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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harbingerkts - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
My situation was fairly similar, except with the deal that Dell was running at the time I purchased, I could match the price on Newegg if I bought the cheapest component in each class on Newegg... but the Dell came with a 2 year warranty with accidental damage coverage.If you haven't already, throw even a cheap 64GB SSD in there as a OS/Game drive. The difference in speed vs the HD they put in is night and day. Just make sure to request the full OS / Application disks from Dell if you do.
adonn78 - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
I am a bit afraid oft he 460 watt budget generic Power supply unit used int hsi system. On top of that I would be afraid of the system overheating int he summer months with the standard air cooling heatsinl/fan. Other than that it seems like a powerful system for the price. but I'd rather get a system from ibuypower or cyberpower off of newegg for about the same but with liquid cooling, better PSU, and a nicer case with better cooling.Wolfpup - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
I've had to switch to a notebook so haven't been paying as much attention to Dell's desktops anymore, but skimming over the Studio XPS 7100 and 8100, it's looking like they still offer a nicely put together system at a reasonable price. Back in the day I bought about half my systems from Dell, and half built myself, and never had complaints with Dell...I think they use standard power supplies on most systems too, so it's probably fine even if you need more power down the line. (Plus my Dells were always quieter than my systems I intentionally bought to be quiet using Sonata cases and the like.)lapasta - Friday, October 29, 2010 - link
nice systembut for that config $1,149.99 damneddddddddddddd
im dutch and i know im a little paying to much attention on what is the cheapest LOL
but cmon
550W stille power supply
Processor AMD Phenom II X6 1055T SIX-Core (AM3, 8MB, 6 x 2.8 Ghz, boxed)
Mainbord Asus M4N68T-M AM3 (support 8GB ram)
Video nVidia GeForce GTX 460 768mb gddr5 Directx 11 HDMI out
HDD 500GB S-ata2 7200RPM
memory KINGSTON 4GB DDR3 1333MHZ PC10600
sound 7.1 High-Definition Audio
networking LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
USB 2.0 connections 4x Usb 2.0 at the back, 2x USB 2.0 at the front
Microfoon connection 1x at front
headphone 1x at front
DVD dr5ive Samsung Dual Layer DVD-R +/- 22x
garanty 2 year inclusief with support
and the best part now in stores for only 500 EUR thats 692,85USD
god i love holland lol
peace out greetings pasta
Bruce20 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I bet this thing would be great for a home <a href="http://musicoven.com">music recording</a>. I need to get me some better supplies than i have.qzyxya - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
I have this computer and i'm wondering what speed of ram to get, I know it has 4 ram slots and can accept 16gb (i assume), but idk what speed.Also what is the name of this motherboard?
DocWoo - Friday, April 21, 2017 - link
It's 2017 and my Dell XPS 7100 still is running, Twice I had to vacuum dust out of the CPU when the fans got noisy. Last time, the heat sink stuck to the CPU and removing it pulled the AMD chip out of the socket. Pins bent, but I re-straightened them, put it back in the ZIF and it booted, LOL. $200 for an obsolete CPU if I had to replace it.But I will be updating.
DocWoo - Wednesday, August 29, 2018 - link
Still running the XPS 7100 on Win 7 after 6 years. This summer, I put in a GeoForce graphics card, a 650W power supply, and a solid state C: drive. FWIW, windows experience at 7.5. No gaming. Just Lightroom and video edits.DocWu - Sunday, December 15, 2019 - link
Nine years after I bought it. Still running. Upgrade to Corsair 450W PSU and Geoforce GT1030. 12GB RAM. 256GB boot SSD and several HD's. Windows 10.AMD CPU fell out and I had to spend several hours straightening the pins. If that hadn't worked, I would have bought a new box.