Hello, im planning to learn houdini and would like to do it right, i was thinking to upgrade my system (4 core-lga2011-x79) and buy the ryzen 1950x with loads of rams and stuff, but i dont know if should i wait to the prices to drop a little bit more, also i found 12 core xeons procesors in ebay as cheap as 150$, maybe i can go that way and extent the life of my actual system 1 o 2 years more, but i dont known how demanding is houdini, which would be the better route? If someone has the 1950x iwould appreciate to hear about the general performance, would use it mostly for Rbd, fume, pyro and liquid sims

try this link. talks about differences between Core CPU and Xeons.
https://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/core-vs-xeon-which-intel-cpu-should-you-choose-1326109 [www.techradar.com]

I just upgraded from a still functional but long in tooth i5 4680 w/16gig to Ryzen 2700x w/32gig the difference is startling

Go for Core