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Dell's Precision 7920 Tower (starts at $1,779; a whopping $23,289 as tested) 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 24 cores and 48 threads each), 96GB of memory, five storage drives, and a 48GB Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000 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.

Scalable to the Nines

The components in my Precision 7920 review unit that contribute the most to its over-$20,000 price are its dual 2.4GHz Xeon Platinum 8260 CPUs (a $6,529 uptick over the single base 1.9GHz Xeon Bronze 3204) and its 48GB Quadro RTX 8000 GPU ($4,203 over the base 2GB AMD Radeon Pro WX 2100).

Behind those, its 96GB of DDR4-2933 error-correcting code (ECC) memory rings up at $1,300, while its storage drives—a single 512GB solid-state drive for Windows 10 Pro for Workstations and four 4TB, 3.5-inch SATA hard drives for data—add about the same. The hard drives are configured in a RAID 10 array via a MegaRAID SAS 9460-16i storage controller, which adds another $411. A three-year warranty with onsite service is standard fare, though I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the available five-year warranty for a machine this expensive.

Believe it or not, this Precision 7920 isn't maxed out; just a few more clicks will take you into the six-figure range. For instance, the processor options climb up to dual Xeon Platinum "L" suffix chips that support high memory ceilings, a required upgrade should you decide to fork over about $60,000 for the workstation's 3TB maximum. (That's with a "T"; it would be 24 128GB RDIMMs.) Dual, triple, or quad graphics cards are also available, as well as up to ten traditional storage drives and numerous M.2 SSDs. All told, it's a remarkably scalable and configurable system.

The Dell's mainstream competition comes from the HP Z8 Tower and Lenovo ThinkStation P920, both formidable dual-CPU workstations with equivalent hardware. I kitted out the HP to $28,858 with roughly the same loadout, and while Lenovo's configuration tools didn't allow me to select the Dell's exact parts, it's a safe bet that its price would be within a few thousand. There really isn't an Apple side to this equation since the Mac Pro is only offered with a single CPU. Nonetheless, I priced it at $16,799 with the fastest it offers (a 28-core Intel Xeon W-class) and an AMD Radeon Pro Vega II GPU.

I'll have a detailed discussion of the Precision's hardware before the benchmarks section. First, let's get into the heart of the Precision 7920.

Larger Than Life

The Precision 7920 is a goliath tower, measuring 17 by 8.6 by 22.3 inches (HWD) and weighing a whopping 56 pounds in this review guise. The metal carry handles on its front and back are supremely sturdy and a godsend for moving it any distance.

This tower shares its design theme with the Dell Precision 5820. The construction is almost entirely steel. Honeycomb front panels allow airflow for the system's numerous fans; four are stacked behind the left-side grate, another two point out the rear, and a seventh slots between the CPU coolers. (More on the latter soon.)

There are numerous smaller fans in the power supply, graphics card, and several dedicated to the various storage drives. The Precision doesn't get annoyingly loud despite all those fans, giving off just a low background hum for most tasks. The fans spooled up slightly while I was running our benchmark tests, but I had to listen for them.

This tower's excellent front-panel connectivity includes a full-size SD card reader, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports, and an audio combo jack.

The optional slimline DVD writer sits off to the right. A switch on the dividing line between the front panels releases the right-side grate for access to the four lower 3.5-inch drive bays:

Each bay is populated with a 4TB SATA drive in my unit. Swapping drives is a toolless operation; simply press the release button and use the pop-out handle to slide out the caddy. Two fans behind the drive bays keep them cool.

The right chamber of the chassis is dedicated to storage drives and power. My Precision 7920 test unit has a 1,400-watt server-style power supply. For the ultimate in serviceability, it can be replaced in less than a minute without even opening the chassis. Pressing the release tab allows it to slide out:

This power supply has no attached wires, instead plugging via a PCI Express-like connector into a power control board. The replacement simply slides in.

Impressive Innards

A release latch on the left panel provide toolless access to the Precision 7920's interior. The inside looks plain at first, since much of the action is hidden behind a plastic shroud that routes airflow over the CPUs and memory slots.

Removing the shroud (which doesn't require tools, though it does require disconnecting a fan cable) reveals serious hardware:

The server-style motherboard is massive, at about 16 by 16 inches, and covers almost every square inch of the interior. Dell prints a handy diagram of its ports, slots, and connectors on the access panel door.

The tall, aluminum-finned CPU coolers sit between 24 memory slots, 12 of which are allocated to each CPU. The 96GB of memory in my tower consists of a dozen 8GB DDR4-2933 ECC RDIMMs running in six-channel mode.

Moving below, the mirror-like finish on the Quadro RTX 8000 card is hard to miss. This review unit has just one of them, but Dell will happily install up to three if you so desire.

The card uses a blower-style cooler and has its power connectors (one 6-pin and one 8-pin) on the aft end instead of on the side to best accommodate multi-GPU scenarios.

The PCIe slot above the Quadro is occupied by a MegaRAID SAS 9460-16i hardware RAID controller, while a Dell Ultra Speed Duo card is installed a slot below it. The latter has two M.2 slots, one of which holds a 512GB PCIe SSD in my configuration. The card has a small fan to keep drive temperatures in check. Dell also offers an Ultra Speed Quad card with four M.2 slots. One slot further below is the optional Thunderbolt 3 add-in card with two Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) connectors and a DisplayPort video input.

The Quadro RTX 8000 provides four DisplayPort video outputs and a VirtualLink USB-C connector for virtual reality headsets. The motherboard provides the remaining connectivity, including line-out and line-in/microphone jacks, serial and PS/2 legacy ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet jacks, and six USB 3.1 Type-A ports.

Dell offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, though this unit isn't so equipped. You can also opt for Intel or Aquantia network add-in cards for more robust wired connectivity.

Provided Peripherals

The Dell KB813 wired keyboard (included in this Precision 7920's price) is relatively basic save for its SmartCard slot. This is a keyboard that would likely be deployed in an enterprise or high security environment. Its keys have a reassuring feel and the palm rest is a nice touch.

A Dell MS116 wired mouse is also included. Its three buttons, scroll wheel, and comfortable shape make it a reliable, if basic, everyday performer.

Hardware In-Depth

The Precision 7920's elite hardware deserves a deep dive, so this section will get a little technical. (Our desktop workstations guide is a good intro to workstation technology.)

Let's start with the CPU choices. The Dell offers all four tiers of Intel's "Cascade Lake" second-generation Xeon scalable processor line: Bronze (the most basic, aimed at low-intensity work with just six or eight cores and scaling to two CPUs); Silver (a step up in performance, offering up to 16 cores and faster memory support); Gold (another step up, with up to 28 cores and scaling to four CPUs); and Platinum (the highest-end chips, scaling to eight CPUs and supporting up to 4.5TB of memory).

The Xeon Platinum chips support three Intel Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI) links for the fastest CPU-to-CPU communication; the Xeon Gold supports either two or three such links, and Silver and Bronze support only two. All tiers support six-channel memory for massive bandwidth. I measured my review unit's peak read performance at 204GB per second with Intel's Memory Latency Checker. (For unrealistic comparison's sake, that's more than four times the rated bandwidth of the Core i9-9900K, Intel's flagship mainstream CPU.) There are more differences between the Xeon scalable tiers that I won't get into here, such as the number of AVX-512 FMA units, but I've covered the common decision points.

The outstanding difference between the Precision 7920's Xeon scalable processors and the Precision 5820's Xeon W-class chips is that the former support more than one of them being installed in a system. If you need more cores and threads than the Precision 5820's top choice—the 18-core, 36-thread Xeon W-2195—then the Precision 7920 with one or two CPUs is your next destination.

The Precision 7920 offers a maximum of 56 processor cores and 112 threads via two 28-core, 56-thread Xeon Platinum chips (models 8276 and 8280, including "M" and "L" suffix chips with higher-than 1TB memory ceilings). The two Xeon Platinum 8260 chips in my review unit aren't far behind with a combined 48 cores and 96 threads. It's mildly amusing to look at the Windows Task Manager with that many logical CPUs…

The CPU cores run at a relatively modest 2.4GHz but can reach 3.9GHz in Turbo Boost mode. The available Xeon Platinum 8268 chips have the same core and thread count but a higher thermal design power (TDP) rating (205 watts versus 165 watts for the 8260). They also top out at 3.9GHz but have a base clock about 20 percent higher (2.9GHz), which makes them an attractive upgrade for long-running workloads that fully utilize the CPUs, where the processor would operate closer to its base than its turbo clock.

Now let's move into GPU territory. The Precision 7920's multitude of AMD Radeon Pro and Nvidia Quadro professional-grade GPU choices (up to four cards) are designed for running professional apps and help it achieve independent software vendor (ISV) certifications. My review unit's 48GB "Pascal" Quadro RTX 8000 is the crown jewel of GPUs today, surpassing even the 32GB "Volta" Quadro GV100 (which is available in the Precision 7920) in onboard memory. The Quadro RTX 8000 is the full Pascal GPU, offering the same 4,608 CUDA cores, 575 Tensor cores, and 72 ray-tracing cores that can be found in the Quadro RTX 6000 and the prosumer GeForce Titan RTX. (The former is offered in the Precision 7920; the latter isn't. Our GeForce RTX 2080 review is worth a read for the low-down on the Pascal GPU architecture.)

Unlike the Titan RTX, the Quadro RTX 6000 and RTX 8000 both use ECC memory, which can be mandatory if errors in calculations are unacceptable (as would be the case in scientific research and financial scenarios). The Quadro RTX 8000 doubles the RTX 6000's frame buffer to 48GB; that can be a highly attractive reason to spend the extra cash, as it allows larger datasets and more complex models to be handled in memory for better performance. The Precision 7920 can be equipped with three RTX 8000s, as I wrote earlier, though there are workstations on the market that offer four.

Let's proceed to the benchmarks, shall we?

Performance and Benchmarks

I don't blame you if you skipped down here to see how a $23,289 workstation performs, though I must temper expectations of it breaking our charts. It didn't do that in most cases, but that doesn't mean it's slow. Most of our CPU-sensitive benchmarking regimen doesn't fully leverage all 24 cores and 48 threads of one of my Precision's processors, let alone both, so some of its results are undistinguished next to the machines I used for comparison:

These are the fastest workstations we've tested. The Precision 7920 would seem to have the edge when it comes to overall CPU grunt, but its weak point is that its CPU cores run at only 2.4GHz and scale to just 3.9GHz in Turbo Boost mode. Compare that to the Core i9-9900K in the HP and Asus, which runs at 3.6GHz and tops out at 5GHz—it's actually the fastest CPU here for workflows that don't fully leverage more than its 8 cores and 16 threads (which is true for most of our tests).

Graphics-wise, the Precision 7920's Quadro RTX 8000 should be the fastest, though this won't be obvious in our 3D benchmarks for reasons I'll explain.

Storage, Media, and CPU Tests

Our PCMark 10 general system assessment gauges a system's performance across tasks like office productivity, videoconferencing, and web surfing, all things that the Precision 7920 can handle with both hands tied behind its back. It didn't score particularly well next to the other machines because the test doesn't use anywhere near the system's CPU or GPU power, a theme that will continue. Nonetheless, it scored well above the 4,000-point mark that we consider excellent for Microsoft Office and similar tasks. Our PCMark 8 storage benchmark wasn't compatible with the Precision 7920, something that's not uncommon among workstations.

Next up is Cinebench R15, a CPU-cruncher that uses all available processor cores and threads to render a complex image.

Now we're talking! The Precision 7920's dual-CPU firepower had awesome effect here with the highest score we've ever seen from a tested system. (The AMD Threadripper 3970X scored higher, though that was just a review of the chip itself.) As a fun fact, its CPUs have more total cores and threads than all the other systems combined.

Another processor-intensive test is our Handbrake video editing exercise, in which we transcode a 12-minute 4K video down to 1080p.

The Precision 7920 leads the way yet doesn't stand out, not due to any fault of its own. The preset we use in this benchmark doesn't scale well beyond six to eight CPU cores (per Handbrake's documentation), so much of its CPU potential went untapped. That underlines the critical lesson that hardware is only useful if software can utilize it.

With workstations like these, we also use POV-Ray 3.7 for CPU assessment. This test uses ray tracing to render a three-dimensional image. (Note that it doesn't use the ray tracing features of Nvidia's RTX-class GPUs; this is purely CPU-focused.)

The Precision 7920 did well here, but it's again held back by software. This benchmark supports multiple threads, but it doesn't support multiple CPUs. Thus, only half the Dell's CPU power was utilized.

The final test in this section is photo editing. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the total. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play.

Even the most advanced Photoshop task wouldn't be a challenge for the Precision 7920, although it takes a back seat to the others here since our test doesn't take advantage of its hardware. It's ironic (or perhaps frustrating) that the Asus and HP were the best performers despite using the least expensive (though highest-clocked) CPUs in the lot.

Workstation and Graphics Tests

We use two benchmark suites to gauge the gaming performance potential of a PC. In the first, UL's 3DMark, we run two DirectX 11-driven subtests, the mainstream Sky Diver and the more challenging Fire Strike. Our other gaming simulation is Unigine Corp.'s Superposition, which uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene.

The Precision 7920 scored just okay in both tests as neither use its CPU grunt, nor let the Quadro RTX 8000 stretch its legs. That said, gaming is hardly a realistic application for this machine.

Now we'll move on to Cinebench R15's OpenGL test, which taps the hardware rendering capabilities of the GPU.

The Precision 7920 did fine, but as in many previous tests, it just didn't stand out. The Windows Task Manager reported a mere 2 percent CPU usage during this test (about 1.5 threads' worth) and no more than one-third utilization of the Quadro RTX 8000.

Our next, and most workstation-savvy, benchmark is SPECviewperf 13, which renders and rotates wireframe models using real-world viewsets from popular ISV apps.

The story repeats here, with the Precision 7920 not quite distinguishing itself, although it does produce numbers that indicate it could run these apps without breaking a sweat.

Now onto some unofficial tests. Cinebench R15 provided a glimpse at how powerful the Precision 7920's dual CPUs could be, though none of our tests truly tested the Quadro RTX 8000. There was no chance I was going to miss an opportunity to exercise a $5,500 GPU, so I fired up the following benchmarks on both the Precision 7920 and the Corsair One Pro i200.

First up is LuxMark, a cross-platform OpenCL benchmarking tool. (Higher scores are best.)

The Dell predictably scored the best. It wasn't massively faster than the Corsair, and I didn't expect that to be the case. The latter's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti has almost as many CUDA cores as the Quadro RTX 8000 (4,352 versus 4,608), and the scoring differences generally follow that disparity.

The next and last benchmark I ran is Otoy's OctaneBench 4, based on its OctaneRender 4 GPU rendering software. (Higher scores are best.)

Here, again, the Dell's RTX 8000 clinched the top spot. It's the one to beat for single GPU rendering performance.

I didn't have a machine learning or deep learning benchmark on hand, but that's the type of scenario where the Quadro RTX 8000's 48GB frame buffer could be worth the investment over a lesser GPU. Otherwise, the Quadro RTX 6000 will offer identical performance for less. Depending on the workflow, a pair of Quadro RTX 5000 or RTX 4000 GPUs could also be equally (or more) attractive.

Two for the Money: A Bomb Workstation Pick

Dell's Precision 7920 is an epic workstation in every sense of the word. The dual-CPU configuration Dell sent offers immense performance for tasks that can take advantage of such hardware, which can also be said about its 48GB Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card. Software is the limiting factor with a machine like this; many of our benchmark tests showed it to be not much faster than workstations that cost much less, while in others it was simply off-the-charts fast.

This Dell is second to none when it comes to serviceability, with a power supply that can be swapped without disassembly, accessible front drive bays, and toolless access to just about everything. It also has fantastic expansion possibilities; it could be upgraded several times over to stay relevant long after purchase.

None of the Precision 7920's prowess comes cheap, of course, but it's priced to match its immediate competition. Dell's own Precision 5820 can be a more economical choice if you're not in need of dual CPUs, triple GPUs, or more than 256GB of memory. But for any of those extremes, the Precision 7920 is our top pick for a dual-CPU workstation.

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