Advice on server for medical research

OLPPS

New member
Hello,

The specs I am considering are below. I am purchasing the server to allow us to increase the speed of our Monte Carlo simulations which we use for medical research. We will be accessing the server through a very old monitor and are not concerned with graphics quality as it is just going to be used for number crunching. The tools we have cannot run on GPU or multithreaded by default, but we can run as many instances in parallel as we want, so we are looking to maximise the number of cores at a reasonable speed to allow for as many of these simulations as possible. I am aware from some bench testing we've done that each simulation should take no more than 0.5 Gb of ram whilst running, but have doubled this to allow for some more complicated geometries in the future to require more than this. The budget is about at limit with what we have, so my questions really are:

-Can we configure the two SSDs suggested in RAID 0 to allow for faster data read/write speeds? (and if so, how am I supposed to specify this in the ordering as I can select the same drive for First RAID Category and Second RAID Category).

-Would the two drives be sufficient for writing from all CPU cores or would I ideally need more drive destinations to maximise the data write speed? In general I am unclear whether an increased number of storage drives will lead to a faster write speed or just increased data storage, as well as whether to expect a bottleneck in writing to the SSDs given the large number of CPU threads that will be in use.

-Whether or not the cooling solution is sufficient or if additional cooling would be required. At its peak, this system would be running for 2 -3 days at full load, though most simulations should complete within a few hours.

-Have I just overdone it with the number of threads without supporting them with other appropriate hardware?

Any advice gratefully welcomed!!

Specs:
Case
ASUS RS700A-E11-RS12U DP 1U RACK CHASSIS
Processor (CPU)
AMD EPYC™ 7763 64 Core CPU (2.45GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo, 256MB CACHE)
Processor (CPU)
AMD EPYC™ 7763 64 Core CPU (2.45GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo, 256MB CACHE)
Motherboard
ASUS® KMPP-D32 (DDR4 RDIMM, iKVM)
Memory (RAM)
256GB Kingston DDR4 3200MHz ECC Registered (8 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
ASPEED INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR MP600 PRO NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 7000 MB/R, 6850 MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR MP600 PRO NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 7000 MB/R, 6850 MB/W)
RAID
RAID 0 (STRIPED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD)
RAID Card
Broadcom Tri-Mode MegaRAID 9440-8i (63SATA/2NVMe) RAID Card
Power Supply
ASUS REDUNDANT INTEGRATED 1600W 80+ PLATINUM POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
2 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Asus Passive 1U Heatsink
Processor Cooling
Asus Passive 1U Heatsink
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Network Card
2 x GIGABIT LAN PORTS (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Remote Management Chip
INTEGRATED ASUS ASMB9-IKVM
Rails
Integrated Asus Friction Rail Kit
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Subject to stock availability on pre-order products
 

AgentCooper

At Least I Have Chicken
Moderator
I think we might need to get the bat signal out and call upon @richard_pcs for this one…

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