Reviews - Dell Studio XPS: Intel's Core i7 system for £699

[Bob Crabtree]

I can look at it with my eyes closed, if that's what you want.

Nah, he's got you bang to rights!

Mind you (sorry!), I probably should have emailed you about this a good while ago cos I've noticed it a few times before.

As for the substantive issue - this here review of the Dell i7 system - it very neatly underlines my take on Dell.

I recommend Dell to friends, relatives and clients and am very rarely made to look bad by such recommendations. Few of these people are hardcore gamers but one that is was knocked out by his Q6600 Vostro with an uprated graphics card.

Recently, though, one recommendation did turn bad for a while (though I have a get-out clause).

I helped a mate who's a pro photographer based in deepest Normandy spec up a Dell Vostro QuadCore desktop PC but, against my advice, he opted to buy it with a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, rather than sticking with cables.

The upshot was a whole series of BSODs caused, I'm pretty sure, by dodgy Logitech drivers - and, really, that is no kind of way for a business PC to behave when someone is earning a living by using it. Definitely left a bad taste in my mate's mouth.

However, for out-and-out value for money, it's very hard to beat Dell - and it's one company that does still let you opt for Windows XP, rather than being forced to have Vista running, though that's not an option available on the XPS system being reviewed, I notice.

In addition, as someone who's fixed or upgraded a large number of Dell PCs of varying vintages, I'm regularly impressed by the fact that Dell almost always makes available on its related support page the service manual that I need - and doesn't hide it away somewhere.

I also sometimes put my own money where my mouth is. On a whim, I recently bought from Tesco a Dell Inspiron 530 with a Q6600 CPU for the princely sum of £299 inc VAT and wasn't disappointed.

It's sitting in a corner until I decide what graphics card to put in it (I'm waiting for prices of the new-gen AMD cards to fall a bit) and whether or not to install a more powerful PSU. But even as is, it's a powerful (yet very quiet) little devil.

Also, unlike most Dells until recently, I should be able to install a standard PSU, not have to pay through the nose for one built specifically to fit. Indeed, I massively welcome Dell's move towards using more standardised parts, even though, generally, the overall build-quality has tended to fall at the same time.

Many of the Dells I work on are seriously solid bits of kit and engineered to a very high standard but that's not much use for a client if he's got to pay a stupidly large sum for a completely new fascia when all that's wrong is a broken bit of plastic behind the on/off switch.

Fact is, I'm really pleased to see this review of this i7 Dell - and reckon that HEXUS and its readers would all benefit from there being more hands-on with Dell machines.

[Saracen]

Well, I'm distinctly underwhelmed by it.

Firstly, if I'm going to buy a high-performance machine, I'm going to want a good deal more versatility than that machine offers. And if I'm not buying a high-performance machine, why pay the premium for i7?

Secondly, no option to delete the BluRay drive. Fine if you want BluRay, but I don't, so I'm damned if I'm paying for it. A standard DVD burner would be a required option for me.

Next, the retail site is still showing dual-channel memory as being the only purchase options. Referring back to point 1), if I want a high-performance machine and am paying early-adopter premium for it, I want bandwidth-limiting dual-channel because .....???

Oh, and then there's the video card. That's a bit more troublesome, since it depends who the machine is aimed at, and whether they game or not. But if they do, then as has already been pointed out, the video card upgrade is overpriced, as we could all buy the upgrade card at retail prices for less than Dell want to upgrade it from the card that's already there.

And if you do want to upgrade the video card, then that restricted power supply is running much closer to the theoretical PSU limit than I'd be prepared to accept.


So far as I'm concerned, that machine falls firmly between a rock and a hard place. If you want a performance machine, it's far too compromised. And if you don't, then you don't need i7 so save yourself some money and get a FAR better balanced machine in the process.

It seems to me that that machine is aimed at people that want i7 just because it's available. There's no way I'd fork out £700 on a spec like that, because it's neither one thing nor t'other.

There's an old saying that strikes me as apt here - if something is worth doing, it's worth doing properly. And in my view, that machine doesn't do it properly. It looks more like a cynical bit of marketing exploitation, designed to pull people in with the i7 appeal, and then cuts corners all over the place. Not impressed ..... and no way would I buy it.

[Bob Crabtree]

I often have people come to me to help them spec up a PC and then set everything up for them.

It's VERY normal, when the machine being spec'd is a Dell, for me to say, no, don't buy an extra hard disk now, price is too high - and don't buy a whole lot of add-ons, cos the prices are too high.

As T has pointed out in the review - that's where Dell hopes to make its money. It's the unwary, of course, who'd end up paying over the odds for, say, a second HDD, or extra RAM.

Even so, there are times when I will say, yes, that's a good deal, most notably in Dell's prices for Adobe Elements software.

[Maccer101]

IMO Dell like all of the big brand pre-built PC distributers market their PCs primarily based on the Processor (and to lesser extent RAM), not the Mobo or the PSU or any of the other parts. This makes it easy to market to people who don't know too much about computers and makes the chip the primary distinguishing factor between one PC and another.

I bought a Q6600 Dell this year as I was drawn into the idea that I needed a quad, I will never need a quad for what I use my PC for and at least 95% of people wouldn't notice if they swapped out their quad for a E5200. For simple tasks like opening windows, files and such my clocked E2180 PC has pretty similar performance.

I think Dell make a good affordable PC (except for not enough cooling), but from now on I'll always go home build, buy an entry level processor and clock it.

Mind you when I saw that Tesco Deal for a Dell 530 Q6600 for £299 I have to admit it was an astonishing price if you wanted a Vista machine

[neologan]

Well, I'm distinctly underwhelmed by it.

Firstly, if I'm going to buy a high-performance machine, I'm going to want a good deal more versatility than that machine offers. And if I'm not buying a high-performance machine, why pay the premium for i7?

Secondly, no option to delete the BluRay drive. Fine if you want BluRay, but I don't, so I'm damned if I'm paying for it. A standard DVD burner would be a required option for me.

Next, the retail site is still showing dual-channel memory as being the only purchase options. Referring back to point 1), if I want a high-performance machine and am paying early-adopter premium for it, I want bandwidth-limiting dual-channel because .....???

Oh, and then there's the video card. That's a bit more troublesome, since it depends who the machine is aimed at, and whether they game or not. But if they do, then as has already been pointed out, the video card upgrade is overpriced, as we could all buy the upgrade card at retail prices for less than Dell want to upgrade it from the card that's already there.

And if you do want to upgrade the video card, then that restricted power supply is running much closer to the theoretical PSU limit than I'd be prepared to accept.


So far as I'm concerned, that machine falls firmly between a rock and a hard place. If you want a performance machine, it's far too compromised. And if you don't, then you don't need i7 so save yourself some money and get a FAR better balanced machine in the process.

It seems to me that that machine is aimed at people that want i7 just because it's available. There's no way I'd fork out £700 on a spec like that, because it's neither one thing nor t'other.

There's an old saying that strikes me as apt here - if something is worth doing, it's worth doing properly. And in my view, that machine doesn't do it properly. It looks more like a cynical bit of marketing exploitation, designed to pull people in with the i7 appeal, and then cuts corners all over the place. Not impressed ..... and no way would I buy it.

Pretty much bang on there. For me, there are too many compromises considering its based on expensive core hardware (i7). This machine appears good value because its based on I7, but its got silly cheap hardware mixed in with it. Anything outside of a laptop that doesn't allow overclocking is lacking value for me from the get go so there was never any chance for this one, even with it's aggressive pricing (as already said, cost cuts are certainly easy to spot on this machine).

[J400uk]

Nice review guys. I have bought one of these and very excited about it. Got the following spec for 649.90:
- Intel Core i7 920
- 4GB DDR3 RAM
- 640GB Sata Hard Drive
- Blu-Ray Disk Burner
- ATI Radeon 3650 (have a 512mb 3850 oc already which I will swap for)
- Free Creative 2GB Vado Camcorder
- Multimedia keyboard, Laser Mouse
- Vista Home Premium 64-bit

Should be a nice upgrade from what I have currently, and still amazed what you get for the money. Was discussing with a freind that could probably sell the parts on individually and make a sizeable profit, especially given the fact the BD Burner is worth about £150.

Makes me laugh the way this rather plain looking MATX Dell box beats massive custom-built overclocked q9550 rigs that cost twice as much.

-J400uk

[neologan]

well without overclocking its not going to beat those machines you mention really, as someone who buys a core 2 Quad and builds it themselves can overclock the hell out of it. I just don't like the cut corners here, but your choice, hope you enjoy it

for the same money i'd have gone for a custom build core2quad, no question in my mind. Well actually, i'd go dual core wolfdale really.

[Dreaming]

I can see this being nice for those who like to rip / encode lots and lots of films. You could put it away somewhere, put windows server on it or something and just let it run...

TBH if I was upgrading my cpu I would upgrade to an e8600 not a q6600 and definately not a core i7. I don't need 8 cores, and as much as Intel tries to push it I can't see outlook and internet explorer needing more than 1 (or 2 just for fun) anytime in the next 5 years.

What could happen, is you could have dumb terminals and one server and run multiple user's PCs at once, if that makes sense? But the technological boundaries need to be overcome first.

Then again I had an idea of massive massive distributed wireless networks everywhere (so its internet would be like mobile phone signals but on a different frequency) but my friend who does compsci told me it was a daft idea .

Can anyone who isn't going to be using it as some kind of server explain why they need a core i7? It just seems to be upgradeitis.

[kalniel]

Can anyone who isn't going to be using it as some kind of server explain why they need a core i7? It just seems to be upgradeitis.

You can say that about anything - a pentium III is more than powerful enough for the vast majority of people's computer use

[Biscuit]

Then again I had an idea of massive massive distributed wireless networks everywhere (so its internet would be like mobile phone signals but on a different frequency) but my friend who does compsci told me it was a daft idea

Well your friend is probably going to be suprised if wimax takes off then

[Dreaming]

You can say that about anything - a pentium III is more than powerful enough for the vast majority of people's computer use

Well maybe not gaming, but still a decent C2D doesn't bottleneck any of the newest games really. The only time I notice my dual core is a bit slow is when I try to do something like convert a .avi file or something to a dvd format but in the time I've had this PC (over 15 months) I've done it twice...

Well your friend is probably going to be suprised if wimax takes off then

Heh perhaps - I think it was more to do with bandwidth limitations he was saying, and really fibre optics is the way it will get better. I think in Japan you can pay a company to fibre optic to your house and get 100mb/s asymettric yet in the UK we still only get between 4 and 8 depending on the traffic shaping...

[kalniel]

Well maybe not gaming,

I said majority

If you are in the small minority that want to run powerful games on your PC then you need more specialist equipment, just like if you're in the minority that wants to run a server

[nebulaoperator]

Hi to everyone,

at the moment i'm awaiting my new dell studio i7 920.Was thinking about overclocking that system and did some research just to know that dell mobo normally don't have such option to overclocking, also some people allready having same PC said there is not option at Bios to do overclocking. if not!? what options are available? by a new mobo in the future or something else? sorry for beeing a little bit out of subject...

[Mit321]

Surely this is an amazing deal if you don't want to OC it in the future. I was planning a new build (never done one before) but surely this is what I should go for?

Can you replace the PSU and GPU in the future with dells without hassle?

[nebulaoperator]

I bought my system for £625. did that cous i'm not a big gamer.just do occasionally it and that was my budget. otherways i would go for building my one and play OC'ing it!

Base : Studio XPS Intel Core i7 Processor 920 (2.66GHz, 8MB cache, 4.8GT/sec) 1
Ship Accessory : English Docs with UK/IRL power cord 1
Resource DVD : English Studio XPS Diagnostics and Drivers 1
Memory : 4096MB (4x1024) 1067MHz DDR3 Tri Channel 1
Media Card Reader : 19-in-1 Media Card Reader 1
Hard Drive : 750GB Serial ATA (7200RPM) 1
Optical Drive : 16X DVD+/-RW Drive 1
Optical Software : ROXIO Software for Vista - Creator / MYDVD 10.2 1
Display : Not Included 1
Graphics : 256 MB ATI Radeon 3650 1
Audio Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital capability 1
Speakers Not Included 1
Mice : Dell Laser USB (6 buttons scroll) Black Mouse 1
Keyboard : UK/Irish (QWERTY) Dell Multimedia USB Black 1
Operating System : English Genuine Windows Vista SP1 Home Premium (64 BIT) including Media

[J400uk]

Surely this is an amazing deal if you don't want to OC it in the future. I was planning a new build (never done one before) but surely this is what I should go for?

Can you replace the PSU and GPU in the future with dells without hassle?

Yes its stunning value for money, I got mine for £650 and to custom build using the cheapest components would have cost in excess of £900 (and thats not including the free video camera I got from Dell )

I swapped out the weak PSU supplied for a 500w Antec Modular Neopower and changed out the 3650 for my dual slot 3850 512 OC. Seems to work fine, other than one of the front USB ports died..