Alienware Area 51 R5 as a CFD workstation

fusij · June 12, 2019, 05:17

Hello,

does anybody here have experience with or an opinion on the Alienware Area 51 R5 as a CFD or other computational heavy workstation?

Specs:
CPU - i9 9980XE (18 core, 24.75MB Cache, up to 4,5 GHz)
RAM - 64GB DDR4, 2666 MHz
HDD - 1 TB SSD M.2 PCIe NVME
GPU - Geforce RTX2080Ti 11GB GDDR6

My company is looking to buy a high performance workstation to use for CFD, VR, 3D Point Clouds etc. They do not fancy to build a machine themselves, they rather want to buy a product off the shelve.

Is there any other product on the market that you would rather recommend?

evcelica · June 13, 2019, 11:15

Well it looks like you need to build a workstation for many different things. The VR would benefit from the video card, but that wouldn't do anything for the CFD.

That CPU has 4 memory channels.

A dual socket workstation with current gen XEON CPUs would have two CPUs, and 6 memory channels per CPU, so it would be much faster for CFD, 3x the memory bandwidth. I'd say more than double, approaching triple the performance.

But it will be more expensive of course, and what you have chosen is still very good, and will work fine.

If you have a slightly bigger budget, and will be running large/a lot of CFD, I'd go for the workstation instead of the gaming computer.

Add a large HDD for storage.

Dell (I mention because you are already looking at them) will customize workstations for you.
I've also dealt with a company "AVA direct", they are very good at building whatever computer you want for incredibly low markup vs Dell. Have a look at them.

June 12, 2019, 05:17	Alienware Area 51 R5 as a CFD workstation	#1
fusij Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Posts: 56 Rep Power: 17	Hello, does anybody here have experience with or an opinion on the Alienware Area 51 R5 as a CFD or other computational heavy workstation? Specs: CPU - i9 9980XE (18 core, 24.75MB Cache, up to 4,5 GHz) RAM - 64GB DDR4, 2666 MHz HDD - 1 TB SSD M.2 PCIe NVME GPU - Geforce RTX2080Ti 11GB GDDR6 My company is looking to buy a high performance workstation to use for CFD, VR, 3D Point Clouds etc. They do not fancy to build a machine themselves, they rather want to buy a product off the shelve. Is there any other product on the market that you would rather recommend?

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June 13, 2019, 11:15		#2
evcelica Senior Member Erik Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Earth (Land portion) Posts: 1,188 Rep Power: 23	Well it looks like you need to build a workstation for many different things. The VR would benefit from the video card, but that wouldn't do anything for the CFD. That CPU has 4 memory channels. A dual socket workstation with current gen XEON CPUs would have two CPUs, and 6 memory channels per CPU, so it would be much faster for CFD, 3x the memory bandwidth. I'd say more than double, approaching triple the performance. But it will be more expensive of course, and what you have chosen is still very good, and will work fine. If you have a slightly bigger budget, and will be running large/a lot of CFD, I'd go for the workstation instead of the gaming computer. Add a large HDD for storage. Dell (I mention because you are already looking at them) will customize workstations for you. I've also dealt with a company "AVA direct", they are very good at building whatever computer you want for incredibly low markup vs Dell. Have a look at them.