Hi All, 

I'm not a massively savvy computer person, but I know just enough to put good advice to use. I'm wanting to build a new workstation for running Abaqus and have several questions.

Info: My general use is medium size simulations solving nonlinear static and implicit dynamics cases - large deformation, nonlinear materials. Some of this work is solids-only, while some is coupled temperature-displacement formulation for thermal-solids coupling. I do a smaller amount of explicit dynamic analysis. A typical problem will use 200k-500k elements (4-node tets, 8-node hexes) and some *tie constraints. I have tokens enough to run up to 16 physical cores, but so far beyond 8-cores seems to be diminishing returns. 

I'm fortunate enough to have a decent budget for the new build. I run things on an older Xeon 6-core machine now. . . when a sim is running, the machine can't be effectively used for much else. 64 GB of RAM is enough for my simulations, but sometimes it leaves little for everything else.

Question: Is Xeon still the best option for stuff like this? I'm curious about the latests AMD Threadripper PRO 5000 series, and their 24-core option would permit larger simulations while still using my workstation for other stuff. I've read that the lack of AVX-512 support on the TR Pro CPUs makes them quite inferior for ABAQUS implicit. . . is this true? Are there any hangups with the Intel MLK using this CPU? If Xeon really is the best option, should I build with a dual-CPU configuration or just one CPU? Any advice on RAM?

All advice and guidance is much appreciated!!

Abaqus ​​​​​​​