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I need some help trying to put together another system beyond my current machine for primarily performing finite element optimization type tasks and other engineering analysis. I haven’t built a system for long time. Eventually the machine will become my day to day desktop (currently i7-860). I also need to buy a NAS or a storage server but I think that should be a separate box.

Primary Intended Usage:
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- Small 2D electromagnetic and thermal finite element simulations (generally < 20,000 elements) as part of an evolutionary optimization algorithm. For each generation of the optimization algorithm tens to a hundred independent designs are evaluated making the simulations extremely parallelizable favoring a large number of cores. I am not going to be running these all the time but currently when I do they generally take ½ day to 2 days to complete.

- Matlab simulations

- Solidworks: Relatively simple assemblies

- Rarely some larger scale 3D finite element simulations (generally < 250,000 elements). Maybe very rarely some CFD simulations.

-Eventually the machine will become my day to day desktop as my current machine is a i7-860 2.8 GHz, 8 Gb of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series

-I don’t intend to over-clock the machine or play games on it.

The two systems I am thinking about are:
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i7-4790k; $250
ASUS Z97-AR; $90
16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3 1600; $160
Total: $500
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CyyBzy
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/932KGX

i7-5820k; $300
ASUS X99-A; $235
16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR4 2400; $200
Video Card: Passive or semi-passive with Display Port and DVI outputs; $150
Total: $885

Components I have Already Purchased:
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Power Supply: Seasonic
Case: Fractal Design R5
CPU Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo
Storage: Crucial MX 100 512 GB SSD (Thinking about exchanging this)

Pluses for the i7-4790k:
Higher base (4 Gz) and turbo (4.4 GHz) CPU frequency than i7-5820k
Relatively in expensive through Microcenter (CPU: $250, MB: $90)
Built in graphics hardware
Low power draw on load ad idle compared to the i7-5820k

Pluses for the i7-5820k:
Two additional cores though they are slower
Twice the memory bandwidth
Maybe more future proof

Questions:
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Which processor and platform is likely to be faster. The i7-4790k has quite a clock frequency advantage while the i7-5820k has two additional cores and twice the memory bandwidth. I know generally for large CFD type simulations a high memory bandwidth is highly recommended. I am not sure memory bandwidth matters much for small finite element simulations though.

Can the memory bandwidth of the i7-4790k and Z-97 be increased substantially by using a higher rated frequency memory and with reduced timings?

Is the additional cost of the i7-5820k and X-99 platform worth it?

I have been toying with the idea of trying to use an Intel Xeon Phi for parallelizing my small simulations further is it likely to work in a ASUS X99-A motherboard in the x16 slot?

What is the likely longevity of the Z-97 and X-99 platforms? I tend to keep computers for a very long time.

Is DDR3 likely to be phased out soon?

While DDR4 while theoretically more future proof I assume the timings and frequency are going to increase rapidly?

Is there a go to low cost video card that is passive or semi-passive with display port and DVI outputs?

Is the built in video card of the i7-4790k, HD 4600, okay for basic CAD work including Solidworks?

Any other thoughts or recommendations on what to purchase?

What I recommend really depends on your budget.

Back in 2010, I built a computer for a friend/colleague that was mostly using it for CFD analysis and I went with socket 1366 (i7-950 if i remember right). If you can afford it, you should go with Haswell-E and X99.

As a side note, you should really be getting more than 16GB of RAM in either situation. Depending on the applications you're using you may also be able to take advantage of GPGPU stuff. Nvidia is usually better about supporting this and if you can utilize CUDA for GPGPU it can save you a lot of time. If you want to float a budget our way, we could recommend parts based on that.

My budget is flexible though I would like to keep it under $1000 generally. Because the simulations are small even 16 GB is enough. Unfortunatley GPGPU will not speed up these simulations.

The main advantage of the X99 platform is mainly more memory and more PCIe lanes. Neither of these seem to be needed so I'd say save some money and go with the i7 4790k.

Though have you considered any Xeon's so that you would be using ECC memory?

Solidworks runs on consumer cards and integrated graphics, but it will work in a limited way - the advanced graphics options will be unavailable. The basic shaded graphics will run okay as long as the models aren't too complex though.

For a lot of the CAD we do, Geforce & Radeon are in the same ballpark as Quadro and FirePro, but in the case of Solidworks the professional cards are better. It's one of those cases where there's a pretty obvious difference between consumer and professional drivers for a change.

A good place to start would be to do some research on the software you listed and determine how well it's been optimized for thread usage (whether it will make use of the extra CPU cores). I would expect most simulation software to be very well-threaded, which would result in a measurably better performance for the 5820k despite lower clock speeds. That's in theory. If the software only uses 4 threads or less, than the 4790 will be faster due to higher clockspeed.

How important is having maximum performance? Even in situations which favor the 5820, the 4790 would still be doing fairly well.