As we celebrate 30 years of SOLIDWORKS, we also say goodbye to the Dell Precision brand and introduce some new names. Firstly, a bit of history. In 1995, SOLIDWORKS revolutionised the CAD industry as the first 3D CAD system on windows. And just two years later, Dell launched the first Dell Precision Workstation, delivering the best performance for this new breed of professional applications. Running on Microsoft Windows. It may seem strange, but one of the most valuable companies in the world, NVIDIA hadn't even released their first graphics card. Another industry first in 1999, followed by the first professional graphics card under the Quadro branding in the year 2000. Dell Precision and NVIDIA Quadro became synonymous with professional applications such as SOLIDWORKS and CATIA. So it may come as a surprise that these brands have been retired. Starting with the changes to the Dell range for 2025. This isn't just about Dell Precision. It's part of an overall strategy to simplify Dell's product range. Also being retired are well-known names such as Inspiron and XPS. In the consumer spaces and for business users, the OptiPlex Vostro, and Latitude brands are also gone. Replacing these brands is a new, simplified range known as Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max. And while Alienware will remain for gaming, you weren't planning on running professional applications on a gaming machine where you. The consumer range, previously known as Inspiron and XPS, will now just be known as Dell and are aimed at home use. Dell Pro will be the new brand for office users, which were primarily under the OptiPlex and latitude brandings. And while these are good choices for light office applications, these are not suitable for CAD use as they will not feature dedicated graphics or the most powerful CPU’s. Dell Pro Max branding will be reserved for those requiring the highest performance, such as CAD, a direct replacement for the precision brand. Sounds simple. Well, on the desktop side, it is. The Dell Precision range is gradually being replaced by the desktops under the Pro Max brand. Currently, the Pro Max Micro, Slim and Tower T2, and currently the Pro Max Tower T2 offers the best performance for CAD and is scalable to support the demands of the majority of simulation and visualization users. Currently, there is no T1 or T3 and above, but we expect these names to be utilised in the future as more models in the range are updated. For now, some older models with the precision branding remain. And if you're unsure, check with us for the best option for your work. On the laptop side, things get a little more complicated. All of the laptop ranges will have three tiers, plus a number representing the screen size and the names. And for the Dell Pro Max range, launching July 2025, we have the Dell Pro Max 14 and 16. The Dell Pro Max 14 and 16 premium, and the Dell Pro Max 16 and 18 plus. The base tier of Dell Pro Max replaces the old Dell Precision 3000 series laptops and offers impressive performance for core CAD workflows and occasional visualization and simulation tasks at a very attractive price point. Available in 14 and 16 inch screen sizes. They may not sound like a huge upgrade on the 2024 models. However, the new taller 16 by ten ratio screens provide a lot more usable space, with upgrades to the materials and cooling on both models. These are more than entry level systems in 2025. The Dell Pro Max premium replaces the precision 5000 series laptops, delivering a blend of premium materials to offer the best combination of portability and performance. While the screen sizes remain the same as 2024. This brand new design is recommended for those who need to use their systems on the go. And the Dell Pro Max plus replaces the most powerful Dell Precision 7000 series laptops favored by our own engineers at the top of the range, with a new 18 inch screen option. This is an engineering marvel, barely bigger than the old 17 inch models, with a clever new three fan cooling system, stacking the CPU and graphics card for optimum packing and cooling. This allows them to run up to 200W. These systems are true desktop replacements, which still allow the flexibility to move between locations without compromising performance. Naming wise, this certainly sounds like a simpler range. Gone are the complicated model numbers and descriptions. If you do need to know how old your system is in future, there's also a model number on the system, which can be decoded to show the year of release, and the CPU vendor. All of the new Dell Pro Max models feature Intel's latest Core Ultra 200 series CPUs with enhanced performance, efficiency and dedicated AI chip known as the Neural Processing Unit. They can be used for local AI tasks, such as blurring your background on the teams meeting with more software likely to utilize this capability in years to come. So what about graphics? Well, all of these laptops feature graphics card from the new NVIDIA RTX Pro Blackwell generation. Each generation being named after a noteworthy scientist. The RTX Pro branding clears up any confusion versus their gaming GeForce graphics range. We can appreciate that when the NVIDIA Quadro branding was retired in 2021, there have been a couple of generations where the name sounded similar. For instance, the NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada generation is a supported card certified by SOLIDWORKS and Dassault Systèmes for compatibility with their applications. Whereas the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 sounds similar but is an unsupported consumer level graphics card. This may mean you miss out on certain graphics features and have an increased likelihood of performance and stability issues. In those cases, we cannot get assistance from the developers to resolve issues specific to a non-certified setup. On these laptops, it's clear for the new models launching Summer 2025, the entire stack from the entry level NVIDIA RTX Pro 506 gigabyte card all the way up to the NVIDIA RTX Pro 5000 with 24GB of graphics memory. Are the dedicated graphics cards supported for professional applications such as SOLIDWORKS and CATIA. On the desktop side, at the time of recording, only the 96 gigabyte NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell graphics card is available, and with an £8,000 price tag, this is more suitable for GPU compute tasks such as visualization, AI, and certain simulation products from the Dassault SIMULIA range. The cards more suited to CAD and everyday budgets are launching between now and the end of the year, so for CAD you will still see cards under the NVIDIA RTX Ada generation naming convention. For a little while yet. And away from the CAD arena, we couldn't get away with the video without another mention of AI. This summer, Dell are expanding their Pro Max range to include AI focused systems. The new Dell Pro Max with GB ten and GB 300 are based on NVIDIA's Grace Blackwell platform. These systems have an NVIDIA Grace ARM based CPU cores and NVIDIA Blackwell Graphics with up to 128GB of unified memory to work with AI models with up to 200 billion parameters or more. If you link two of them together, and the GB 300 features a larger memory capacity for even larger air models and around 20 times the compute power, albeit at a significantly higher cost. So while you won't be running CAD or even windows on these systems, if someone in your business is looking to utilize AI, this makes workflows previously not possible at the desk side feasible at a price that is accessible. And finally, if you're looking to upgrade, don't forget about another big change coming in October 2025. Microsoft are ending support for Windows 10 on the 14th of October 2025, and while you can pay Microsoft per device for extended security updates after this date, this does not extend to software support. Software developers such as SOLIDWORKS and Dassault Systèmes cannot get support from Microsoft to continue supporting their applications on Windows 10, and as a result, they will end support for Windows 10 at the same time as Microsoft. Yes, that's right, SOLIDWORKS 2026 will not be supported on Windows 10. You can check if your current system supports Windows 11 via a tool on Microsoft website or your hardware vendor. However, even if your current PC supports Windows 11, we recommend a replacement cycle of 3 to 5 years as optimal for engineering applications. These users often benefit most from a hardware refresh. The Dell Precision brand may be retired, but the new Dell Pro Max range are worthy successors to the name. Backed by the new NVIDIA RTX Pro Blackwell Graphics. These deliver a big uplift in performance, so if you're looking to upgrade this year, check out the optimal range of workstation specifications we recommend on our website, or get in touch for more advice.