Hi there,
I’m looking to buy a workstation from DELL, I found Threadripper Workstation “Precision 7875” that will fit my use case (CFD purpose), but for about the same price I could also go for a rack “poweredge 7615”.
Since I hope I could continue this work and build a little server next year, and that I can go further to play with genoa X, I want to go for the Epyc Rack but I would have some questions regarding configuration and OS.
I plan to configure it with :
- 9384X, 32 core 3D cache
- 12 RDIMM (max bandwith) 384 or 768 Go
- 800W redondant PSU
Unfortunately it seems I can’t select PCI riser since CPU power is too hight…
Do you know if we can add this anyway ?
If I bought RAM from an other vendor, is there some specs limitation to be sure to boot ?
A least RDIMM at 4800 MT/s, can I go higher ? What sub timings ?
Then storage, i’m lost here.
For CFD purpose I would want an Ok’ish boot drive, a quite performant drive to save unsteady simulation and good old rust for “archive”.
On a workstation I would have choosen M2 (sata should be good too) for boot and perf drive and Sata Hard drive for archive.
There are a lot of SAS drive and I don’t know what to choose, I can’t get how to use M2 there, or U2 maybe.
There is Dell’s BOSS thing, what does-it provides ?
The thing is that I want this server to provide a backup for other workstation too.
Might want to buy from else where to drope a bit the price.
Finaly wich OS ?
I want to get rid of Windows, there are some linux possibilities but by default they are only provide with a Dell subscription, do you know it ? Would you advise it ?
Or should I go install myself, if yes what distribiution : Debian, Fedora, some thing more tight to server environement ?
And how to moove from this single rack to a little, 3 node or so, computationnal cluster next year ?
Might open a different topic for those point but every advice is good to take.
I hope this topic is readable enought, thanks for your help.
PS: I’m from France, I think I have to shop from DELL but do you know some server vendor to compare, and also an administration service (installation and surveilance).