I'm looking for a budget server (<$250) to run Blender and COMSOL simulations. Any advice?

[Mega2]

I'm on a $250 budget but will be using COMSOL for some fluid simulations and Blender to model some machines. Ultimately, all of this will need 64 GB of RAM and a mere 500 GB of storage. Optimally, I'm shooting for +20 cores.

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can probably get some dual 2011 systems for that much if you get lucky, something like a dell r620 or simmilar. Look for off brand models that are cheaper. Id hunt for them locally, as shipping those aren't cheap and will eat away at your budget.

 

20 cores is probably too much to ask for, as the 10 core e5 v2 xeons are about 100 bucks a pop on their own now. Id stay away from the opterons from the era as there much slower per core.

[Camofelix]

From a brief google it looks like comsol supports cuda acceleration, and I know that blender does.

 

You might be better off with an inexpensive older system (Say sandy bridge or ivy bridge?) Then add in some DDR3 (pretty cheap these days) and some older used GPU's (Kepler/maxwell are dirt cheap these days)

 

You'd essentually be doing what steve and co. from GN did in video 1  with the networking side of video 2. As for setting up remote comsol, I can't speak to setting it up so google(and reddit/Lttforums) will be your friend.