Workstations are the desktop machines you buy if your results count. While a high end business PC will make quick work of a spreadsheet, graphics, engineering, and scientific apps require a little more oomph. Aside from power, ISV certifications, error-free memory, and expandability are major factors in the workstation purchase process. The Dell Precision T1600 (Best Deal: $1,234.00 at Dell SMB) passes all tests with flying colors, and is therefore our new Editor's Choice for single-processor workstations, replacing the HP Z210 Small Form Factor Workstation ($2,173 direct, 4 stars).
Design and Features
The Precision T1600 is a basic looking tower, though its silver and black two-tone façade will help distinguish it from the Dell Optiplex business systems in your organization. There's no mistaking this system for a run of the mill PC. The raised rectangular front panel channels air into the chassis to cool the system's workstation class Intel Xeon processor and Nvidia Quadro 2000 graphics card. The system has a decent amount of interior expansion room, including space for another optical drive, two more memory DIMMs, a PCI card, a PCIe x1 card, and an additional PCIe x16 graphics card so you can use more than two monitors. The system's Quadro card only supports two displays simultaneously. There is mount for an additional hard drive, but there's only one free SATA port, so you can either add an optical drive or a hard drive, but not both simultaneously. The system's two main hard drives are on tool-less sleds, so they can be swapped quickly in case of a drive failure. The system's PCI/PCIe cards are also tool-less, so you don't need a screwdriver for most upgrades. Outside, the system has ten USB 2.0 ports for external peripherals like hard drives, tablets, or the mouse and keyboard. The system lacks next gen ports like eSATA or USB 3.0, so you're stuck with slower USB 2.0 external hard drives. Essentially this means that this system is suited more for non-video workstation tasks. You wouldn't want to transfer multi-GB video files using the system's slower USB 2.0 ports.
The Precision T1600's Xeon processor, Nvidia Quadro graphics, and Intel-based motherboard combine (like Voltron) to give you the power to run high-end workstation apps. While the Precision T1600's ISV certified list isn't quite as long as the one on the Lenovo ThinkStation D20 ($9,344 direct, 4 stars), the Precision T1600's certifications still cover monster apps like AutoCAD, Maya, and SolidWorks. Speaking of apps, the system is devoid of bloatware. The two 500GB hard drives combined into a 1TB RAID 0 array are pretty empty when you turn on the system for the first time. Preloaded software was limited to useful apps like PowerDVD and Roxio Creator. Basically, you'll want very few pre-loaded apps, so there will be fewer opportunities for conflicting apps to crash your system and ruin millions of dollars worth of work. Besides, apps that stay running in the background use up processor power that could otherwise be doing real work, which is the reason you considered a workstation over a high end PC in the first place.
Performance
The reason to buy a workstation is partly speed and partly so you know you can trust your results. The trust comes into play when you use ISV certified apps and technologies like ECC (error correcting code) system memory. The speed comes from the quad-core Hyperthreaded Xeon E3-1270 processor and Nvidia Quadro 2000 graphics. The Precision T1600 is actually one of the fastest business systems we've tested, period, nevermind the fact that it's a workstation. The Precision T1600 completed the Handbrake video test in a quick 1:13 and the Photoshop CS5 test in 2:57. To put this into perspective, the current Editor's Choice HP Z210 Small Form Factor Workstation completed the same tasks a bit slower (1:32 Handbrake, 3:04 CS5). The Precision is also faster than the current Enterprise-class business PC, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M91p ($1,180 direct, 4 stars) (1:21 Handbrake, 3:12 CS5). That's pretty fast, and it means that your graphics tasks will be completed rather quickly on the Precision T1600. The Del also does better than its competition on the 3D tests, including the 3DMark11 benchmark and our 3D game tests. While we know you won't be playing 3D games on your workstation machines, the tests still show that the Precision T1600 has a lot of 3D rendering power.
Compared with the enterprise-class Lenovo M91p , workstations like the Precision T1600 show that they have better performance in addition to the ISV certification factor. You want your tasks done quickly? Get a workstation. And among workstations, the Precision T1600 comes out looking pretty good as well. Compared with the Editor's Choice HP Z210, the Precision T1600 has more power, much better expandability, and a much better price. The Z210 is 2,343 with the Quadro FX 1800 card, and the Precision T1600 comes with a faster processor and graphics for $150 less money. About the only thing the HP Z210 has over the Precision T1600 is that the former comes with an SSD boot drive that may be a bit faster during morning boot-up and loading apps. Right now, the Dell Precision T1600 has the best balance between price, performance, and expandability. So therefore we award the Dell Precision T1600 our new Editors' Choice award for single-processor-equipped workstations.
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