Hardware Configuration Ansys WB

[Mevanvt]

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a setup for Ansys workbench that is between 3-6k$ I need to go with Dell due to work contracts and want to maximize my money to performance. The white paper on the ansys website is a bit dated and doesn't account for the new i7 processors or newer xeon and core 2duo. I want to run with only the standard license so 2 processors(cores) can only be utilized. 8gb of ram is most likely how much memory I would get.

Also is it worth getting 2 x 10000rpm drives and running them in raid 0 or would 2x 7200 rpm drives in raid 0 be almost as good.

 

[cbrn]

Hi,
IMHO it doesn't matter if the newest processors aren't listed: within your budget you would only create a strongly unbalanced machine if you wanted to use one of them.
My advice is not to push too much on the processor's side if you can't afford "serving" it with consistent quantity of RAM.
64-bit architecture is a "must-be". 16 GB RAM is a minimum if you don't want to be disappointed within one year...
If you find a way to spec out a machine with 32 GB RAM, you won't need any fast hard-drive because everything will keep into memory. Any kind of RAM is hundreds of times faster than the fastest hard-drive possible.
As regards video card, as far as you only need to use Ansys family of products, even an entry-level professional card like my old ATI T2-128 will do the job very very well (it costed about 400 $ six years ago...).

Always remember: with enough RAM, there is no problem which won't be solved (it will only be a matter of ime); if your problem doesn't keep into memory, instead, there is NO processor which will allow it to run !!!

Regards