[jeanhyuk]

Hey smart people of CFD forum,

I'm trying to set up a workstation and my company has allowed me about $5000 maximum budget (not including monitors, mouse, keyboard). However, the company already has a workstation that they bought earlier this year and I was wondering if what we have is good enough?

I will be using OpenFOAM and grid size could range anywhere from 1 million to 10 million. My projects will mostly be somewhere from battery pack cooling/heating and Vehicle HVAC. We might have some other projects but it won't deviate too far from these projects and I would most likely be using standard turbulence models. I would also be doing some 3-D modelling using Solidworks and Autocad, but I would mainly be doing the simulation and some numerical analysis using MATLAB and Python.

The specs for our current workstation is:

2 x Intel Xeon E-52646 v4
4 x DDR4 16G PC4-19200
NVIDIA Quadro M4000
Samsung 850 Evo 250G SSD + Toshiba 3TB SATA3/7200/64MB

This workstation is currently used by one of our team member who wanted to learn CFD and eventually use the workstation for simulation, but instead been using it mainly for 3-D modeling.

Our boss suggested that, since we are tight on budget, I should use the workstation instead. And we would buy the team member a cheaper workstation with a better graphic card that can handle heavy 3D modeling and a CPU good enough to handle not too complicated simulations (since she'd still like to learn and work on some simulation for our future project).

If our current set up is good enough for me, could you recommend specs for my team member? If not, could you recommend a better workstation combination for me?

Thank you in advance!

[flotus1]

In order to use your current workstation for CFD, you need to upgrade it with another 4 sticks of memory. With only 4 DIMMs, you are at best using 2 instead of 4 memory channels each CPU provides.
Don't know how many cores your current workstation has, Xeon E5-2646 v4 must either be some OEM-specific part or a typo. But depending on the core count, this relatively cheap upgrade might almost double the performance for parallel CFD computations

Regarding a "cheaper" workstation for your colleague that is better suited for 3D modeling:
You are probably still looking at around 3k-4k dollars. A higher-end Quadro card like the P5000 already costs 1500$ retail.
In terms of CPU, you have quite a few options depending on the budget. I7-8700k (cheaper), I7-7820x (better suited for simulations), Xeon W-2145 (same as the 7820x but with ECC-support) ...

[Simbelmynë]

The best price/performance option might be to go with an 8700k system and take the Quadro card from the existing workstation. You can then buy a cheaper GPU and some RAM for the (now CFD only) workstation.


I do not think the 7820X is necessary if she will mainly be learning CFD.

[jeanhyuk]

Here's the detailed specs for the CPU. It has 10 cores. Is this ok or would it be better to upgrade to AMD Epyc 7301, given my budget situation and all? I live in South Korea so the components may be a bit pricier than in the US. By the way, I'm a big fan of yours!

[flotus1]

Specs are ok for a simulation workstation. AMD Epyc would be a bit faster in parallel, so it depends on how much performance you actually need and are willing to pay for. Fitting 2x Epyc 7301 and 16x8GB of RAM into a 5000$ budget might be difficult if prices in your region are particularly high.
If you want to keep this workstation, sanitizing the memory configuration would definitely be worth it. If the Quadro M4000 provides enough performance for your colleague, swapping it out is actually a good idea to save some money.