New Workstations 2018

Jason Bessuille

October 2018 / Rev 1

Background
In September 2018, both Jim and I were experiencing slowdowns with Solidworks (2017 SP3.0) and he directed
me to look for workstation replacements to be purchased before the end of October.

Our previous machines had been spec’d and built by me, and have operated great for 6 years, but now we need
new ones and would like to have the peace of mind that comes with buying a pre-built workstation from a
known manufacturer with full tech support over the next several years.

The budget given is $5k-$6k per machine. The use is primarily for Solidworks modeling and (both structural and
flow) simulation.

Processor
The first step in choosing a workstation is to decide what processor we want (or what qualities it should have)
since that determines the motherboard, memory type, and many other factors that limit the options available.

It is well known that Solidworks modeling is a single-thread process, meaning the best UI and rebuild
performance will be obtained with the fastest clock speed. Typically, faster clock speeds are found with
processors that have fewer cores (4 or 6 is the low end these days).

Solidworks simulation and meshing can make use of multiple cores, but with decreasing returns as the number
increases.

Here is a list of the CPUs I will consider for this workstation:

Base Turbo Turbo Physical L3

Series Part No. Generation Architecture Chipset
Freq Freq Boost Cores cache
Core i9-7900X 3.3 4.3 4.5 10 13.75 7th gen Skylake X X299
Core i9-7920X 2.9 4.3 4.4 12 16.50 7th gen Skylake X X299
Core i9-7940X 3.1 4.3 4.4 14 19.25 7th gen Skylake X X299
Core i7-8700K 3.7 4.7 n/a 6 12.00 8th gen Coffee Lake Z370
Core i7-8086K 4.0 5.0 n/a 6 12.00 8th gen Coffee Lake Z370
Xeon E-2186G 3.8 4.7 n/a 6 12.00 8th gen Coffee Lake E C236
Xeon E-2176G 3.7 4.7 n/a 6 12.00 8th gen Coffee Lake E C236
Innova Systems in 2017 showed (without giving much information about their test protocol) that increasing
cores beyond 12 has no effect on FEA performance, and that 6 cores seems to be the sweet spot). Innova
recommends a maximum of 8 cores for “maximum” hardware usage. Of course, the number of cores assigned to
SW can be limited in Windows, so getting a chip with 10 or 12 cores would not hurt, but might come with lower
clock speeds or a higher price vs one with 6 or 8 cores.

Puget Systems found in 2016 that anything beyond 10 cores does not help with simulation tasks, and that very
little is gained by going from 8 to 10 cores. In the end, they recommended the 4-core i7-6700K, the fastest Core-
brand processor available at the time.

Alignex in 2018 found that (again, without much description) that FEA simulation performance improvement
tops out at about 6 cores
Xeon or Core?
One big benefit of Xeon chips is that they allow the use of ECC memory. Most articles I’ve read say the benefit of
this really only occurs if you run many simulations that last a long time, having ECC memory might prevent
occasional failures.

Xeons are much more expensive, as are the motherboards and ECC ram that goes with them. For a given budget,
more performance will be derived from a Core chip, assuming the potential for occasional simulation failures
can be tolerated (I believe it can in our case).

CONCLUSION: INTEL CORE (i7-8700K or i9-79xxX)

Skylake X or Coffee Lake?

Puget Systems tested SW 2018 with the i7-8700K and i9-79xxX. For general performance, the i7-8700K was the
clear winner. FEA and Flow Sim do benefit from the increased cores of the i9-79xxX series. However, these gains
are small compared to the increased performance of the i7 with assembly rebuild and rotation.
Table 1: Puget Systems SW 2018 test – Performance relative to i7-8700K

Test i7-8700K i9-7900X i9-7920X i9-7940X i9-7960X

Assembly
100% 89% 88% 89% 88%
Rotation
Rebuild and
100% 96% 94% 95% 95%
Motion
Simulation 100% 100% 102% 106% 106%

CONCLUSION: COFFEE LAKE (i7-8700K or i7-8086K)

Note: After speccing out a system at Puget, they notified me that they can’t give more than 1 year warranty on
the 8086K CPU because it is limited edition. Maybe an OC’d 8700K is the best option.

Memory / RAM
Innova systems suggests at least 24 GB for those running simulations

Javelin Tech recommends 32 GB or more for simulations

Graphics
Everything I’ve seen shows that the Quadro P2000 is the sweet spot in terms of performance and cost. In fact,
even if cost were not a factor, going up to the P4000 gives almost no benefit. The P2000 can easily handle
multiple 4K or 5K displays.
CONCLUSION: QUADRO P2000 5GB
List of Workstations that we should decide from:

M.2
NVMe SATA
Make Model CPU GPU RAM SATA SSD Warranty Link Price as quoted Notes
SSD HDD
Primary

Precision
64 1000 1000 - 5 yr
Dell 3630 i7-8700K P2000 link $ 4,352.00  
Precision
64 512 1000 - 5 yr
Dell 5820 i9-7900X P2000 link $ 5,230.00  

HP Z4 G4 i9-7900X P2000 64 512 1000 - 5 yr link $ 5,262.00  

Puget Rendering
64 500 1000 - 3 yr
Systems System i7-7920X P2000 http://puget.systems/go/148845 $ 5,131.00  
Puget
64 1000 1000 - 3 yr
Systems Spirit i7-8086K P2000 http://puget.systems/go/148846 $ 4,166.00  
They
do not
64 1000 1000 - 3 yr
Puget https://www.pugetsystems.com/myaccount/detail.php? OC as a
Systems Spirit i7-8700K P2000 st=save&viewnum=183376 $ 4,122.00 rule
i7-8700K
64 512 - 2000 3 yr
Boxx APEXX S3 OC to 4.8 P2000 link $ 5,221.00  
i7-8086K
OC to 5.0 64 512 - 2000 3 yr
Boxx APEXX SE All cores P2000   $ 5,440.00  
i7-8700K 64 OC to very
Mtower OC to 5.0 3200 1000 1000 - 3 yr many
Xi PCIe All cores P2000 MHz link $ 4,668.00 options
64
i7-8700K @3000 1000 1000 - 3 yr
Origin M-Class OC to 5.0 P2000 MHz   $ 4,098.00