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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LaughingTarget - Friday, July 9, 2010 - link
I just buy the thing with the expectation that I'll hold onto it for about 4 years. The only time I bothered to upgrade anything was putting an extra 2 gigs of RAM into my Conroe machine when I picked up a copy of Win7.freeturkeys - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
That was a standard ATI video card, the connector is for a dongle that splits to dual VGA or dual DVI. Just noticed the age of this though, so you probably already know this by now!HangFire - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Its been how long since Dell stopped using non-standard P/S pinouts... 6 years? 7? Unforgivable, perhaps, but hardly relevant anymore.I've got news for you, most OEM PC's stay stock for their entire lifetime, save for RAM and maybe a new hard disk. After 3 years they get reformatted and the kids flog it for a while playing Flash and Web games and then it dies and gets thrown away. If it lasts 5 years total people get their money's worth and are satisfied.
If this does not describe your desired experience, skip the article, because if you read it, you'd find the article already says that these systems exist for people who don't want to even think about upgrades and mods. The fact that it doesn't come stuffed with crapware and McAfee is the only s/w you have to uninstall is a near miracle, plus the fact it comes with a decent CPU and video card for a reasonable price, means that you can recommend this system to a family knowing that Mom and Dad will find it fast enough for 3 years and the kids will play games on it OK and it won't become a tech support nightmare for you, their computer guy friend.
wilmarkj - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
What you state is not news - you hardly have a choice. I Hardly think that a 6 Core Phenom with 6 GB RAM and HD 5870 maketh a computer for Mom and Dad. If you read the article you will see its the writer of this article that made the comparison to a built from parts system. My post was merely putting this in what i thought was a more accurate perspective. I still dont buy that crap about Dell and using standard parts - ive see too many recent dells had had so much non standard crap (see my post about the video card). A decent video card and CPU is about all here though and seems unmatched by the motherboard, and as far as i recall the segate XXX.11 has a history of issues. This system looks a little ridiculous, and then its justified based on its parts. Afterall this is anandtech, not pcmagazine.LokutusofBorg - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link
We just bought XPS 8100s at work, which look to be the Intel twin (i7-860) to this model.We added an SSD and it was a PITA. The hard drives mount sideways and only use the screw holes on the bottom of the drive. The mounting bracket that came with the SSD only had side screws. So my SSD is just loose in the HD slot.
And the power cables from the PSU are *maddeningly* short. Like, I-want-to-hit-somebody-in-the-face-for-making-them-that-short short.
HangFire - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
If you can't locate HDD/SSD adapters with bottom screws, power cable extenders, can't drill and tap a hole, or get out a soldering iron, wire and shrink tubing and just fix it, you are hardly in a position to promote upgrades.Grow up and deal with it, these are all trivial things that don't even approach the level of case modding. If you have built a few dozen custom systems you've dealt with worse, or maybe you haven't...
wilmarkj - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Rubbish! You say elsewhere - "most OEM PC's stay stock for their entire lifetime", and now you're telling this guy to pull out his soldering iron. Dell computers are crap. This guy started with a dell - you expect him to pull out his soldering iron?? I have built over 500 systems from parts, several servers and workstations, and special applications computers - all from off the shelf parts - NEVER DELL - they short change you and utilize horrid practices/cut corners, like the way they mount drives, cable specs, etc. While i like a challenge - i never go out of my way to encounter unnecessary trouble.HangFire - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Or don't use a soldering iron, just buy the adapter, but he is so hot about his mad moddin' skillz I had to point out he was ranting about the trivial.The whole point of the matter is OEM PC's are not made for massive upgradability, if that is what you need deal with it and don't buy a Dell, that doesn't make them horrid. It just makes them what they are, OEM PC's, the solution for 80% of the market, including factory available upgrade parts that fit right in for 80% of upgrade needs. If you and yours don't fit into this percentage of the market, good on you, buy custom or build your own.
Once you catch up to the number of systems I've built, modded, and repaired, you might realize that there are lots of people happy with OEM PC's out there, and don't mind buying an all-new one every 3 years. There are advantages either way.
seapeople - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
That sounds dangerous. We all know how susceptible SSD's are to any bit of vibration. If it's not mounted properly and your dog bumps your system you could lose all your data!chucko6166 - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
I purchased a Studio XPS 7100 a few weeks ago for my son.to use as his primary gaming machine. It works as advertised and it's been rock solid stable. I've built plenty of systems over the last 30 years and my selection criteria for this PC heavily favored bang for the buck, performance, and stability. I'm willing to give up a bit of performance to insure stability, and in my case overclocking is not something that I'm interested in, as I really don't need the extra few percent of performance that overclocking would provide.Before I ordered I put together a build list on NewEgg and discovered that I could not build the same system for the price that I paid for the Dell. The choice was a simple one, and I commend Dell for building a quality PC and selling it at a reasonable price.
It's cool, quiet, stable, and provides good bang for the buck and excellent performance for a PC in the $1000-$1250 price range. I configured it with 8GB of RAM and the HD 5870, and frame rates are superb at 1920x1080.
Life is good.