Truss Engineering, a structural engineering firm in Abuja, runs ANSYS Mechanical for finite element analysis on complex structural projects. Their previous workstation was an aging Xeon-based machine that had served them well but was increasingly falling behind on solve times as project complexity grew.
ANSYS is one of the most CPU-intensive applications in professional use. Solve times on complex models can range from minutes to hours depending on mesh density and analysis type. Every percentage point of CPU performance improvement translates directly to reduced turnaround time on deliverables.
The Configuration
- Intel Core i9-14900K (ANSYS Mechanical benchmarks favour high-frequency cores for many solver types — the i9's boost clocks matter here)
- 128GB DDR5 RAM (large FEA meshes require substantial memory; running out causes paging that destroys solve times)
- NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super 16GB (GPU-accelerated solvers in ANSYS can dramatically reduce solve times on supported analysis types)
- 2TB NVMe PCIe 5.0 (result file I/O during solve operations)
- 1000W 80+ Platinum (the i9-14900K under full solver load)
Results
A representative structural model that was their benchmark test took 47 minutes to solve on the old Xeon. On the new system, the same solve completed in 11 minutes. Analysis sessions that previously required leaving work running overnight now complete during the working day.