KITGURU SHORTLISTS: THE BEST WORKSTATION OF 2024

It's hard to be anything other than gobsmacked by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX, and it's presented at its best by the Armari Magnetar S32T-RD1000G2. The 2990WX is the most powerful workstation processor available at the time of this review, and the 32 cores blast through any rendering task you can throw at it. It makes for a simply unmatched rendering machine, and you'd have to step up to a dual-socket motherboard to beat this performance.

It's an incredibly powerful workstation that sports not one, but two NVIDIA Quadro GP100 GPUs, as well as a Quadro P2000. That makes it perfect for something like V-Ray rendering, where it excels. On top of its monstrous 3D performance, it's actually pretty quiet and cool, thanks to the impressive amount of airflow that the chassis can drive. It may be incredibly expensive - but its GPGPU rendering with V-Ray is in the top 20 in the world.

The PC Specialist Nucleus is an expensive computer, but as workstations go its price is merely mid-range. You do get a lot of kit for under £4,000, with the 32 core AMD 2990WX, 32GB of RAM, Quadro P4000 graphics, and plenty of fast storage. Whether you're modelling, designing, or rendering, this is a system that will cope extremely well.

The PNY Prevail Pro is an impressive mobile workstation. You get a decent amount of CPU power, capable professional graphics in the form of a Quadro P4000, desktop levels of storage, and a great UHD screen all in a package small and light enough to actually carry around with you. It's also got plenty of connectivity options and display outputs, making this a very capable mobile workstation.

There's no doubt the MSI WT73VR 7RM is pushing the term 'mobile workstation' to its limits, given weighs over 4KG and is almost 5cm thick. That said, it boasts the impressive Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6 CPU running at 3GHz, 32GB DDR4 SDRAM and the Quadro P5000 graphics chip. Overall, this is one of the most powerful mobile workstations we've seen, with its 3D performance rivalling that of some desktops.