2. Beauty That's More Than Skin Deep

The ultra glossy finish might make the XPS 720 H2C Edition look a little classier than an Alienware system, but the verdict is still out on what the shape reminds us of. Test lab technician Shelton Romhanyi mentions a "sand crawler", but to me it looks like two rural-delivery newspaper boxes stacked atop each other. Not that this is all bad: I once saw a newspaper box used as a blower scoop on a top street dragster, though I don't think homemade hot-rods are what Dell had in mind.

Lights under the leading edges of the upper and lower sections add a soft glow to illuminate bays in style, and are controlled through BIOS or an easy OS application. Front panel ports sit between these sections, with a two-drive 3.25" bay above them pre-loaded with a single 13-in-1 card reader.

Rear panel illumination eases cable insertion in dimly-lit rooms. The two digital audio connections can be ignored, since the XPS 720 H2C Edition contains a digital-capable Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card.

Opening the side panel reveals the H2C liquid cooling apparatus, with a cover that extends the width of the case. It's not backwards, by the way - it's BTX!

All the extra cooling hides a Core 2 Extreme QX6800 processor, factory overclocked to 3.73 GHz! Dell stresses that users are allowed and even encouraged to go faster, showing off as an example a system at FSB1333 and 4.0 GHz.