Wednesday 19th September 2007

Dream PCs 2007: Dell

Posted at: 10:46am 19th September 2007 by Alex Watson

Day two of Dream PC week and we've got video of the entry from the world's biggest PC manufacturer, Dell

At Custom PC we only run one PC labs test a year: the Dream PC competiton. Once every twelve months we challenge a select group of PC manufacturers to enter a very simple, but very demanding competition: build the best PC you can, money no object. This year, we imposed only two requirements on the four invited manufacturers: the systems had to be supplied with a monitor capable of displaying a 1,920 x 1,200 image; and they must have some form of Windows Vista installed (although Windows XP could be included too), so that we could try out the latest DirectX 10 games.

This year, our four entrants - Dell, Gladiator, Scan and Vadim - submitted PCs toting 57.16GHz worth of CPUs, 15GB of RAM, 6.14GB of graphics RAM, 6.57TB of hard disk space and 4kW of power.

Our analysis of these four incredible PCs will be in Issue 50 of the magazine, which is out for subscribers at the end of this week and on newstands on the 27th of September. To whet your appetites however, every day this week we'll be featuring a video of one of the entrants on www.custompc.co.uk.

Day One: Vadim

Day Two: Dell

Day Three: Gladiator

Day Four: Scan

To continue Dream PC week 2007, we've got some footage of Dell's XPS 720 HC. Yes it's a Dell, but it's cooled using a combination of liquid and TECs and it's overclocked :

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Comments

6/10

seems silly to bring in a "Dream" machine with 2xGTXs and not 2xUltras, a relatively small CPU overclock, only 3GB of RAM, and that AWFUL LOOKING XPS case they seem to have been using for forever now. Don't get it, its ugly. Should be a small server or something besides encasing a "Dream" machine

Comment by wumberpeb at 2:24pm 25th September 2007

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Not a dream

It's a nice machine. It's an excellent machine. It's not a dream machine.

Comment by tetlee at 12:35pm 23rd September 2007

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and another thing...

As Lightning_Pete stated, 3Gb of RAM is silly... 4Gb is more sensible (especially for Vista), why? two words - Page...File. 4-8Gb of RAM (preferably 8 obviously) negates the need for a page file so there's a small overall speed benefit to you PC - not lightning like Pete but enough over the machine's lifetime to warrant it. - I buy/build a PC for it to last me 2 years and do what I want it to do well. Which is why I've got 4GB of RAM in my 2.8GHz X2-4200 machine. And 8Gb in my 3.5GHz AM2 system. And it's why I'm never going to buy Vista, because it's worse than OS X. it needs 1.5Gb to be happy in the RAM dept, while XP64 still runs 64bit apps the same, but only needs 0.5Gb to be happy. which frees up more RAM for apps/games/page file. I've tried Vista and it's crap. I tried XP64, and now I've bought it.

Comment by EdArch at 5:04pm 21st September 2007

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this is all a bit much...

I'm not sure why Dell just issued one of their 'off the cupboard shelf' systems, but I also don't get this... it's nice to see what can be done to PC's but 10k is even more than a top of the range PowerMac (which has 2 quad-core xeons) - I'm not a Mac fan and I think they're bad value for money and I think the same of all these PC's I'd rather spend 6-10k on a car because I'd get something i can never get from a PC - adrenaline caused by G-force (acceleration, braking, cornering). Quite right, 2 GTX cards are not 2 ultras, but they have the same amount of streams and you can OC a GTX to the same speed as an ultra through n-Tune so no I'm not spending an extra £100 just for some extra speeds that I can get myself - that's like buying a Ferrari and hiring a driver - NO NO NO...just...NO you don't do it it's ridiculous. This isn't even a 'dream PC' contest because most people could build higher-spec machines themselves (not including ridiculous liquid coolers and 15 fans on each RAM chip). I like PC's because they're cheaper and work better than Mac's (see my blog http://custompc.co.uk/blogs/edarch/ for more!) but even with the terrible value-for-money, I can't see spending 10k on a PC being that much better. Anybody could probably build a dual, quad-core system with 8Gb of Ram and a RAID setup - probably with a couple of Raptor drives for alot less and OC it really well. Sorry but if I had 10k to spend, I'd be off to the Maldives for a month, or doing my own rally race, or learning to fly, ski-ing, touring arizona in a land rover, motorcycling across the states, surfing in Australia, being in a cage lowered into the sea among a load of great white sharks or in Amsterdam being extremely filthy - or all of the above - I would not be sitting at home waiting for a load of silicon that I would only really use for a year and then ditch for a new platform/revision/etc. anyone disagree with me?

Comment by EdArch at 4:43pm 21st September 2007

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As soon as DELL is mentioned Lights go out!

Ok for most of the commentors here many people are against dell, because they charge a little more than usual and possibly because of their known habit of not being a gaming computer ! But Although some people argue if its not for its specs or prices, its is messiness inside for whatever.... Remember, Dells are professionally built to high standards, and the chances of having problems with these machines through ''no fault'' of your own (note the quotations) is miniscule compared to all other PC manufacturers, or CustomPC builders alike...... This machine is not only be given a nice water cool system, but a quad Extreme edition CPU, Plenty of RAM (although 3gb instead of 2 gb was a bit silly,) and best of all it has some big gaming cards behind it too.... To top all that, you get bundled legit software, creative sound card, numerous USBs, case and cooling included and other little extras aswell...... For those keen on building a dream machine, let DELL do it for you , if you have the wallet :) I would give this machine an 8 / 10

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 7:07pm 20th September 2007

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For a company that builds commercial PC's, I dont personally see a problem with this! This area isn't where they intend on making money so the mere fact they have a pc that lets face it is considerably faster than most peoples home computers is an acheivment in its self! The ideas here are fine although not thought out as well as they should have been. A little untidy which is a disapointment and as stated before, the use of generic dell parts isn't really something you could class as being extreme or a dream in any respect!

Comment by andrew8200m at 1:28pm 20th September 2007

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with all the money you charge for ur mag you think u could turn on a few lights in the room when ur fliming the videos

Comment by Watson at 11:55am 20th September 2007

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yeh 2 gtxs aren't 2 ultras

money is an object dell are rubbish

Comment by wegreenall at 10:06am 20th September 2007

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NickMC07121989 another point on this test is the machine is saleable...to be honest i dont know many people that can pay £10,000+ for a PC...even from Vadim so is a largely unsalable item...extreme but not practical