Laptop for FEA/CAM: GPU computing outside budget -> gaming laptop with better CPU?

[marcrichard]

Hi all,

My old laptop died recently so i have to buy a new one for a max budget of ~1500€ (it can be secondhand or renew).

I want to do FEA, some CFD, multibody simulations, possibly CAM and above all I want to have the best speed for optimization with optistruct and tosca.

I read some threads on eng-tips about laptop recommendations however one question persists:
GPU computing is out of my budget I think, what makes the graphic card of lesser importance in my choice because the GPU won't accelerate the speed of the analysis. So CPU (+ RAM and HDD) seems my priority. I ask myself if I shouldn't maybe better buy a gaming laptop with a very good CPU and a high-end gaming graphic card (not certified) instead of buying a computer with certified graphic card (for example a Dell precision with an nvidia quadro) which will have a weaker CPU for the same price.

Of course I will go in both case for 16GB RAM or more. I don't know if I can set up a SSD inside a gaming laptop (I must say my skills are completly outdated about actual hardware)

Has anyone got any experience with recent gaming laptop running (solving, modeling and rendering) common simulation softwares like: Hyperworks, NX CAE, MSC Nastran, Adams, Ansys, Abaqus... ?

Any experience or recommendation would be very much appreciated!

Thank you.
Kind Regards,
Marc

 

[GregLocock]

For FEA the only important thing is to have enough RAM to solve in memory.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[MartinShane]

I work with an off the shelf consumer / gaming oriented laptop using Solidworks and the integrated simulation package, and it works for fairly well for CAD, but drives me nuts when running simulation or trying to manage larger models.

Are you set on / stuck with a Laptop?

Could build yourself a lot more bang-for-your-buck with a desktop.

If you are willing to use a non-cert GPU you should be able to build a fairly capable desktop system at that budget, with more room to scale up in the future.

 

[IRstuff]

"GPU computing is out of my budget I think, what makes the graphic card of lesser importance in my choice because the GPU won't accelerate the speed of the analysis. "

The latter may be true, but not the former. Even the lower cost Nvidia GPUs are pretty powerful.

TTFN
faq731-376

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[marcrichard]

Thank you all for your answers!

Are you set on / stuck with a Laptop?
Could build yourself a lot more bang-for-your-buck with a desktop.

Yes I agree, I am aware of that fact but at the moment, no choice, I am stuck with the laptop option.

I work with an off the shelf consumer / gaming oriented laptop using Solidworks and the integrated simulation package, and it works for fairly well for CAD, but drives me nuts when running simulation or trying to manage larger models.

Always interesting to have feedback. Can I have more details about your hardware configuration?
I must say I am exactly more worrying about performance with simulation packages. As far as I understand, the SolidWorks Performance Test does not take into account simulation tasks.
How is RealView behaving with your laptop? (I have a link somewhere for an unofficial patch which was activating RealView for non-certified graphic cards, you certainly already know)

Thanks.
Best Regards,
Marc

 

[IceBreakerSours]

I want to do FEA, some CFD, multibody simulations, possibly CAM and above all I want to have the best speed for optimization with optistruct and tosca.

Assuming you are going to do a "lot" of computational work, IMHO, that's asking too much out of a laptop. Laptops do not have great cooling systems and the CPUs aren't nearly as fast as the ones you can put in a desktop. If you have the money, why not put together a really nice desktop with CPUs that can be overclocked (+ hyperthreading disabled in the BIOS) and a decent cooling system? I would give that a thought, if it is an option.

For implicit algorithms, more memory is better and for explicit ones, more CPU power is better.

[Note that life gets sucked out of the CPUs by overclocking them. However, you can get your CPU to have, at least, twice as much speed. And that is awesome!]

http://www.eng-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=376

http://www.eng-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=1083

 

[GregLocock]

" FEA, some CFD, multibody simulations, possibly CAM and above all I want to have the best speed for optimization with optistruct and tosca."

Apart from CFD, how many of the above can be parallelised off the shelf? Are there licensing issues involved?

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[marcrichard]

Thanks for your help.

If you have the money, why not put together a really nice desktop with CPUs that can be overclocked (+ hyperthreading disabled in the BIOS) and a decent cooling system?

Yes you right. I don't exclude the possibility to invest later in a more descent desktop worksation but at the moment I really need a laptop for mobility reasons, and I hope to have the best hardware balance for simulation "on the road".

Apart from CFD, how many of the above can be parallelised off the shelf? Are there licensing issues involved?

True. It was given in some articles as another advantage of GPU computing, the problem of licenses with multi-core CPU's. I am searching to have more information on that matter.

Best Regards,
Marc

 

[dwallace1971]

Would it be possible to set up a desktop from which you can log in remotely and use that for your simulation runs? I have found this to be a good solution as I can use my laptop to remotely control my desktop, taking advantage of my desktop's faster cpu's and massive memory while being free to move about the country. Recent trips out of the country have proven this to be an imperfect solution, however.

"On the human scale, the laws of Newtonian Physics are non-negotiable"