Just enough pro-level power to stay on budget

With good (but not great) processing power and limited 3D capabilities, the Dell Precision 3650 is a solid workstation tower for data-intensive work that doesn't tax the processor too heavily.

If you need workstation quality on a shoestring budget, then the Dell Precision 3650 (starts at $884.95; $1,989 as tested) is made for you. With a massive range of customization options, and a handful of serviceable budget configurations, it’s a great fit for many firms that don't require the immense computing power of other desktop workstations. The Precision 3650 does offer decent processing power and ISV-certified graphics (the key distinction, that) in a tower that looks plain but has excellent upgradability. It’s a workhorse for light-duty tasks like manipulating financial models or reviewing 3D designs, but it won’t be enough for serious content creation.

Our review unit is a tower workstation that comes equipped with an Intel Core i7-11700K eight-core processor, paired with 16GB of memory and Nvidia Quadro P1000 graphics.

Though the term “workstation PC” may conjure up thoughts of high-powered machines for complex engineering and rendering photo-realistic animation, it’s a much broader category, and at the low end of this ready-for-work category, you can find systems that don’t even have a discrete GPU.

Case in point, the lowest configuration of the Dell Precision 3650 uses an older 10th Generation Intel Core i5-10505, and relies on integrated graphics. That barely qualifies as a workstation. On the other hand, our review unit is nicely equipped. And you can take it up from there: A $3,689 configuration is outfitted with the same Intel Core i7-11700K CPU as our review unit, but it pairs that processor with an AMD Radeon W6800 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. Those are still small potatoes for the workstation category overall, but it does show the range of components and power available in Dell’s budget-friendly workstation line.

At the top end, Dell actually offers the 3650 with Intel Core i9 and Xeon processors, which are dramatically more powerful than the Core i7 found in our budget-friendly test unit. And the graphics solutions available at the high end range up to an Nvidia RTX5000 or AMD Radeon Pro W5700, two potent pro-level GPUs that are suitable to pretty much any demanding task you can imagine. It just requires spending thousands of dollars more.

As desktop towers go, the Dell Precision 3650 is all business. This is as straightforward and boring as you could ever hope for a desktop tower to be, and that’s a good thing for this category of PC. While the 13.2 by 7 by 13.6-inch (HWD) tower doesn’t have any flashy features or funky design elements, what you get is accessible, modular, and easily expanded. It’s not especially elegant, but it’s effective in a utilitarian way.

Opening up the tower is simple. You can use a Phillips-head screwdriver to remove the side panel and access everything inside. The straightforward design makes it easy to add or swap out a cooling fan, add multiple drives for storage, add additional GPUs, or even switch out the power supply for something with higher wattage.

If you want a basic machine that can scale up considerably, you’ll appreciate the four DIMM slots, the PCI Express x16 Gen 4 slot, and support for multiple SATA drives (three 3.5-inch ones or four 2.5-inch ones). Options abound, with room for additional drives, ports, and internal cards.

The Precision 3650 also has a healthy collection of ports, front and back. On the front of our test machine are a trio of USB 3.0 ports, along with a USB-C connection, an SD card slot (rare nowadays on any desktop), and an audio headset jack.

On the back you’ll find another trio of USB 3.0 ports, a pair of USB-A connections, an Ethernet port and two DisplayPort connections for external monitors. Curiously, you’ll also find a pair of PS/2 connections for older peripherals, despite the connector format falling out of style more than a decade ago.

Below these ports are the video connections for the Nvidia Quadro P1000, an already dated GPU, given that Nvidia has dropped the Quadro branding in recent months. But on the card itself, you’ll find four mini DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, with support for video and audio. The card also supports Nvidia Mosaic, which lets you easily combine multiple monitors into a single multi-panel display.

But you may have already noticed one curious omission from this list of connections: There’s no HDMI port. While that’s not an insurmountable issue—and you can add HDMI to your configuration for $17.45—the standard setup will prevent you from using monitors that are HDMI-only. You’ll also need an adapter in order to use a full-size DisplayPort with the card, but thankfully Dell includes adapters for all four of the mini DisplayPort jacks on the card in our review unit.

One more unexpected quirk: There’s no Wi-Fi. While that’s not an issue for offices that offer plenty of wired connectivity, it’s a major pain for any modern environment that relies on wireless networking. A Wi-Fi card can be added when you configure your system, but it’s not standard, and will cost extra—$27.91 for 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), and $31.40 for Wi-Fi 6.

When it comes to workstation desktops, we aren’t always able to compare systems as directly as we do most consumer or business computers, since we don’t review them as frequently, and because the range of configurations varies widely. So for this review we looked at both workstation PCs, like the compact HP Z2 Mini G9 and the budget-friendly HP Z2 G8 Tower, and some roughly comparable gaming machines, like the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i (2021) and the NZXT H1 Mini Plus, two consumer machines that offer plenty of power in a similar price range.

Our first pair of tests are part of UL's PCMark 10 suite, which tests overall performance by simulating a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows. PCMark 10 also includes a separate storage test which tests the desktop’s primary drive.

Our next three benchmarks focus on processing power, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for CPU-intensive workloads. Cinebench R23 uses Maxon's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop(Opens in a new window) , which uses Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

Looking at the numbers, a pattern became quite clear: The Precision 3650, while categorized as a workstation desktop, wasn’t as powerful as the other workstation PCs. It didn’t fall too far behind, seeing as it still topped the inexpensive gaming rigs, but the system’s 11th Generation Intel Core i7-11700K processor wasn’t delivering the sort of power you’d get from a Core i9.

It came in last place in PCMark 10 performance tests, fell right in the middle with a 7-minute transcoding time in HandBrake 1.4, and both Cinebench and Geekbench scores place it in the same spot in the middle of the pack.

We also ran the Precision 3650 through our additional suite of workstation and content creation tests, to see how it held up under the increased demand that workstation machines are often subjected to. These include Puget Systems' PugetBench for the Adobe Premiere Pro 15 video editor; SPECviewperf 2020, an industry-standard measurement of 3D performance in CAD and graphics rendering applications; and Blender, another 3D modeling test.

And compared with other workstations, the Precision 3650 struggled to keep up. The system’s Nvidia Quadro P1000 GPU may come with ISV certifications and some fancy multi-monitor drivers, but it’s not a powerhouse for rendering and video editing—the low scores in Premiere Pro and SPECviewperf attest to that.

But not all workstations are made for high-octane visual rendering. In fact, one workstation use that is often overlooked in our raw-power performance tests are financial applications. If you want a decent machine that can handle multiple monitors and complex operations for stock trading or similar work, the Precision 3650 might be exactly what you need. But for graphics-heavy applications, it’s not the best choice. When we ran the Dell through our graphics tests, it was simply outmatched.

For Windows PCs, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming tests. Among the former are two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Two other gaming simulations come from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which specializes in OpenGL performance.

And here we see the real weakness in our budget workstation. It’s simply not built for 3D rendering performance. In 3DMark Time Spy and Night Raid, it took a distant fifth place, turning in scores that are barely worth comparing. Even knowing the differences between a basic card like the Quadro P1000 and the RTX series cards used in the HP and Lenovo machines, the difference in overall GPU performance was striking.

Workstation systems are often purchased for their processing capabilities, using one or more high-powered CPUs and GPUs to tackle some of the most complex visual rendering tasks around, like rendering architectural designs, analyzing medical imagery, or just generating scenes for video and games. The Dell Precision 3650, as reviewed here, isn’t built for that sort of work. Yes, it has an Nvidia Quadro GPU, which comes with the ISV-certified reliability professionals need, but it’s not the beefy graphics card you might have expected in a workstation.

But that’s not all workstations are for. There’s plenty of number crunching and data visualization that needs doing without fancy 3D models. From day trading to statistical analysis, some workstations are all about running the numbers and knowing that your hardware offers the rock-solid reliability of a professional machine. And for that, the Dell Precision 3650 is ideal. It’s a middle-of-the-pack workhorse, and while it may not lead with stunning performance, it’s a great option for the number cruncher who doesn’t have the budget or the need for gaming-level graphics and advanced 3D rendering.

With good (but not great) processing power and limited 3D capabilities, the Dell Precision 3650 is a solid workstation tower for data-intensive work that doesn't tax the processor too heavily.

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If you’re after laptop buying advice, I’m your man. I’ve been reviewing PCs and technology products for more than a decade. I cut my teeth in PC Labs, spending several years with PCMag.com before writing for other outlets, among them LaptopMag.com and Tom’s Guide. While computers are my main focus, I’ve also written at length about topics ranging from fitness gear and appliances to TV and home theater equipment. If I’ve used it, I have opinions about it, whether somebody’s paying me to write them up or not.

I usually cycle between two or three different laptops. By the nature of my job, I always have several review units in the rotation. My daily driver for work, though, is a Lenovo ThinkPad T-series with a 10th Generation Intel Core i5 processor.

No less than six different systems are in regular use in my home, from a Chromebook for the kids to a mini PC that’s hooked up to my TV. I have a Raspberry Pi that I’ve set up as a retro gaming console, plus personal machines for my wife and myself, both running Windows.

I spent a few years as a TV reviewer, and have two Roku smart TVs that get daily use, along with several aging game consoles. (Eventually I’ll get around to building out a proper home theater setup.)

I’m a Google diehard, with Google Drive and Workplace forming the core of my daily work tools. Someday, I’ll get around to writing a book about advanced search strategies. Or Batman. One of the two.

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