Description

Dell’s Precision 7920 Tower  is one of the world’s most powerful desktop workstations. Dell sent it to us in a supercomputer-like configuration with not one but two Intel Xeon Platinum 8260 processors (sporting 20 cores and 40 threads each), 32GB of memory, five storage drives, and a 8GB Nvidia Quadro P400 graphics card. Specialized is the word to describe this monster, as its hardware is only as good as the software that can leverage it. Case in point, the Precision 7920 didn’t always excel in our benchmark tests since most of them don’t scale to use all its hardware. Its heavy lifting potential is best used in data science and machine learning scenarios where maximum performance and long-term reliability are key, for which the 7920 gets our highest recommendation. In scenarios where only a single CPU is needed, Dell’s Precision 5820 is more economical and nearly as expandable, while HP’s Z2 Tower G4 can provide a lot of pep in a smaller and even more affordable form factor. But when push comes to shove, the Precision 7920 stands tall as one of the fastest workstations that money—and a lot of it—can buy.