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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aoskunk - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
I'm not sure what you meant your dissapointed about? it turned out i had done nothing wrong, seeing as how once i got working parts everything was perfect. bios was far from complicated to setup. just select the proper xmp profile which it explained right in the directions that came with both the ram and motherboard. slecting right boot config. in fact i dont think there was really anything else to change other than the timing to skip Asus' own quick access OS. Aside from core multipliers etc. (I am now perfectly stable at 4GHz!)Unfortunatley at least where I live the cost of going to a repair shop would likely end up costing as much as say, my videocard. But like I said there was no error on my part, just some bad luck. I paid extra for good shipping from a carrier that doesn't subject your packages to falls from as high as 12 feet. I agree that there is a lot of misinformation posted in the reviews on newegg. They do often have some of the best pricing and pretty good RMA service though.
BernardP - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
Each time I look at the possibility of configuring a Dell system, I run into a couple of things that keep me from proceeding. One is the limited possibilities for adding hard drives. No experienced user wants to run a single 1 TB HD with everything on it. My preferred combination is one system drive and 2 data drives, one mirroring the other. No can do here.The other thing is that Dells no longer ship with a true Windows install DVD. There is a basic configuration already on the HD and you have to burn your own disc image of this in case of an eventual reinstall. It's not possible to format the drive and do a clean Windows install from an OEM windows DVD.
Don't try to partition the drive either, as the partinioning software will wreac havoc with the hidden Restore Partition.
However, a basic pre-built is certainly a great option for the casual user (like my parents) who are happy to just surt the web and send email.
seapeople - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
Did this just change? My Dell Inspiron from April shipped with a Windows install disk. It was simple to do a reformat and fresh Windows install. Partitioning is fine to do as well. Of course, the partitioning does kill the Factory Restore functionality, but why would I want to go back to the factory state anyway when I have a Windows install disk?DominionSeraph - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
With Dell it's always questionable what you're going to get. I've gotten disks that restore it to factory state, ones with OS + applications so you can just install the OS, and straight Windows disks.BernardP - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Yes, it's a new policy effective April 1 2010:http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/deskto...
seapeople - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Wow, I was lucky it seems!harbingerkts - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Long story short - with their windows 7 systems Dell's using a recovery partition and telling users to create recovery disks. I had to request the OS and Application disks through a form on their site.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
"The dock offers sets of shortcuts at the top of the screen not totally dissimilar to the dock in Mac OS X."I'm sure that I had a Windows 95 machine way back in the past that had various menus at the top of the screen from oems and other etc.
I don't think we'll ever have any article that doesn't mention apple now. People want to know about the damn machine and most won't even know or BOTHER to realise that shortcut icons look like the ones in OSX.
cknobman - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
That coupled with the gimped chipset ruin a otherwise decent build for the price (from a cookie cutter manufacturer anyways).With only 460 Watts say goodbye to overclocking or expansion.
Powerlurker - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
Overclocking is probably the last thing on the mind of someone who is buying a computer from Dell.