The Dell Precision T5820 is Dell's mainstream tower on Intel Xeon W-2100/W-2200 — up to 18 cores, quiet cooling, and ISV certification. Our most popular CAD workstation platform.
Memory, drive caddies and spares that fit this model — tested pulls from working systems, covered by the same warranty as our workstations.
The Dell Precision 5820 Tower is a single-socket workstation built around the Intel Xeon W-2000 processor family on the C422 chipset, or Intel Core X-series processors on X299 — up to 18 cores, eight DIMM slots and support for two double-width graphics cards. On the second-hand market it is the sweet spot of the Precision line: one high-clock processor, room for two full-power GPUs, and none of the price or the 220-volt power appetite that comes with a dual-socket machine. Every unit on this page is configured, assembled and burn-in tested at our own bench in New Hudson, Michigan, then shipped with a free 1-year warranty covering parts, labor and shipping. Pick a finished build below, or start from a bare chassis and choose your own CPU, memory, storage and GPU.
| Form factor | Tower — 16.45″ H × 6.95″ W × 20.4″ D, from 34 lb (15.4 kg) |
|---|---|
| Sockets / processors | One socket. Intel Xeon W-2000 family or Intel Core X-series, up to 18 cores |
| Chipset | Intel C422 (Skylake-W / Cascade Lake-W) · Intel X299 on Core X builds |
| Memory | 8 DIMM slots, four-channel — up to 512 GB DDR4-2666 ECC RDIMM (up to 256 GB at 2933 MHz); Core X builds take non-ECC unbuffered DDR4 to 256 GB |
| Expansion slots | PCIe Gen3: two x16, one x16 wired x8, one x16 wired x4, one x16 wired x1, plus one legacy PCI 32/33 |
| Graphics | Two PCIe x16 Gen3 graphics cards, 600 W total — up to 2 × 300 W double-width |
| Drive bays | Front FlexBays for up to four 2.5″/3.5″ SATA drives; up to six 2.5″ or five 3.5″ with the 5.25″ bay in use; two front hot-swap M.2/U.2 NVMe on enabled backplanes |
| Maximum storage | Up to 60 TB across SATA, SAS and PCIe M.2/U.2 NVMe — for example five 12 TB 3.5″ SATA enterprise drives, six 1.9 TB 2.5″ SATA SSDs, or four 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSDs on a Dell Precision Ultra-Speed Drive Quad x16 card |
| Storage controller | Intel chipset SATA 6 Gb/s (6 ports + 2 optical) with Intel RSTe software RAID 0/1/5/10; optional Broadcom MegaRAID 9440-8i or 9460-16i (9460-16i adds 4 GB cache and hardware RAID) |
| Network | Integrated Intel i219 Gigabit Ethernet; optional Intel X550-T2 dual-port 10GbE |
| Front / rear I/O | Front: two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C, universal headphone jack, SD card slot. Rear: six USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A, serial, RJ45, two PS/2, audio line-in/mic and line-out |
| Power supply | 425 W or 950 W, 90% efficient, 80 PLUS Gold — externally accessible and lockable |
| Security | TPM 2.0, chassis intrusion switch, lockable PSU and drive sleds |
| Operating systems | Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, Windows 10 Pro (Core X builds), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0, Ubuntu Linux 18.04, SUSE Linux SLES 12 SP2 |
| Certification | ISV-certified by Dell on select configurations; ships with Dell Precision Optimizer for application tuning |
Source: Dell Precision 5820 Tower Workstation Spec Sheet (hosted below).
Every 5820 we ship is built to order from a tested chassis, so start with the processor family and work outward — CPU, memory, storage, graphics, OS and warranty term are all picked in the configurator, and the price updates as you go.
Not sure which board you are looking at, or need a combination the configurator will not price — 512 GB of RAM, dual 300 W GPUs, a MegaRAID 9460-16i — send us a quote request and we will build it.
Dell shipped the 5820 in two versions that look identical from the outside, and mixing them up is the most common mistake buyers make:
We list build-to-order chassis for both, so check which family a listing names before you buy. If a job depends on memory error correction, take the Xeon.
Stock rotates, but the 5820s moving through our floor cluster around a predictable set of parts: Xeon W-2123 (4C) and W-2133 (6C) at the entry end, W-2145 (8C) and W-2155 (10C) for heavier work, 32–128 GB of DDR4 ECC, and NVIDIA professional graphics from a Quadro P620 up to a P4000 — with GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 3080 cards on the render-focused builds. Most ship with Windows 10 or 11 Pro; bare-OS units are available if you image your own fleet. Need something outside that pattern? Send us a quote request and we will price the exact build.
The 5820 is not a repurposed desktop. Dell certifies select Precision configurations with independent software vendors, so the combination of processor, graphics card and driver stack is validated against the professional applications the machine is sold for, and the multichannel thermal design is built to hold clocks under sustained load rather than in short bursts. Every Precision also ships with Dell Precision Optimizer, which tunes the system for popular ISV applications; the DPO Premium version tunes based on how the machine is actually used. Both survive refurbishment — certification and the optimizer live in the hardware and the software, not in the original invoice — which is the main practical reason a used Precision is a different proposition from a used consumer tower with the same core count.
We build to the ordered spec rather than shipping whatever came off the pallet. Each chassis is stripped and inspected, the parts that wear — fans, thermal paste, drives — are checked or replaced, the machine is assembled to the configuration you chose and then stress tested before it is boxed. What comes with it:
For most single-user CAD, GIS, photogrammetry and video seats, the 5820 is still the right amount of machine. Browse the rest of the range on our refurbished Dell workstations hub, or add ECC memory, a second-hand Xeon W or a professional GPU to a machine you already own.
Dell Precision 5820 Workstation Tower Spec Sheet.pdf
Dell Precision 5820 Tower Workstation Owner's Manual.pdf
Dell Precision 5820 Tower Workstation Quick Start Guide.pdf
Configuring RAID for Dell Precision Workstations.pdf
Connecting to PCoIP Remote-Access.pdf
Dell Precision Optimizer White Paper.pdf
With registered ECC DDR4 the ceiling is 512 GB at 2666 MHz, or 256 GB if you want the faster 2933 MHz modules — eight slots across four channels. Core X-series builds use unbuffered non-ECC memory instead and stop at 256 GB. Speed follows the CPU, so a 2933 MHz kit in a W-2123 machine simply runs at the processor’s rated speed.
Up to 60 TB, combining SATA, SAS and PCIe NVMe drives. In practice that means five 12 TB 3.5″ SATA enterprise drives, or six 2.5″ SATA/SAS drives with the 5.25″ bay populated, or four 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSDs on a Dell Precision Ultra-Speed Drive Quad x16 add-in card. The front FlexBays also take hot-swap M.2/U.2 NVMe SSDs — two on the standard enabled backplane, four with the MegaRAID 9460 NVMe option. SAS drives are a Xeon-only feature; Core X builds are limited to SATA and a single front NVMe SSD.
Yes — two PCIe x16 Gen3 slots and a 600 W graphics budget, which covers a pair of 300 W double-width cards. That configuration needs the 950 W power supply rather than the 425 W unit, so tell us if you plan to add a second card later and we will ship the larger PSU.
Yes — it is the classic single-seat CAD and editing box, and Dell ISV-certifies select 5820 configurations against professional applications. Both workloads reward exactly what this chassis is built for: a high-clock processor rather than a huge core count, ECC memory on the Xeon boards, and a professional GPU. Dell offered the 5820 with cards from a Quadro P620 at the entry end up to a Quadro P5000, RTX 4000/5000 or Radeon Pro WX 7100 for heavier viewport and timeline work, and the 600 W graphics budget leaves room to add a second card for GPU-accelerated encode or render. See our computers built for CAD and video editing workstation pages for the configurations we recommend. Where the 5820 runs out of road is many-core rendering and multi-GPU compute — for those, step up to a dual-socket Precision 7920.
These are ex-corporate machines built for continuous duty, and the parts that wear — fans, thermal paste, drives — are the parts we check. Each unit is assembled to the ordered spec, stress tested, and covered by a free 1-year warranty on parts, labor and return shipping, extendable to five years. Returns are open for 90 days from purchase (RMA and restocking terms), and shipping is refunded when a unit is genuinely defective.
Xeon W-2000 series parts up to 18 cores on the C422 board, or Intel Core X-series chips on the X299 board. On the Xeon side that spans the W-2100 series from the 4-core W-2123 to the 18-core W-2195, and the later W-2200 series from the W-2223 to the 18-core, 36-thread W-2295. The two families are not interchangeable with Core X — the motherboard determines which one fits. If you are upgrading an existing tower, check the board first, then browse our refurbished processors.
The 5820 has one CPU socket; the 7820 and 7920 have two. That is the whole difference in one line, and everything else follows from it: the 5820 gives you 8 DIMM slots, two graphics slots and a 600 W GPU budget in a 34 lb chassis, while the 7920 gives you 24 DIMM slots, more PCIe lanes and a 1400 W supply in a heavier, louder box. If your work is single-threaded or lightly threaded — CAD modeling, most editing timelines, GIS — the 5820’s higher clocks often finish first for a fraction of the money. If you are rendering, simulating or running many VMs, the core count of the dual-socket towers wins.
Stock configurations placed before 1:00 pm EST leave the same business day; custom builds take longer because they are assembled and tested to order. Ground shipping is free within the contiguous United States on orders over $35.
Dell announced the Precision 5820 Tower on August 1, 2017, around SIGGRAPH, and opened orders on October 3, 2017 — the launch announcement lists the 5820, 7820 and 7920 towers as available to order from that date. It stayed in the line-up for years afterwards, which is why the second-hand supply is deep and the platform is still straightforward to configure and support today. The single-socket tower that replaced it is the Precision 5860.
