Dell Precision T5600 Workstation

Description

Workstations are a different breed from a typical desktop PC offering tested and verified compatibility with not only the operating system and hardware but also industry leading software such as Adobe, 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage, etc. Workstations are also the bread and butter for crunching numbers in finance, scientific analysis, engineering, and film editing. In 2012, HP systems were dominating the workstation market. With the arrival of the T3500, T5600, and T7600, all of that changed. With these Dell workstations, HP had some serious competition on their hands. In fact, the mid-range Dell T5600 tower workstation was more comparable to HP's top of the line Z820 workstation and had the performance credentials to prove it.

ISV Certification

ISV certified ensures this system performs effortlessly running intensive software applications used by design engineers, financial analysts, and geologists. ISV is an acronym for Independent Software Vendor and means these independent software vendors have tested the software, hardware, and components to ensure stable and reliable performance.

Performance

The Dell Precision T5600 workstation features Intel's C600 series chipset to support dual Xeon E5-2600 processors with up to 8 cores each. It also comes with turbo boost in some processors and optional vPro Technology, which is Intel's umbrella marketing term for a bunch of other things that are included with the processor to augment performance.

Storage

Choose from either two 3.5-inch drives or four 2.5-inch SAS, SATA or SSD drives. Storage controller options includes the standard Dell PERC H310, which supports up to 6GB/s transfer speeds and RAID of 0, 1, 5, and 10 or the optional PERCH710P hardware PCIe RAID card supporting SATA, SAS and RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5.

Memory

Quad-channel memory supports up to 128GB with two CPUs. There are 8 memory slots total, with 4 slots allocated to each CPU. Only DDR3 ECC RDIMMs are supported with memory speeds ranging from 1333MHz to 1600MHz. To achieve top memory speeds, the memory modules must be paired with a compatible processor. Speed of processing defaults to the slowest performer between the memory modules and CPUs.

Expansion

With dual processors this system supports up to six expansion slots, all full-length, for adding NICs, additional graphics cards, and optional audio and storage cards. There's also four USB ports in front and six in back, all are 2.0 except for one USB 3.0 port on both the front and back of the system. Choose from both Nvidia and AMD graphic cards, including the Nvidia Quadro 5000 and 6000 GPUs for high-end 3D work. The system also supports several AMD FirePro professional-grade cards, including the FirePro V7900 and V5900. A maximum of two graphics cards are supported. All of this is powered by a 90% efficient, 80-Plus Gold Certified 820W or 685W PSU with 300W total allocated to graphics card support. If you will be installing two GPUs we recommend installing the 820W power supply.

Management

Users can choose from several operating systems including Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu. The system also supports several security features including the ability to secure the hard drives and power supply, an intrusion sensor, data protection software, advanced authentication, and malware protection.

Summary

As with all Dell workstations, the Dell Precision T5600 workstation is very well designed and features tool-less access and replacement for many of the components. The system offers a reasonable amount of expansion with support for up to six hard drives and enough memory to meet the needs of most professional applications.