Discussion Forum

Here's my take, which is based on limited experience.

Running out of memory is going to be the biggest hit on your productivity so if you're running a browser concurrently with COMSOL, for example reading mail via yahoo or google, or perhaps you're also running Powerpoint to document results, or maybe you're running Acroread viewing graphics-intensive PDF's, those other apps are going to chew up a lot of it on their own, so you want to make sure you still have enough left over to throw at COMSOL. With that in mind going with more memory is rarely a decision that's going to be ever regretted.

If you're just running COMSOL and nothing else then it depends on the size and complexity of models and physics. I've been doing mechanical simulations of lumpy structures which have a lot of structural detail and those tend to demand a lot of memory: on my poor little 4GB system even killing all other optional Windows 7 processes I'm severely limited in my mesh density. If I were to buy my own system I'd definitely go for at least 16 GB.

For processors, it depends on how many threads you're running and/or how many concurrent instances of COMSOL you're running. So the answer of how many processors you need is harder to answer in general -- but if I had to choose between three systems, one with more cores, the second with more memory, the third with faster clock speeds, the "safe" answer is to go with the more memory, the 2nd best choice is likely more cores, and the faster clock speed only third. The faster clock will help with every simulation but only a small extent (speed of the memory is at least as important) but the memory can easily be deal breaker on whether you can run your model at all or in acceptable time. CPUs can help a LOT but only if you are able to use the added number: there's a saturation point.

So I leave it to others to flesh out more details but these are just my observations.

I don't know about Windows vs Linux and am interested in that myself. I want to say Linux is a lot more efficient but I'm not sure. I really like a good command line so am biased towards the Linux side but I understand the Windows provides better integration with things like spreadsheets and email, in particular "out of the box".

Thank you.
Memory shouldnt be too much of a problem, since i got at least 64 GB in every configuration, based on the 4-8 GB RAM per core recommandation given by COMSOL. I ran simulations in ANSYS with 20M Nodes and those needed sth. like 50 GB of RAM so i think im safe here.

I also configured a System based on an I7 5960 (eight cores, 3 GHz) with 64 GB of very fast NonECC DDR4 RAM.
The RAM in the DELL configuration would be ECC DDR3 RAM. How important is ECC, given that the people using the workstation is limited to three, of whom i would use it 90% of the time. So, if an error accurs, i could simply restart the simulation. I ran a lot of simulations in ANSYS on a NonECC AMD Quadcore and never had any problems...
Also, such a system would be much cheaper (due to the cheaper CPU).

Hello Elias,

If you're sure that you will 64GB of RAM or less, then there is no advantage to the 128GB RAM machine (which is significantly more expensive)

The price difference between the other configurations seems to be less than 10%, and the performance difference will be quite similar, since for such models as you describe memory speed will be the most important, as Daniel appropriately points out.

With respect to OS: You should not expect significant performance differences between OS's.

Best Regards,