Is this a good setup to get fast simulations with Phoenix fd

[lukepenry]

I want to upgrade my PC for faster simulations.

my current setup is

Intel I7-5820K CPU 3.30HGz

32GB ram

GTX 2080TI


I am thinking to upgrade to this because i read phoenix works best with lots of fast cores.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32 core CPU (3.7GHz - 4.5Ghz

128GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz

GTX 2080TI

Any advice would be appeciated.

Thanks!

[ThomasMiller]

Edit: Ignore me. Read what squintnic wrote below

That's a great choice IMO. The Threadripper 3970X will be at least 5 times faster in simulations than your current CPU (64 vs 12). Another more affordable option is the Ryzen 9 3950X which has 32 threads (2.5 times faster) and it's on a AM4 socket so you don't need a more expensive TRX40 motherboard

[squintnic]

That CPU wont be very good in phoenix, too many cores. Phoenix is terrible with many cores. My 2990wx 32 core gets outpaced by a old i7....less cores with a higher clock speed win here.

You will need a fast SSD - as fast as you can afford, and as big.
If you dont regularly hit 128gb it might be worth stepping down to 64gb RAM at a higher speed, you wont get 128 running fast.
A 2080Ti wont make a difference to sim speeds either, step down to a 2060 or something cheap but useable in a pinch.

It really depends if the machine needs to be used for other things or if it sits on deadline doing sims and churning frames.

[lukepenry]

This is interesting, do you know why it gets worse as the cores increase? I read somewhere the older Gen threadrippers show up as 2 NUMA nodes which slows things down a lot, is that the case with your 2990wx?

The ram speed i was going for was 3200MHz, and the SSD would be a Samsung 860 QVO 1tb 550/520 MB/s. Do you think this speed would be suficient?

Cheers!

[squintnic]

check this

https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...ation-hardware

im not sure why its so slow with large core counts, one of the chaos staff or muhammed explained it somewhere in the phoenix sub forum.
at the moment im building a phx node for sims and trying to find a good price point / performance point.

[squintnic]

double post

[M.Max]

To add an example to what squintnic mentioned above , you could see here how 3970x beat 3990x when it comes to simulation .
https://3dcollective.es/prueba-hardw...dripper-3990x/

[Joelaff]

On multi-core machines, esp. those with NUMA you can tell Phoenix to simulate with FEWER cores (or FEWER NUMA nodes) and this is often faster.

[waaazoo]

Yes, definitely higher GHz per core. Also double check the compatibility of the RAM with your motherboard to get the fastest speed out of it.
A very fast SSD (M2 at least) will help also a lot as there is much read/write going on.
Personally I had a speed up only by changing the RAM sticks for faster ones.