[fonograph]

I am Solidworks/Ansys noob,I have 1K euro,what components should I buy?

Right now this is my plan

Z370 motherboard - 150
i3 Coffee Lake - 120
2x 16gb DDR4 - 330
250gb 850 EVO SSD - 120
550W Seasonic PSU - 90
GeForce Quadro P600 - 220

Should I buy 1060 GTX instead? Should I buy another 16gb stick instead? Or should I run integrated gpu and upgrade cpu to 8600K i5?

[flotus1]

Z370 motherboard - 150 more like 110
i3 Coffee Lake - 120 an I5 8400 or 8600k would be a better choice
2x 16gb DDR4 - 330 for 330$, this should be at least DDR4-3200
250gb 850 EVO SSD - 120 are your prices really in €
550W Seasonic PSU - 90 Seasonic Focus Plus Gold?
GeForce Quadro P600 - 220 a GTX 1050TI for 150€ will do the job

Do not use a third memory module. Unbalanced memory configurations are never a good idea and will affect performance.
I would not rely on integrated graphics since it steals memory bandwidth that you need for your solver.

That being said, I would rather choose Intels X99/X299 Platform for a cheap CFD/FEA build. The reason being quad-channel memory. I recently sold my old workstation, it is pretty much what I would still recommend with a few changes For sale: my "old" workstation
Use 4x8GB DDR4-3000 or higher. The CPU could be replaced with an I7-5820k or I7-6800k (or I7-7800x for X299). Cheap X99 motherboards are easily available. Use a standard ATX form factor if you have enough space.

[fonograph]

How much faster will 7800x + 4x 8gb ram be compared to 8600k + 4x 8gb ram?

The X299 mobo and 7800x is going to be 20% price increse over the z370 8600k whitch is already 6 core too and its one generation newer.

What is this "quad channel" memory? I see that z370 motherboards have 4 places for ram,not 2.Doesnt z370 have quad channel memory?

[flotus1]

No, it doesn't.
DIMM slots do not indicate memory channels. The memory controller sits in the CPU which determines the number of memory channels available.
Kaby-Lake: 2 channels
Haswell-E, Broadwell-E, Skylake-X: 4 channels
Kaby-Lake is not necessarily one generation newer than Skylake-X because Skylake-X has nothing to do with with the mainstream Skylake architecture. Then again, Kaby Lake is not faster per clock than Skalyke. I must admit that this can be quite confusing.

Assuming the same memory speed and running on 6 cores, quad-channel X99 should be somewhere around 30% faster than a dual-channel Z370 setup. Results may vary depending on the exact model of CPU and the frequency it is running at.

So to be more precise:
Cheap X99 motherboard: 100€
I7-5820k or I7-6800k: 200-250€
4x8GB DDR4-3000 or higher: 300€

[fonograph]

Thank you very much flotus.

But what about that Quadro,I read that GTX is only for gaming and that it sucks for workstation CAD,FEA,CFD needs.What is the advantage of Quadro? In what CAD,FEA,CFD programs will I see benefit?

Also,wouldnt it be better to go with Threadripper over intel? How would 8 core Threadripper compare to 7800x or 8600k?

[flotus1]

Threadripper 8-core: 450€
Cheapest TR4 motherboard: 290€

Skylake-X 8-core: 540€
Cheapest X299 motherboard: 200€

Plus Skylake-X is faster per core and less picky when it comes to memory.

The graphics card is not a factor when doing CFD or FEA. You will not offload any computations to the GPU. And if you do, a Quadro P600 is significantly slower than a GTX 1050TI.
The only benefit a professional card has are driver optimizations and certified drivers for some CAD programs. For a private computer that is not used mostly for a CAD program where you know that the card and driver you have are officially certified, I would usually recommend a consumer graphics card instead.
If you want peace of mind on this topic, just buy the quadro.

[fonograph]

Is Ryzen good? What about Ryzen 3 1200 or Ryzen 5 1600? I have to admit I am kind of AMD fan boy,I love them since the early 2000s,from the athlon era.I would love to buy cpu from them to support them,becose I think Intel is getting too greedy,I dont like the idea of consumer cpu market being monopoly with bs that result from it like locked overclocks for low end chips.

Even if AMD will be little worse I would still buy Ryzen.Will it be big mistake buying Ryzen 1200 over the non-oc lowest coffee lake,or Ryzen 5 1700 over 8600k?

This is price where I live right now

i3 8100 = 122

i3 8350k = 159

i5 8400 = 210

i5 8600k = 325

Ryzen 7 1700 = 299

Ryzen 5 1600 = 249

Ryzen 3 1200 = 109

I can get Ryzen 8 core 30 euro cheaper than 8600k,question is,how will it perform.

[flotus1]

Every single Kaby-Lake CPU will outperform its Ryzen price equivalent in CFD and CAD workloads. This is not coming from an Intel shill, I just ordered two AMD Epyc 7301 today. Just a simple fact. If you want to base your purchase on your sympathy for a multi-billion dollar company don't ask for advice on technical details. The Ryzen CPUs offer a good value for "productivity" workloads like e.g video editing that are not bandwidth limited and can make effective use of hyperthreading.
An I5-8600k can be bought cheaper without waiting for better availability:
https://www.csl-computer.com/shop/pr...30&cPath=61_69
https://www.csl-computer.com/shop/pr...09&cPath=61_69
Here you even get a decent aftermarket CPU cooler.

Once more, the best bang for the buck is in Intels X99 platform.

[fonograph]

Can you post link to some benchmarks 8600k vs 1700? How big of difference is it? I agree that its stupid to base the decision on emotion,but if the difference is very small I think its ok.

You say the Intels are better,but how much is it? Is it significant difference? I would expect the Ryzen 1700 8 core to be very close to 8600k becose even if its cores are slower,it have 33% more cores.

[flotus1]

CFD performance does not work this way. More cores means more parallelization overhead. So what you want is a low amount of cores with maximum per-core performance. Intel takes the cake here.
Plus you need enough memory bandwidth to feed data to the cores. This is where AMD Ryzen makes it quite difficult. To get more than DDR4-2933 working, you need pretty expensive memory, namely RAM equipped with "Samsung b-die". Intels memory controllers are technically mature. Put in whatever memory is cheap, clock it however you want.

[fonograph]

I googled some benchmarks,it seems like 8350k with OC is best bang for buck.Should I buy 2x 16gb or 4x8gb ram?

Does ram speed make significant difference with 8350k? I will overclock ram too,what model ram kit should I buy?

[pibil1]

Would you share your benchmarks on that 8350k?, that processor has dual channel memory. There's an interesting thread about Ryzen CPUs with benchmarks which leads to conclude that i7 6800k it''s a nice budget build for CFD. With the main downside being dual channel memory on all AMD under Threadripper.

I'm starting my build with i7 6850k and x99 based on that thread.


New AMD Ryzen cpus

[fonograph]

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...i3-8350K-1053/

[flotus1]

Originally Posted by fonograph

I googled some benchmarks,it seems like 8350k with OC is best bang for buck.Should I buy 2x 16gb or 4x8gb ram?

Does ram speed make significant difference with 8350k? I will overclock ram too,what model ram kit should I buy?

So Coffee-Lake it is...
While it does not necessarily make a huge difference in performance, I would still recommend 2x16GB for upgradeability. And 16GB UDIMMs are always dual-rank which yields slightly better performance.
I can not recommend a specific Kit without knowing where you live. Just buy what is cheap and rated for at least DDR4-3000.
I tend to disagree with the best bang for the buck part. That bundle with Z370 mainboard, I5-8400 and CPU cooler for 329€ is a pretty good value. Don't know if something similar is available in your country though.
Unless your plans are to overclock the I3 to 5GHz or more, the I5 seems to be a better value. While it is solving on 4-5 cores, you can still use your computer for other tasks.

[fonograph]

how much memory controllers have xeon platinum,gold,silver and bronze?

If cfd needs high memory bandwidth and coffee lake have only two.I should buy something different,I read in other thread that epyc have 8 controllers?

7800x and threadripper have 4,maybe some cheap xeon or epyc is good choice,I rather have small number of fast cores.

[pibil1]

Finally. So how about i7 6800k?, it's cheaper and has same # of cores. I've read that 7800x mobo isn't soldered as 6800k's, so it's getting hotter when OC.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic...-not-soldered/
https://wccftech.com/intels-core-x-s...-spreader-ihs/
https://www.msi.com/blog/Understandi...full-potential
https://overclocking.guide/the-truth...cpu-soldering/
https://www.extremetech.com/computin...ke-x-potential
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...sues,5117.html

Threadripper is way more expensive than these, I wouldn't call budget.

[fonograph]

6800k is only 30e cheaper in my country

[flotus1]

Finally indeed
You won't be able to put together a machine with AMD Epyc processor(s) for less than 2000€. So I don't think this is an option here. But to answer your question, Epyc has four dual-channel memory controllers, 8 memory channels total.
Intels Skylake-SP has a single hexa-channel memory controller. But just as AMD Epyc, it is a bad choice for a cheap single-socket workstation.
Both platforms do not offer an affordable CPU with high performance per core. And the motherboards are expensive.

So my recommendation stays the same: X99 platform with a used 6-core CPU, e.g. from ebay. 100€ for the mainboard, 200€ for the CPU.
If you need a lot of memory, you can use a dual-socket Intel 2011 platform with Xeon E5-2xxx CPUs instead. The DDR3 reg ECC this platform uses can be bought cheap, just like the CPUs.

[fonograph]

right now I am thinking about increasing my budget little bit and going 7800x.I get 6 fast cores,4 channel memory and price isnt that high.

[flotus1]

Just keep in mind that the I7-7800x is not really a performance upgrade compared to its predecessors. I would only recommend it if buying used is not an option for some reason.