[Klaus M.]

HP Z640

Intel Xeon E5 2623 v3 (2.6 GHz / Turboboost 3.2 GHz), 64 GB DDR4 ECC, 512 GB SSD, NVIDIA Quadro M4000,

Is this specs good enough for CFD, this would be low, medium or high performance PC?

What is better for CFD xeon or i9?
What is the most important RAM , number of cores?

[flotus1]

Whether or not this type of used workstation is a good idea mostly depends on the price. So if you want an opinion on a particular deal, please include the price. And your budget. There are a lot of bad offers on ebay.
But with this one in particular, I don't need to know the price. It's a single low-end CPU with only 4 cores. The main reason why PCs from this generation can still be useful for CFD, is that some of them support dual-CPU configurations. From the "Haswell" generation in particular (Xeon E5-26xx V3) you can get CPUs with 12 cores for around 100€. In particular 2670v2, 2680v3, 2673v3, 2678v3, 2690v3.
Using only one of these CPUs instead of 2, you get about the same multi-core performance as a modern desktop CPU, but much lower single-core performance. Not ideal, especially for a machine primarily for learning how to use various CFD software packages.
The only other saving grace for old server CPUs is the cheaper memory, and the fact that they support a lot of it.

What is better for CFD xeon or i9?

That's just labels for marketing. They tell you nothing about how the CPU performs for a certain task, since they span the entire spectrum of CPU types available these days.

What is the most important RAM , number of cores?

That's a pretty open-ended question, especially without knowing the requirements.
Again, I highly recommend reading this first.

[Klaus M.]

Originally Posted by flotus1

So if you want an opinion on a particular deal, please include the price.
Not ideal, especially for a machine primarily for learning how to use various CFD software packages.

Can you post desktop up to 3000€ that will be ok?

[flotus1]

https://www.ebay.de/itm/124994121951...AAAOSwhq9hiT06
Something along those lines maybe? I don't scour ebay regularly for these things, so there may be better offers. But apart from more storage -which you can easily drop in yourself- this should get you pretty far.

[Klaus M.]

Originally Posted by flotus1

https://www.ebay.de/itm/124994121951...AAAOSwhq9hiT06
Something along those lines maybe? I don't scour ebay regularly for these things, so there may be better offers. But apart from more storage -which you can easily drop in yourself- this should get you pretty far.

Thanks.
This processor has "only" 10 cores, is this enough?


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...fications.html

[flotus1]

Yep, it's only 10 cores. But it is pretty much the highest frequency CPU from this generation, which makes up the core count difference to the 12-core CPUs usually recommended.
More importantly, making it the ideal workstation CPU, thanks to the higher single-core performance. We still have some of these in operation at my office.