New year, new PC.... Observations

[Sinister Fiero]

For the past few years I've been working with a Dell XPS 600 desktop. It had the old Pentium D (dual core) 3.0 GHz processor and 2gb of memory running WinXP. It was a good PC, but has progressively gotten bogged down as more updates have been installed from MS for the WinXP Pro OS it was running. COD MW2 was starting to lag on me too so it was time for an upgrade. One of the wife's PC's at the office died so I jumped at the opportunity to upgrade my PC (which I was able to write off on my 2011 taxes) and donate this old 600 to her office instead of having her waste good money on a store-bought replacement (which she didn't really need a lot of performance out of since she doesn't run any CPU-intensive applications).

Back when the XPS 600 was new, it was Dell's top-of-the-line unit. It was built like a brick sh*t house; literally. Huge case, huge CPU cooler, custom ducting around the CPU cooler AND around the hard drive bay, + a stock 650watt PSU. Tons of fans. I think the entire PC weighed 40 or 50lbs. Definitely top quality.

Well for the replacement PC, I ordered an XPS 8300 from Dell. Now before you DIY PC builders jump on my back, I need to tell you I am quite capable of building my own PC and I have done so several times in the past. But what I have also found out, building my own PC is, it is very difficult to build a PC from many different components that has 0 teething problems. The last time I built a PC, I think I spent the better part of a month finding drivers that didn't conflict with all the different hardware I was using in that unit. One of the things that companies like Dell does is make sure all of the hardware they use in their PCs has no compatibility issues when they ship (or at least that seems like a logical thing I would think they check/do before shipping units out). Time is money for me and right now I don't have the time to fart around with getting everything to work in a custom built PC. Another reason for the purchase from Dell is, after I priced everything out for what it would cost me to build my own custom PC equiv. to what Dell sold in this XPS 8300 I purchased, I would have only saved about $100 and would not have gotten the warranty I got with this Dell.

My XPS 8300 shipped with a quad core i7 2600 processor (3.4ghz), 8gb DDR3 memory (1333mhz bus), 500gb SATA HDD, nVidia 530 GT video card (stock with this system but I replaced it with the OC 450GTS card I already had), SB X-FI sound, CD/DVD burner, on-board 10/100/1000 ethernet, integrated card readers (front top of case), and Win7 Ultimate along with the stock keyboard, mouse, and 2-year warranty. I found an online discount code that allowed me to purchase this for under $1k before Christmas so I think I did pretty good compared to the other stuff I've been looking at. Took them about a week to build it and I paid $15 for 2-day shipping (they actually shipped it overnight for no extra charge so it arrived Friday, Dec 23; in time for Christmas).

Now, for the observations. This new XPS certainly doesn't have near the quality of case the XPS 600 I replaced had. This XPS 8300 only comes with a 460w PSU, but I get the feeling the larger PSU probably isn't needed for what I'm doing with it (never plan on running dual video cards; which this mobo doesn't support anyway). I noticed the CPU cooler in this new PC is very small (and basic looking) compared to what was in that XPS 600. But after some research, I've determined this is the stock cooler Intel ships with this i7 2600 processor so I'm not worried. My 600 had about 8 USB ports on the back (+ 2 on front) plus 2 back and 2 front FireWire ports. This 8300 only has 4 rear USB ports, 2 USB ports on the top of the case, and 2 USB ports on the front behind a "trap door" that opens up. Wish it had more rear USB ports. Don't really need the firewire ports. But this 8300 did come with a rear eSATA port which is nice since my 1TB BlackArmor external backup HDD has an eSATA port. As per other Dell cases, this thing has the externally opening, spring-loaded doors that cover the "CD ROM" drives which I'm not a fan of. I do feel as though after years of use the external door that covers the single CD/DVD drive this 8300 has will probably end up breaking. The XPS 600 had one big door that you had to manually open (swings out of the way to the side) to expose the three 5 1/4" drive bays (2 of which were occupied in that PC). And, of course, the XPS 600 had customizable front LED lighting whereas this XPS 8300 has no lighting of any kind except for the power button and HDD busy LEDs.

Impressions: This XPS 8300 is fast and it works great. I've thrown everything at it (including MW3 on the highest graphics settings) and haven't had one hiccup whatsoever (of course I am using my factory overclocked 450GTS video card instead of the stock GT530 that came in this 8300). This XPS 8300 isn't built using the highest quality case, but I didn't expect it to be especially since Dell acquired AlienWare which seems to be the new "top-of-the-line" units they sell. I've owned Dells, HP's, Gateways, and self-built systems. And out of all of them, I must say I've been the most satisifed and had the least problems with Dells. Hopefully that track record will be maintained by this XPS 8300. Time will tell.

I just went to the Dell site and custom built a pretty much identical XPS 8300 to what I got for less than $1k and the price is now well over $1.1k before taxes and shipping.

[Emc209i]

Well Ryan, I wasn't going to say anything, but my $200 PSU just fired a capacitor, so I've been on pricewatch for the past hour and I'm fired up.

Dell sucks balls. They use proprietary chopped down motherboards, no BIOS or clock flexibility, and packaging built for the masses. Of course they have great track records, because all of the complexity is farmed out. You spent a grand on a rig with 1333 frequency memory, which will bottleneck that I7, even with the built in memory controller on the I series CPU's. You're not going to notice, upgrading from what you have, but a benchmark will show how much potential its sucking from your processor. I'm sure you're happy with the gaming because of the Nvidia card, but for anything like folding or video processing, it's going to be lacking in comparison to what you could have pieced together on your own.

Also, Call of Duty is still using a DX9 architecture, and really shouldn't be used to benchmark anything built after '09. Pop Skyrim in and unlock the ugrid, see how it does.

Glad you're happy enough to write a seven paragraph review. Hopefully it will do an alright job of keeping up with the times. Sorry to be a negative Nancy.

[AkursedX]

My desktop is quite similar, almost identical to your original desktop. It works well for what it is although my current laptop is faster and has more memory. I'm not a gamer though. Asides from internet, I only use my computer for music/photo storage, and budgets/spreadsheets.

Back when I bought my Dell, they used to give a sizable government employee discount. I saved over $500 with the discount over what it would cost me to buy it regularly. Out of curiosity, I price-checked the system that you bought a couple of weeks ago and was quite bummed as the employee discount is virtually nothing nowadays. Oh well.

[The Dark Side of Will]

It's been several years since I built my own. My parents have a local guy who builds theirs and I don't have to mess with it... which is fine by me.

I got over gaming in the early days of Quake 3, so what I do is look for the "knee" in the price/performance curve. IE, if the 500 MB DIMM costs $40 and the 1GB DIMM costs $100 and the 2GB DIMM costs $300 (I know I'm dating myself with those numbers) then I get the 1GB DIMM as the best value because it is the best combination of price/performance while resulting in a somewhat up-to-date system that will have a lot of longevity for what I want it to do... IE, I only have to build a system every couple of years.

I see I'm way behind on the modern standards.

I'm going to have to update my computing resources sometime soon for CAD and CNC, so I'll probably have to post a follow up in a few months.

[Series8217]

You really cannot beat Dell reliability, even with a system you build yourself. Dell does a lot of research into reliable, lasting components that still perform well. Yeah, you can read reviews on Newegg and other sites, but with the size of Dell's customer base they have more data than you'll ever be able to access on the public internet.

We have dozens of Dell computers at work, and I'm not aware of a single one that has failed; power supplies, CPUs, RAM, case fans, they all still work. We retired a bunch of them that were 5 to 10 years old since we got new Vostros to replace them. I went through all the old hard drives to test and wipe them -- not a single failure. Those are good, durable parts.

My only gripe with the Dell computers we tend to order is they don't support much RAM. They usually come in already maxed out at 4 gigs, but sometimes we need a bit more for CAD or graphics stuff. You have to pay a lot more for the high-memory workstations.

In comparison, I think only one of the HP laptops we had is still working, and it has a dead USB port. None our HP desktops work anymore. Junk.

I bought a SuperMicro server last month; time will tell how it holds up, but it's working nicely so far and I'm happy with the case design and layout.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Every computer on NMCI is a Dell... seems like every one I come across is ancient and pathetically slow, but they still work. The low failure rate on Dells is pretty impressive.

[Aaron]

We run Dell Latitude E6400 XFR laptops at work. To this day I'm simply amazed they survive. From starting the car when it's -10 degrees, to leaving the heater on full blast while I'm out doing other things, sitting in the sun during the day, and not to mention the actual driving(!) I've only had one problem with it, and that is a failed motherboard when it stopped reading USB devices. Other than that, fucking bulletproof when you consider what he put them through. And I love the touch screens. It's pretty quick, though I don't know any of the specs off-hand it easily outperforms the last generation of ATG-series laptops we had.

[Series8217]

Those laptops are bad ass.

Great laptop for in-car tuning too..