Today we're looking at the new Dell Precision 3680. And if you click because of the title, let me explain. Dell are claiming that this is the fastest workstation for single threaded tasks based on their own internal comparisons. In January 2024. This should be great news for CAD as most of those workflows are single threaded by the very nature. One feature has to be calculated before the next can be built on top of that. However, even this bold claim doesn't truly capture what the Dell Precision 3680 is all about for engineering workflows. We believe it's the best workstation for the vast majority of CAD and related workflows. With 14 generation Intel Core CPUs offering the highest single threaded performance and up to 24 cores for the more multi-threaded tasks, and being a workstation platform, the Intel Core CPUs also support workstation level features such as error code correction Ram to reduce the likelihood of operating system and software crashes. They'll also layer their own technology on top of this. Enhanced BIOS level security features and their reliable memory technology, which can correct for bad memory sectors, avoiding repeated future errors and also suggest proactive component replacement when necessary. The precision 3680 replaces Dell's most popular current workstation, the precision 3660. So what's changed for the new model? On the outside, the differences are subtle with only a slightly larger vent on the side of the system, where on the inside is where we see most of the changes with updated 14th generation Intel CPUs and Nvidia Ada generation professional graphics plus. Crucially, Dell R&D had been hard at work to ensure they get the most from these new, more powerful components. The challenge for these latest generations of Intel CPUs has been delivering sufficient power to the CPU, while also keeping it cool enough to run at peak performance. Dell has addressed this in an innovative way with their new air shroud. While the precision 3680, in common with many PC case designs has a large mesh front to allow plenty of airflow to be drawn into the front of the case, and exhaust is out the rear of the PC. In common with most PC designs, there was still a lot of potential for the recirculation of hot air within the case. This new design directs air from an intake fan at the front over the key components of the motherboard across a massive CPU cooler, which has its own fan to keep pushing across the fins and heat pipes for the hot air. As an exhaust about the rear of the system by another fan. This design change, combined with the new ultra performance mode, not only allows for single threaded workloads to perform at their best, But also for more multi-threaded tasks such as simulation or flow simulation, where it doubles the maximum sustained power to 253W. Now don't try this at home, but in our own tests, with and without the air shroud, we found that the system was able to sustain much higher power limits and lower fan speeds. With the air shroud in place. Also worth noting, as the area for the graphics card gets its own intake fan during cold air to be exhausted by the graphics cards own blower style cooler. Now, we've talked about the improvements to components and the design, but what about the real world performance of the precision 3680? We'll stack up our test system with a 14th generation Intel i9 CPU against models from higher up in the Dell Precision range. We often see customers investigating these more expensive high end workstations in the hope of increased performance. But we're focusing our tests on real CAD workflows. Starting off with rebuilding a relatively complex part with over 50 features, this task takes just 23 seconds to complete on our recommended Dell Precision 3680 desktop, Whereas it takes around 40s to complete on the precision 58, 60 and 7960 workstations running Xeon CPUs with 24 and 36 cores, respectively. There was one model where we didn't see such a drop in CAD performance, the precision 7875 when testing on our 32 core and 64 core models, these were around 10 to 15% slower for CAD tasks. if you're looking to upgrade for an older generation system, we also compared against two similar systems from Dell's Precision 3000 series. The latest precision 5680 was around two times faster than a 2018 workstation and between 30 and 40% faster versus one from 2021. Silhouettes. Flow simulation was the only test where we saw the precision 3680 beaten. This was by the precision 7875, where our 32 core test system was around 13% faster, and the 64 core system 20% faster. Now, these systems do come at stiffly high cost versus the 3680 with its 24 core i9 CPU. So if you use Cat but also have a heavily multi-threaded workflow, the precision 7875 could be a good choice. Is far less noticeable. Compromise for cat performance. we'll also be testing with more complex data sets. And so similarly a range of products to see how well they can take advantage of these systems with many more cores. Now we started this review confident, based on our previous experience, that the precision 3680 would offer the best performance for CAD and related workflows. But it's important to have the evidence to back this up. With the precision 3680 outperforming the more expensive Dell Precision models based on Intel Xeon CPUs by over 30%. And while we were impressed by the new precision 7875 right now, our main recommendation for this would be for heavily multi-threaded workloads such as flow simulation or CPU based rendering, along with those outside our normal focus switches. I. The precision 3680 with this blend of single threaded speeds and up to 24 cores, plus support for high end of video professional graphics, is our recommendation for CAD workstations. To see our range of recommended workstations, check out our website or get in touch for more ice.