Build advice for scientific computation (matlab, python and others)

Jul 19, 2018
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Hello there,

In the lab I work for, we plan to buy a new machine for our simulations. The workstation will run on windows server 2016 so a few people (usually no more than 5) can remotely connect to it to run their simulations.

To be honest, I am not very knowledgeable in that and our IT department doesn’t have much experience in building such machine for simulations. I was therefore wondering about the proper way to go. A main point is about the processor: i7 (or i9?) or Xeon. A main benefit I see for the Xeon is the RAM limit which could be useful for the cases when the 32GB are not enough. However, it seems that some i7 can use up to 64GB. For the benefits on parallelized simulations, I would think that we will not use it enough to benefits from a large amount of core. However, I guess the multi-user purpose might. Would you agree?

Thanks for your help.
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
I would recommend you get your IT dept involved. They will be your primary support for many things, they need to be comfortable with what you have.

For the budget you have, I don't have a good answer. RAM prices are really high. I just got a $1300 quote for 64GB of ECC DDR4 RAM. A new Xeon and decent ram will eat your budget.
 
Jul 19, 2018
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Thanks for the reply. Yes the IT dept. is involved. However, they are mainly used to set up computer for office software applications and some simulations but never went into looking for optimization.

From what I understand, ECC RAM is usefull to have serveur running for a long time without needing for rebooting. This woun't be necessary for us I think. Therefore, maybe skipping Xeon and this type of RAM should save a lot wouldn't you think?