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When configuring a desktop workstation, you can save quite a bit if you’re willing to weigh trade-offs. For example, you can choose a consumer-level graphics card and a professional-class AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processor, which favors CPU-intensive tasks like CGI rendering or report generation. The Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series (3620) (starts at $629; $2,765.21 as tested) goes the opposite route, pairing a high-end-consumer Intel Core i7-6700K processor with an Nvidia Quadro M4000 professional graphics card. The result? Plenty of 3D graphics power for creating visual projects and manipulating virtual objects in real time, with very little impact on day-to-day performance.
Design and Features
The Precision Tower 3620($649.00 at Dell Technologies)(Opens in a new window) has the professional, utilitarian look you expect from a Windows workstation. It measures 14.2 by 6.9 by 17.1 inches, so you’ll need some space on top of or under your desk. It’s more compact than towers like the Dell Precision Tower 5810( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and the Digital Storm Slade Pro, our last two top picks for single-processor workstations. The chassis is business matte black, with a perforated panel on three-quarters of its front face to aid airflow and add style. The optical drive and extra 5.25-inch drive bay are installed in a portion of the case that overhangs the front grille, which gives you a handle to hold the tower when transporting it from desk to desk.
There’s plenty of internal space for upgrades, and most IT access points are tool-less and marked in blue so they’re easy to find when crawling under a desk. Your IT team can install PCI Express (PCIe) expansion cards, hard drives, and memory without needing a screwdriver. There are no free DIMM slots, but it’s easy to pop out the chips if you want to replace them to increase the RAM from 32GB to the 64GB maximum.
Our review unit has a 512GB 2.5-inch SSD boot drive and two 2.5-inch 1TB 7,200rpm SATA hard drives connected in a RAID Level 0 array (for a total of 2TB). Below the Nvidia Quadro M4000 card you’ll find a free PCI slot, one PCIe x4 card slot, an M.2 slot, and a second PCIe x16 slot (wired x4). Besides the extra optical drive bay and the aforementioned M.2 slot, one 3.5-inch drive bay and one 2.5-inch drive bay are free for adding extra storage. Understandably, the larger Dell Precision Tower 5810 and Digital Storm Slade Pro offer more space inside their cases, but the 3620 certainly has more room than the compact HP Z240 SFF Workstation( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and the Origin Chronos Pro($9,620.00 Tested Configuration at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window). Note that the Dell Precision Tower 5810 and the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation include high-capacity SSD(s), which boost their prices by multiple thousands of dollars.
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Connectivity is excellent. On the front panel, you’ll find a headphone jack, a microphone jack, two USB 2.0 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports. The USB 3.0 ports are notably colored blue: Some of Dell’s Optiplex desktops and the Precision Tower 5810 can confuse your employees, since their USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports are the same black color. In the back, you’ll find four DisplayPort connectors on the graphics card, which you should use for plugging in your main display(s). On the back panel itself, you’ll find PS/2 mouse and keyboard jacks, an Ethernet jack, line-in and line-out audio, a serial port, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and two DisplayPort connectors and an HDMI port (though these connect to the processor’s integrated graphics and should be used for auxiliary displays only). The case door has a simple latch to open it and a cable loop so you can lock the workstation to your desk. The system comes with a three-year on-site warranty.
Performance
As stated above, the Precision Tower 3620 comes with an unlocked Intel Core i7-6700K processor. While overclocking is a popular modification for boutique gaming PC manufacturers, the Core i7-6700K is running at its stock 4GHz speed, thus ensuring better stability. Dell could have used an Intel Xeon processor with more cores, but instead decided to take that money and put it towards the Quadro M4000 graphics card, a midrange model that is Nvidia’s most powerful single-slot professional card. (The higher-end M5000 and M6000 cards both take up two slots in a PC chassis.) That extra performance shows in 3D benchmark scores like 3DMark Cloud Gate (25,887 points) and Fire Strike Extreme (3,551). That’s only a shade behind the Digital Storm Slade Pro on Fire Strike Extreme (3,590). Granted, the Nvidia GeForce Titan X–equipped Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation was faster on five of the six 3D tests, but it costs almost $9,500. In any case, the Precision Tower 3620 is a solid choice if you need to render 3D graphics you can manipulate in real time (such as for architectural previsualizations, animation storyboarding, or troubleshooting CAD or CAM models).
See How We Test Desktops
On the other benchmarks, the Precision Tower 3620 lags pricier models, but still performs respectably. It completed the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test with a score of 3,643 points, and finished the HandBrake and Photoshop tests with much aplomb (52 seconds and 2 minutes, 30 seconds, respectively). That’s measurably faster than the HP Z240 SFF workstation overall, and comparable to the performance of the Boxx Apexx 2. The higher-performing Intel Xeon E5 processors in the Precision Tower 5810, the Slade Pro, and Tiki Workstation helped those systems dominate the CineBench (3D rendering in software) and HandBrake tests, but the Precision Tower 3620 was as fast or better on Photoshop. Unless you’re running a task that can take advantage of more than eight processor threads (rendering a CGI animation, for example), then the Core i7-6700K is more than capable enough.
While the 10-core Xeon processors in larger workstations like the Digital Storm Slade Pro have their place, the $6,000-$9,000 price tags are tough to swallow. The $2,765 Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series (3620) is a lot easier to budget for, but still excels on everyday tasks, including photo editing, video editing, and 3D visualization work. It earns our Editors’ Choice for single-processor workstation by virtue of performing almost as well as (or better than) the Slade Pro on many of our benchmark tests, all for less than half the price.
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Configured with a consumer-level Core i7 processor, the Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series (3620) is a professional desktop that performs just as well as a Xeon-powered one on most tasks, but costs thousands of dollars less.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/dell-precision-tower-3000-series-3620
