2933 UDIMM Memory

Internal M.2 storage: 1 TB HP Z Turbo Drive TLC M.2 NVMe SSD

Internal PCIe storage: 1 TB M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe TLC Dual SSD

Graphics card: NVIDIA RTX™ A2000 (6 GB GDDR6 ECC, 4 x Mini DisplayPort 1.4) Graphics

Add-on: HP Z4 G4 Memory Cooling Solution

[pball]

The big issue with Xeon processors is they are not as fast as consumer cpus in terms of single core clock speed. The I7 13900K is generally the fastest cpu for Inventor usage at the moment as shown by the Invmark benchmark leader board. I'm not familiar with the Xeon line up but there are some with less cores and higher clock speeds, might not hurt to see if that is an option if consumer cpus are not an option.

Update since you slipped a reply in before mine.
That 10900X is slightly better but not great by today's standards. If you look at the chart below the 13900K blows both of those cpus out of the water in both single thread and multi-thread speeds. The red marked scores are generally more important for Inventor unless you are doing a lot of rendering or other specific tasks that benefit from more threads.

another edit. "Workstation" computers generally suck for Inventor since they are limited to Xeon cpus or older consumer cpus.

[DarrenP]

why a 10th gen processor?

this came out in 2019

[iamerm]

@pball  thank you this is extremely helpful!

[iamerm]

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@DarrenP wrote:

why a 10th gen processor?

this came out in 2019

---

@DarrenP  because I genuinely don't know what I'm doing. 😂  but you all are helping!

[Frederick_Law]

Xeon are design for stability.  For use in server which run lots of parallel process.

CPU not clocked as high.  ECC RAM are a bit slower.

If you got FEA or rendering that run for days, get a Xeon.

If you got nothing running overnight or once in a while, don't get Xeon.

As other pointed out, i7 is a good choice.

DDR5 if you can afford it.

I don't think the HP Z Turbo worth its money.

3000 MBps (read) / 1700 MBps (write)
4KB Random Read 360000 IOPS

for $2000

Samsung 990

https://www.samsung.com/ca/memory-storage/nvme-ssd/990-pro-2tb-nvme-pcie-gen-4-mz-v9p2t0b-am/

7450 MBps Read 6900 Write MBps

1400K Read /1550K Write IOPS

for $350.

[iamerm]

Configuration 3.0

Am I learning anything? 😕

Processor: Intel® Core™ i9-13900K (up to 5.8 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 36 MB L3 cache, 24 cores, 32 threads)

Memory: Kingston FURY 64 GB DDR5-5200 MHz XMP RGB Heatsink RAM (4 x 16 GB)

Storage: 1 TB WD Black PCIe® 4x4 NVMe™ TLC M.2 SSD

Graphics card: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 (10 GB GDDR6X dedicated) with LHR, Display Connectors

[pball]

I would be happy with that config. One note is you could go with a lower end GPU unless you are using it for non Inventor tasks. It has been proven multiple times on the forum that general Inventor performance is not affected by the gpu. Though newer Inventor versions have some GPU rendering ability now.

[iamerm]

What I finally ordered:

Intel Core i9-13900K Processor

64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-4800 UDIMM Memory

1 TB HP Z Turbo M.2 TLC SSD

512 GB HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 2nd SSD

NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12 GB GDDR6, 4 x Mini DisplayPort 1.4) Graphics

Due to some current promotions, the cost was significantly less than what I expected.  Now we just have to hope it performs well...

Thanks again for everyone's input!