Dell’s single-socket workstation platform is packed with features and performance potential

Pros

• Well-designed chassis
• Very quick to load software

Cons

• Quite pricey

The Precision 5820 is Dell’s latest single-socket workstation for content creators. It supports Xeon processors up to 18 cores, dual Nvidia or AMD professional graphics, up to six hard drives, and various flavours of Linux as well as Windows.

That doesn’t mean you have to pay a fortune. Our review unit features the basic 4GHz Xeon W-2125, a quad-core chip that supports Hyper-Threading for improved rendering abilities. Even though it’s near the bottom of Intel’s Xeon-W range, it offers high single-core frequencies – it Turbo Boosts up to 4.5GHz – so it can cope with modelling, too.

Dell’s choice of 16GB 2,666MHz DDR4 ECC memory is a reasonable starter amount, but I was surprised to see it supplied as two 8GB DIMMs. This leaves six DIMM slots free for upgrade to the system’s maximum of 256GB, but doesn’t take advantage of the quad-channel memory architecture of the Xeon Skylake-W. The Nvidia Quadro P4000 graphics card makes more sense. Part of Nvidia’s Pascal GPU generation, it includes a hefty 1,792 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, capable of 243GB/sec bandwidth.

You may want to complement the 512GB Class 40 NVMe SSD with a larger hard disk for extra storage capacity, but it’s very quick to load software. Running CrystalDiskMark 6, this drive delivered 3,106MB/sec reading, which is close to the best I’ve seen, even though its 457MB/sec writing performance is slower than some SATA-connected SSDs.

Other than the warranty and support provided by a huge company such as Dell, one of the reasons to buy a workstation from a big name is chassis design. The 5820 Tower is no exception. It’s extremely easy to open, using a catch on the side panel, while a tab at the rear allows this to be padlocked shut. The interior is efficiently laid out too, with tool-free access to many components.

The four front-accessible drive bays sit behind a plastic grille that pivots out with the press of a switch. These are 3.5in bays with quick-release caddies, one of which contains the NVMe SSD while the others have SATA ports at the rear for drives to slide into. Above this are some useful ports, including a headphone jack, two USB-C 3.1 ports, two Type-A USB ports and an SD card reader. There’s even a space for a slimline optical drive, and for the sake of its £14 price is probably worth adding.

We ran a mountain of benchmarks on the 5820 to assess its performance. An overall 157 score in our in-house benchmarks is fast but not blistering, reflecting that while the single-core speed is good for applications such as Photoshop, a mere four cores means it’s less impressive in multithreaded tasks. For example, Scan’s 3XS WI4000 Viz, with a six-core chip, scored 278 overall in our benchmarks. The new Apple iMac Pro was also far quicker. Similarly, this spec makes for a mediocre 3D rendering system, as reflected by 940 in the CPU portion of Maxon Cinebench 15 – the Scan managed 1,559.

3D modelling is where this system sits most comfortably, a fact reflected in its SPECviewperf 12.1 scores. The result of 131 in 3dsmax-05 is on par for a Quadro P4000 and roughly the same as the Scan (which has identical graphics). Likewise, 110 in maya-04 is on par with Scan, and a 168 score in sw-03 shows strong abilities in the popular SolidWorks product design application.

Overall, the P4000 performs well in a broad range of engineering, product design and content creation applications. The Precision 5820 will be a great tool for any of these types of modelling work. Similarly, the result of 180 in the OpenGL portion of Maxon Cinebench 15 confirms this system’s abilities when animating with Maxon Cinema 4D (although the Scan managed 227).

The graphics provide plenty of benefit available for GPU-powered rendering. The LuxMark 3.1 result of 3,149 is very good, as we expect from a Quadro P4000, showing strong OpenCL performance. Similarly, OctaneBench 3 produces a score of 104, which implies strong CUDA capabilities, and on par for the number of cores available on the P4000.

Dell Precision 5820 Tower review: Verdict

The Dell Precision 5820 Tower is a relatively quiet workstation in operation, and the configuration we were sent consumed less than 200W even when under heavy load. While £2,977 exc VAT for a relatively entry-level system isn’t cheap, this is only one specification: you can change whichever components you like. Whatever you choose, this is a well-constructed workstation with excellent design and content creation abilities that’s sure to find favour in larger agencies and media companies.

Source: expertreviews.co.uk