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Specs:
Q6600
3gb @800mhz (1gb-1gb-512mb-512mb)
500gb 7200rpm
500gb 7200rpm
Raid 0
8800GT
X-Fi extreme music


Behold, the XPS 420


I'll be taking you through the entire process, from receiving the product to giving FPS benchmarks for a few games, I will try to cover everything as much as possible and describe to you what it feels like to pull one of these out of the box.

To start, I ordered this system from the Dell outlet, the place where other people return their working PC's because for some reason they dislike them, which is a great thing for the secondary buying being that this like new PC now has the title "used" which can pull that price down to where you want to pull the trigger.

Link: Outlet

So, knowing that this is a used computer (and the first one that I've bought used) I was wondering a few things before buying such as, is the warranty like the ones of new computers? Does Dell still offer the 21 day money back guarantee return policy on these? Is there a catch?

Naturally I asked. I talked to Dell and found out that this system's warranty is as good as any other system and allows you to upgrade the warranty along the way if you feel the 1 year term is too short. I also found out that the 21 day return policy is also still in tact even though this system has gone through more than 1 user. I found no catches at all.


The Box



It arrives at my door step in the regular old Dell box, nothing too special. Sealed up nice and tight and in my case it is ding free, please do check before accepting your system that there are no dings in the package and if there are serious problems, although it's going to hurt to turn that computer away...refuse shipment.





From here we take a look inside of the box. We first find what I will call, the "goody tray". We pull this maybe 3'x3' box that is about 3" deep out of the primary container (note the pretty XPS design on it) and open it up to find the hidden treasures that in my opinion are a wonderful find.

Inside of this goody tray, we find ourselves some things that I didn't even expect being familiar with Dell. I find inside that included is multiple lint-free cloths to clean off your XPS 420, a very nice and sturdy XPS mouse pad which was so good I actually replaced my $15 mouse pad with it. We also find a leather binder that holds our XPS 420 service manual/owner's manual along with another cloth, XPS cable ties for the rear of your system, and 2 pairs of noise canceling earplugs from creative (probably included with my sound card). In addition there is the regular keyboard and mouse that you get with every Dell, not terrible but not wonderful either. I just want to note, that these small touches inside of the goody tray are well taken, I feel like although it's not worth buying the XPS just for these things, it makes you feel good as a customer to open up a couple extra goodies. Oh and you also get your Vista reinstall disc, and other discs filled with crap. Also a LOTR 14 day trial. Good going Dell

Now below that, we see our XPS 420, packed in a sturdy plastic styrofoam. Now here, I feel they may have underdone the packing. It just seems like an empty housing of a $1400 piece of equipment. I guess it's not terrible though, it came through in one piece and nothing seems injured.

Out Comes the System



So here we finally have the system itself, glossy front and top. Upon getting it out, you will have to remove some plastic coverings on the front that protect it from scratching and smudging on the way to you, it worked well as there were no smudges (yet). As we can see, we get 2 USB ports on the front, audio in and out jacks, firewire port, power button, and would you look at that, no DVD burner??? You should've seen my face when I thought Dell messed up. Lucky for all of us, there are buttons along the right side of the system that cause the ejector tray to come right out, pushing the spring loaded glossy black panel down. We also have the sideshow featured on the top/front of this, allowing you to access certain things from it while you may have your monitor off. To be honest, I highly doubt I'll ever user this but hell, it looks cool.




There are the sides of it, nothing too special to see. Just a flat silver coat with metallic XPS labeling. At least it's not overly obtrusive so that you can still maintain a professional look if you need this for an office or something public.



I just want everybody to know that this power supply is rated at 375w, which seems very low and pretty crappy if I do say so myself, however what the GPU wants is amperage from the 12v rails and in our case, the XPS 420 has 2 12v rails each supplying 18a, 36a with them combined. 36 amps on 2 12v rails impresses me greatly, the 8800GTX for example uses 30 amps. I smell underrating from Dell as usual



Here we have the rear of the system, again, pretty plain and simple and also please note that in my case, the motherboard did not come with onboard sound because I had the X-Fi option included. Please note that the power supply is interchangeable with retail ones, so in the future you can upgrade your tower without too much concern. (The Dell one included is shortened to make it look right in the system, a retail one would protrude further and although it would not outright make it impossible, it will make upgrading more difficult than one would expect in a normal full sized case.



We now discover that Dell as usual is using their BTX boards (why must you Dell?) and this is the major problem with purchasing Dell. Because of this you cannot upgrade the motherboard in the future...so please understand that before purchasing.



The inside is a bit of a mess from the looks of it, cables running all over and such but in reality is it pretty organized and what I find surprising is that only 1 120mm fan is necessary to ventilate an entire case. That pictured fan is basically front and center of the system and pushes air through the CPU HS and then out the back. Do not worry, your system won't overheat as I used the 8800GT in it for multiple hours stress testing with Crysis and it at no point ran into issues.

Also take note of the fact that there are only 2 hard drive bays along the bottom of this machine, sure that still allows you to have 2 TB of space, but if you like having a bunch of hard drives then this isn't the right option for you.



I leave you with a picture of the sideshow feature in case that part of this interests you

I would also have a picture of the blue LED lit up power button but it didn't want to come out well in pictures so far, if I get a good one I will include that as well.


Fraps Benchmarks


So far I only ran Crysis while benchmarking and I think it did extremely well for me.

Crysis pulled in a minimum of 0fps (dunno where that happened) maximum of 74 and an average of 27fps
The settings are stock from the game, no mods of my own and this was with the 1.1 patch in place. It was also under 32bit Windows Vista and the 8800GT is NOT overclocked. The settings were all high with the resolution set at 1440x900


Call of Duty pulls in a minimum of 34, Max of 93 (likely some limit since it hovers here a lot), and average of 91fps.
This was run with all settings on high AA @ 4x and resolution was set to 1920x1080


Rainbow 6 Vegas: Avg: 52.366 - Min: 27 - Max: 84
Settings were all to high @ 1920x1080

3dMark 2006

Good deal, pd. That is a heck of a setup for that price.

Yeah, I was going to build of course, but I just figured that since I could get the Dell for less than $1400 with tax, shipping, warranty, etc that it's just worth it for me. Don't want to deal with troubleshooting while I'm working towards SATs and ACTs etc etc

Plus since the PSU and GPU are upgradeable, i think the system will last me quite a while

congrats and I hope this one works out for you.

hope so good side at least is that I can still return this system within 21 days of receiving it and Dell generally likes to work with me after years of buying from them

that is a nice setup

You could have saved a few bucks by building your own, but just don't see how you can go wrong with the system you picked at the price you got it at. DIY is not always the best option.

Yeah could've saved myself a couple hundred, but I figured by doing the Dell, I'm less likely to overspend on a build myself when the penryn and new GPU's come. I would've probably spent $1800 then, by buying now I think I'll be tided over

So, when is the arrival date for the beastie, pdonket?

Have it in my hands currently! Just arrived a couple hours ago and I've been tweaking a few things getting it set up perfectly

I will have the review up soon (tonight, if not tomorrow depending on how much studying I get done for Chem)

Good deal PD. Are you gonna try to run any game benches for your review?

Going to get back with the average FPS in Crysis + CoD4 and also going to run 3d06 now

Great pics!

very nice pics!

bench the f@@k outta that!

What's the limitations of what you can show on the screen?

I really like that case appearance and mousepad. Of course you know how I feel about Dell and upgrading but this was a really excellent deal.

Now that I own a Voodoo-internaled PC, I'll never be able to look at wiring the same way again...