Dell Announces Updated Precision Workstation Lineup at SIGGRAPH: Refreshed Towers, Racks, and Laptop

This year, Dell is celebrating the 20^th anniversary of their Precision Workstations. The first Precision workstation, the Workstation 400, was released in 1997 and consisted of a 128MB graphics card, with a total cost at the time of around $12K. The tale is told that sales were slow out of the gate for Dell, with the company selling only 700 units in the first quarter. By the end of the second quarter, Dell sold 7000 units and Precision workstation lineups were well on their way. 

Fast forward to today where the workloads have increased massively – and 128MB of VRAM is a rounding error – and workstation hardware manufacturers like Dell are continuing to improve their production designs to keep up with user demands. Part of Dell’s goals with their latest iteration of their Precision hardware is to become a trusted partner for Data Center solutions, and in turn entice commercial clients to move away from renting hardware and back towards buying it up front. With many small to medium size businesses that are farming out their hardware to services such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, there are pieces of the pie to be taken back.  

Precision Towers and Rack

For the first time in 5 years, Dell has updated both their tower and rack chassis workstations. Dell claims the Precision Tower and Rack workstations are, “…first to market with leading technology to handle complex, creative workloads, including development and deployment of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.”The front of both class devices has changed the look of the front grill with the 2U 7920 looking a lot different. On the rack mount, where there used to be a simple bar going across it, has been replaced with a large hexagonal cover instead. The workstations receive more of an update with a diamond pattern on the front as well as a bezel down the middle where the peripheral attachments can be inserted. 

On the hardware side, the new lineup consists of 5820, 7820, and 7920 Towers as well as a 2U 7920 rack. All incorporate the latest Skylake-X processors, and according to Dell, are designed with flexibility in mind. One of the unique features on the new lineup is bringing PCIe to the front of the chassis where custom devices, such as large removable storage, can be used without entering the chassis. This includes SATA, SAS, PCIe M.2/U.2 NVMe SSDs.

Gallery: Dell Precision 5820, 7820, and 7890

The new towers hold up to 1.5 TB of 2666 MHz RDIMM memory in 4 or 6 channel configurations, with LRDIMMs supporting up to 3 TB on specific CPUs in the 7920. The smaller siblings in the 5820 and 7820 hold up to 256GB and 384GB respectively. CPU support, like RAM, will vary a bit by model. All of these systems support Skylake-X Xeons and are based on the C261 chipset. The 5820 supports up to a 10 core Xeon, while the larger towers and rack mount servers support up to 28 core Xeons.

On the graphics side of the house, Dell uses both NVIDIA and AMD professional graphics cards, with the 7920 and 7820 towers supporting up to 900W of graphics power when using up to 3 double width GPUs. Available NVIDIA cards go up to the Quadro GP100 series cards and other Pascal based cards, while for AMD, customers can get up to AMD’s newly announced Radeon Pro WX9100. The workstations will also support the upcoming Radeon Pro SSG due out in fall. All of this horsepower, both from the CPUs and GPUs can be used for creation and deploying cognitive technologies among many other use cases Dell is targeting with their workstations.

The towers and rack workstations will be available starting October 3rd, 2017. 

Precision 5520 Laptop: 20th Anniversary Edition

Meanwhile, Dell has also announced an update to their Precision 5520 laptop, which they’re calling the Anniversary Edition. The refreshed 5520 is targeting the prosumer market, separating itself from the XPS lineup by using Xeon CPUs and professional graphics. More specifically, the limited edition Anniversary version has several aesthetic changes. The chassis comes in a new color that is dark gray, almost black, which they call, Abyss. The shell is made of anodized aluminum with a brushed finish and anti-fingerprint coating. Outside of the updated chassis appearance, it also comes with a unique Dell 20th-anniversary wallpaper and a special badge commemorating the occasion located on the bottom of the device. 

Specifications for the 5520 Anniversary Edition were not shared, though Dell did mention there will be two high-end configuration options.  Pricing on the limited run Precision 5520 20th-Anniversary Edition comes in at $2179. Availability is today, August 1st. More details can be found at the Dell.com Precision Anniversary website. 

Gallery: Dell Precision 5520

Dell Canvas

Last but not least, this morning Dell is also announcing that their long-awaited Canvas display & input system is now shipping. Essentially a large format touch tablet to maximize drawing space, the Canvas is Dell’s take on Microsoft’s Surface Studio, using a combination of a large surface, digital pen, totems object manipulation and interaction. However unlike the Surface Studio, the Canvas is not a stand-alone PC; rather it’s just an input system and a display. Users still need to connect it to an existing PC to actually use it.

The star of the show is Dell’s choice of panel, which is a QHD (2560 x1400) IPS display. Otherwise the Canvas supports over 90 pieces of software including Adobe, Autodesk, Solidworks, etc. Availability starts August 1^st with the device priced at $1799. This includes the QHD screen/tablet, pen, and the dial totem (the smaller knob totem is optional). 

Gallery: Dell Canvas

More information on the Precision Performance Towers, Racks, the limited run Anniversary Edition 5520 laptop, and Dell Canvas can be found at the Dell website. 

Related Reading:

• The Dell XPS I5 9560 Review: Infinity Edge Part 2
• Lenovo Unveils Thinkstation P320 Tiny SFF Workstation
• NVIDIA Announces Quadro GP100 – Big Pascal Comes to Workstations

HP Unveils Third-Gen All-In-One Z1 Workstation: 4K Display, Intel Xeon, Professional Graphics

HP last week introduced its third-generation HP Z1 all-in-one workstation. The new system offers higher performance than its predecessor as well as a 4K resolution display. The new Z1 is also significantly more compact compared to prior two generations of HP’s Z1 machines, but retains upgradeablility and a serviceable design. In a bid to make the system smaller and slimmer, HP had to shrink the size of the display and move to a purely M.2/2.5-inch storage platform.

The HP Z1 G3 AIO workstation features 23.6” IPS display panel with 4K (3840×2160) resolution at a 60 Hz refresh rate, a rated 300 nits maximum brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio as well as 178°/178° horizontal/vertical viewing angles. For comparison, the first and the second generations of HP’s Z1 featured 27” monitors with 2560×1440 resolution, but with the new incarnation of its AIO workstation the company preferred to install a smaller display panel to make the system more compact, increasing the PPI from 108.8 to 186.7.

The new HP Z1 G3 is based on the Intel Xeon E3 v5/Core i3/i5/i7-series (Skylake) processorsas well as the Intel C236 PCH (platform controller hub). The new AIO workstation can be equipped with up to 64 GB of DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM memory (ECC is supported only by the Xeon and the Core i3 CPUs), up from 32 GB of DDR3 supported by the previous-gen model. The graphics sub-system of the new HP Z1 G3 relies on either Intel’s HD Graphics 530/P530 cores (Gen 9, 24 EUs), NVIDIA’s Quadro M1000M 2 GB (512 stream processors) or M2000M 4 GB (640 stream processors) professional graphics adapters. Since the predecessors of HP’s Z1 G3 relied on low-power professional graphics adapters from NVIDIA in MXM 3.1 form-factor, it is not surprising that the company decided to install similar cards this time. 

Storage in the HP Z1 G3 is something that was significantly redesigned compared to previous generations. The new workstation supports up to two 2.5” HDDs or SSDs with SATA 6 Gbps interface as well as up to two HP Z-Turbo Gen 2 NVMe SSDs in the M.2 2280 form-factor and both with PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. As a result, the Z1 G3 has inherently faster storage system than its predecessors (which did not support PCIe 3.0 SSDs), albeit without the opportunity for a large 3.5-inch mechanical. When it comes to storage space, not everything is that easy. HP itself installs SSDs and HDDs with up to 1 TB capacity, hence, it can equip its Z1 G3 machine with up to 4 TB of storage. However, since there are M.2 SSDs and 2.5” HDDs and SSDs with over 1 TB capacities, end-users could install such drives themselves due to tool-less upgrade and maintenance capabilities. Hardware RAID is supported only for 2.5” HDDs and not everything is clear with software RAID for M.2 drives. Moreover, the system no longer has an internal optical drive.

As for input/output capabilities, the new HP Z1 supports two Thunderbolt 3 ports (the number of controllers is unknown, could either be one controller per port or one controller for both) to connect USB-C and TB3 peripherals as well as external displays. There are also six USB 3.0 ports (one supports charging), one SD 4.0 media card reader, a DisplayPort 1.2 connector and a TRRS connector for headsets. Networking and wireless capabilities look standard for today’s workstations: one Intel I219LM Gigabit Ethernet controller as well as one Intel 8260 Wi-Fi 802.11ac with Bluetooth 4.2 module (installed into its own M.2 slot, thus, does not impact storage options). The system also has four internal stereo speakers with DTS Studio Sound software enhancement.

HP announced its first-generation Z1 AIO workstation back in early 2012. The machine was based on the Intel Xeon E3 v3 or the Intel Core i3/i5 processors (Ivy Bridge), NVIDIA’s mobile Quadro graphics and featured a 27” display panel, an optical drive (or an optional Thunderbolt module) module, desktop-class DDR3 DIMMs, SATA HDDs and so on. The HP Z1 G1 received the first ever 10 out of 10 AIO repairability score from iFixit because it was possible to replace all internal components (even its display panel) fairly easy. The downside of Z1’s architecture was its weight and cost. The maximum weight of the system with stand was around 21.3 kilograms and the cost started at $1899. The HP Z1 G2 followed its ancestor in many ways. However, its weight was still around 21.3 kilograms and the price started at $1999.

When designing the third-generation of its Z1 workstations, HP engineers tried to make the system lighter, thinner and more affordable. They decided to go with a smaller (yet, higher-resolution) display panel, SO-DIMMs rather than full-sized memory modules, removed the optical drive and also lost the 3.5” HDD bay. The result is evident: the system weighs 10.51 kilograms and is two times thinner than its predecessors. The cost of the workstation starts at $1498 in its basic configuration, which is lower compared to the Z1 and the Z1 G2. HP advertises tool-less upgrades and maintenance, but it remains to be seen whether the Z1 G3 is as easy to repair as its predecessors.  

The HP Z1 workstation will be available from May.