Good From the Factory? The Dell Studio XPS 7100
by Dustin Sklavos on July 7, 2010 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Dell
- AMD
- Radeon
- Studio XPS 7100
Dell Studio XPS 7100 Conclusion
Dell's Studio XPS 7100 is by many accounts a winner. So far, nitpicks are minor, and the overall design of the machine allows it to run the most powerful configuration Dell offers for it without causing it to overheat or produce obnoxious fan noise. That leaves us with the price tag. Building your own system with the same components would put your build cost more or less right in line with Dell's pricing for the configuration we reviewed. Frankly, $1,150 for a largely tricked-out Studio XPS 7100 is neither an absolute, skull-crushing steal nor a penny overpriced. We priced out a system with similar components—obviously the case, PSU, and motherboard are different—and came up with a price on Newegg of $1200. Dell currently lists a discount of $279, and without the discount the Studio XPS 7100 is a tougher sell, but Dell traditionally has such "sales" on a permanent basis.
For the price, you get the benefits of a consumer-grade factory machine along with the drawbacks. You don't have to put it together, it comes pretty well balanced overall, and frankly it's one of the few factory machines that doesn't beg for a reformat when you first power it on just to get rid of all the bloat. Dell has produced a lean, powerful, user-friendly system and placed it in an attractive, quiet housing with a reasonable price.
The drawbacks are that the system is balanced for the shipping configuration and not future upgrades. The power supply is from Delta Electronics and should do fine for the load of the Phenom II X6 and Radeon HD 5870, but you're not going to stuff a GTX 470 or 480 into the case. Beyond adding a PCI card and a couple of hard drives you're probably nearing the limits of what you want to run off a 460W PSU. Likewise, you do have to deal with McAfee, and 36 complimentary months wouldn't be enough to have to put up with that obnoxious memory hog, especially when there are superior free alternatives available. Our biggest complaint is the use of the older 785G + SB750 chipset, and that's hardly a deal breaker.
Looking at alternatives, Dell's XPS 9000 with similar components but an i7-920 processor bumps the price up substantially: $1759 with the same 1.5TB hard drive and 5870 GPU! For just $50 more, you can move to the Alienware Aurora and similar parts, presumably with a better PSU (but without a keyboard and mouse standard). Newegg sells a pre-built i7-860 CyberPowerPC with minor changes to the HDD and RAM for $1400. The entry quad-core i7 parts generally split the benchmarks with the X6 1055T, with gaming favoring Intel's Turbo Boost but heavily threaded content creation going to AMD. Considering the price difference, AMD definitely has a lot going for it.
Ultimately, as a build-it-yourself die-hard even I walked away from the Studio XPS 7100 feeling impressed. You definitely get your money's worth from it, and it's worlds away from the Dell of a few years ago that loaded its machines with bloat and stuck them in hideous (if fairly easy to service) boxes. Known quantities like the Phenom II X6 and the Radeon HD 5870 can make it hard to stand out from the crowd, but Dell pulls it all together in an attractive package that is easy to recommend, particularly if you don't want to get your hands dirty.
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Operandi - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link
Delta makes very high quality PSUs, far from "generic" and better than 95% of the trash that has a "brand name" with a fancy label and LED fans.Normally you'll find Deltas in high-end workstations and servers, not menial desktops.
HOOfan 1 - Sunday, July 11, 2010 - link
Umm...Delta usually makes excellent PSUs.385W on the 12V rail is more than enough for an HD5870
strikeback03 - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
I was wondering the same thing. From the Anandtech review numbers for the CPU and GPU it seems like this PSU would be running well above 50% under load, wonder how well it would hold up to that.Alexvrb - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
Probably will run fine, at least for a good while. They lose money if they have lots of failures, so they certainly wouldn't choose a PSU that can't make it past the 1 year warranty - at least not on purpose. It's not the best PSU in the world, I'll give you that, but I think it will be OK in the vast majority of cases (I wouldn't recommend overclocking)My dad has a lower-end XPS 7100, and it's actually been a pretty good machine so far. It's equipped with a lowly Athlon II X4 2.6Ghz, 4GB of DDR3 1333, and a 5450. He doesn't game on it, and it's plenty fast for Office, H.264 content, etc.
Also, the mainboard may not be cutting edge, but it actually supports 16GB of DDR3 1333 and hex core processors. A lot of the cheaper OEM boxes tap out at 4GB or so. So if you opted for a more basic XPS 7100 configuration, you can toss in a better PSU yourself, and upgrade it a decent bit down the road.
I used to hate Dells with a passion, but that probably stemmed from my experiences with their lowest end series, that were (and probably still are) junk. This machine is not bad for a mainstream OEM box.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
FWIW, I have a Dell XPS 410, and it has been running happily (and powered on) for the better part of three years. The XPS line is a big step up from their standard Inspiron in my book, and while the Delta Electronics isn't likely to be the best PSU around, the one in my old XPS is doing fine. In fact, the GPU fan (on an old 7900 GTX) is the only part that has started to get a little louder over the years.strikeback03 - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Sure, it might be fine, but in this class of system you are probably getting some users who actually know what is in the system. I wonder how much more a Seasonic OEM PSU would add to the cost ($10-15 maybe) and whether it would be worthwhile.HOOfan 1 - Sunday, July 11, 2010 - link
Why should they go to Seasonic? Delta makes excellent PSUs...many of Delta's PSUs are better than competing Seasonic PSUs.johnsonx - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
lol, obviously some sort of spam comment that should have a trick-link in there somewhereaoskunk - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
I laughed when I read this as I found it spot on. In november I built a new rig for the first time in 4 years. I had considered buying a comparable system as this however I decided to experience the fun in building my own. However since I had not been reading this site daily like I do now, it took a good amount of research to get caught up to date with all the latest tech, hardware trends and current hardware manufacturer reputations. I had a budget of about $1200 and was going to reuse my Lian Li case that had cost $300 and still listed at about $100 and my dvd-rw. So it took a lot of research to make sure I got the absolute best bang for my buck. Ended up with a Quadcore i7860, 4890, 8gig ram, modular corair 750 power supply and a 1 gig 7200 which i just upgraded to a vertex2. Beautiful system, bios take longer to load than windows. I love it. Runs WoW at make settings without a hiccup, ever.... NOW.HOWEVER. the
"hair-pulling frustration as parts that “should work” don't. Bad RAM, faulty motherboards, and other potential problems can mar the DIY experience". Computer worked great for the first 3 days. Then i got a couple random BSoD. Then the dvd isnt recognized. I buy a new one and it still doesnt work. Then it freezes one time and never starts back up. Asus tech support informs me its a bad motherboard. Get that after 3 weeks and it boots up. But that first day I get a BSoD. I reboot and there doesnt seem to be any problems so I dismiss it. Fast forward 6 months and I've had prolly 6 BSoD with them becoming more frequent and I don't know why. Then one week it snowballs into everytime I start the computer and then I start up to find that its claiming my win7 pro is not authorized. I scratch my head as this was the first time I actually paid for an OS since i got it for $30 by using an .edu email account, right from microsoft. I read up, run memtest+ and get 30,000 errors on a stick. So i take it out and everything runs great. I currently have to RMA the G.Skill 2gb stick still but everything is finally stable and running mind boggling fast. This took until just recently though.
That's 2 main system components that were defective brand new shipped from New Egg. Exactly the concerns listed in this article. The rig years ago I built i realize in retrospect likely had the same exact 2 problems based on the symptoms i had with that one. That motherboard had to be replaced after 3 months and the ram was prolly what caused the BSoDs that i got every now and then.
Now do i regret building my own PC? no i happen not to, though if i hadn't been able to diagnose the problems and had to bring it to somebody and pay through the nose then YES i would regret it. I feel i'm a better techie now having overcame the problems. Now they really werent any big deals but its a pain having to wait for RMA hardware. Something to consider when deciding to DIY or not.
Before you say anything, NO i did not cause the problems I'm certain it was just coincedence. I know how to handle and install the mb and ram. How often do you guys get defective new hardware when building a new rig? 2 bad components has to be sort of rare yes? I used to think that not building a rig yourself was crazy because you could save yourself money and all dell and acer and such do are fill your system up with bloatware. I know give them some credit for testing their systems to make sure they actually run. Now i don't know how well they do that but they must do it decently well. To those that build a lot of systems in the manner that I did how often do you get bad parts?
TGressus - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
The only real issue with DOA equipment is the trip from the distribution warehouse to your home. You have the couriers to thank for that.The first level tech support at the vendors would rather you RMA than return the product to the retailer. It is also rather difficult and not cost effective to diagnose via phone/email.
BIOS configuration is more complex than ever, and most default settings are for legacy compatibility. Proper BIOS tuning seems to be taken for granted anymore, and requires continuous exposure through frequent system building or a lot of reading. The RAM probably required manual configuration just to work without error.
Rather than slander, I'll reserve judgement on the OEM and vendors you chose. Newb Egg reviews are riddled with good intentions and epic failure like this. I applaud your effort, but I am disappoint.