Engineering workstations
Simulation is patient work done by an impatient person. The machine is specified to shorten the part where you are waiting.
Where the budget goes first
Core count
Solvers and analysis scale across cores; this is where wall-clock time is won.
Memory capacity and bandwidth
A run that exceeds memory does not slow down, it fails.
Sustained cooling
A multi-hour solve is thermally nothing like a benchmark burst.
Fast local storage
Result files are large and written continuously.
Thermals are a specification, not an afterthought
A machine that holds full speed for thirty seconds and a machine that holds it for six hours can carry identical component lists. The difference is whether the cooling was specified for sustained load or for a burst.
Engineering work is the case where this matters most, because the runs are long and a machine that throttles quietly turns a four-hour job into a seven-hour one without ever reporting a fault.
- Cooling specified for continuous load, not peak
- Case airflow planned as part of the build rather than assumed
- Noise expectations agreed up front — sustained cooling is rarely silent
Memory that fails, rather than slows
When a solve exceeds available memory the usual outcome is not a slower solve. It is an error, hours in, with the work lost. That asymmetry is why memory on an engineering machine is specified with margin rather than to the expected requirement.
What we will not estimate
We will not tell you how long your solve will take, or how much faster it will be than your current machine. Those depend on your model, your solver and your settings, and a number invented here would be a number you planned around.
What we can do is explain which component governs which part of the run, so the money goes where your particular work is bounded.
What each choice costs elsewhere
| Choice | What it buys | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| More cores | Shorter solves for parallel workloads | Lower per-core speed for interactive modelling |
| Cooling for sustained load | Full speed for the whole run | A larger case and more audible fans |
| Memory with margin | Runs that complete rather than fail | Capacity you may not use every day |
Questions
How many cores should an engineering workstation have?
Will this be faster than our current machine?
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CAD workstations
Cooling and thermal planning
High-performance desktops
Specify for your solver
Tell us the software and the size of a typical run.