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All i can say you want a high end system with warrenty buy it from a place that cares like BEAST computers they build sum amazing systems and the actuall guy who built it will be at the other end of the phone if it goes wrong! Not Dell.... never dell they just havnt got the customer support to build hight end systems !!

I think this really hits the nail on the head here. The point of the article, as made clear by the overview on the first page, is to pit a Dell against an enthusiast build. In the end, the authors are convinced that the dell is a better buy. To add insult to injury, they then attempt to convince you that the Dell is some sort of deal, being ~$7,500 as opposed to $9,000, based on metrics that were apparently pulled from the air.

Wow.

Wow.

The point I would like to make is that for $7,500, you don't need an overclocked system to acheive ultimate performance, so any points made about overclocking (including warrantys) are moot. An enthusiast-built XEON platform will deliver more bang for the buck at a lower price point without the need for overclocking.

It's painfully obvious that the point of this 'article' was not to point out the benefits and the flaws, but merely to point out the benefits of the system and promote the machine.

I haven't read a 'great' article on this site in a long time. The only one that came close was the 'semiconductor 101' article, which was full of wrong information, as pointed out by members of the community. The reviews are, more often than not, biased, poorly written, or missing critical information.

I'm not saying all articles are garbage. It's been said that one bad apple spoils the bunch, but in a basket of bad apples, the good ones stand no chance.

I'm actually very pro-Dell. 80% of our customers owned a Dell, HP, or Gateway computer before coming to us for their next system. These companies make us custom builders look good. God bless 'em.

Just because I don't see the lack of customer support, inflated price, 1 year warranty, and send the system back to the shop to fix it and wait 6 weeks for it to come back as attractive options, there's obviously a huge market for it. HP, Dell, and Gateway have been doing monster business for many years from customers that do find this strategy attractive. But all of these companies' best bang for the buck are their low end systems. You pay very little and get exactly what you pay for. Most people seem to think this is all they need, until they find out how limited the systems are.

As for the price of this system, a person can buy these parts retail and build it for considerably cheaper. "save a scant few $" :?: So imagine how a system builder who gets components at wholesale prices can save you a heap of cash on the same system. Better yet, imagine the markup that a huge company like Dell is making off this system.

Here HERE! I'll second that.

But I think enough is enough. Lets all just agree that Tom needs to make some money somehow, and that this article was greased heavily with cash.

The machine is a demon. It just is not high value for money.

Anyone with enough money to blow on this DELL, without knowing anything about DELL's history, "support" and kickbacks, deserves exactly what they get. A beast, that makes them feel good for a while until they realise that in 1 year they have an average machine and it wasn't worth it.

Sorry to spoil your burning-the-witch-at-the-stake-party boys. I actually bought the Dell system and I'm really enjoying it. I knew that Vista Home didn't support 4gb, so I checked the option for Vista Ultimate. One click. The system runs like a dream, and costs more than $800 less than an Alienware system with exactly the same specs. I really don't know why the guy earlier said his machine was loud, maybe he has superhearing or the machine he's talking about wasn't liquid cooled.

I didn't get the phys-X card because I felt 2 GTX's were enough. Again, only one click.

The only thing I can't figure out is why Dell would undercut Alienware by so much if they own the company?

This machine is the perfect choice for guys that have wanted overclocked machines for years, but have been unwilling or unable to do it themselves. My last machine went through 4gb of RAM because I found out too late that EVGA
motherboards were frying RAM with voltage settings of 2.3 or higher. I was able to RMA it, but when you overclock yourself, there's always the risk of something screwing up.

I welcome a new player to the table for high end machines because competition makes prices go down. Look at Nvidia; no competition from Ati, so they try to swindle us out of extra money with the Ultra.

So how do you like your bios settings??, proprietary motherboard, cheap flimsy plastic front panels, dvd drives, proprietary PS?? (don't lose that power cable), in the words of the Dell dude "dude, you got scre**d"

Selling overclocked systems 'off-the-shelf' is no more than a marketing ploy. Consider this:


The quality of chips manufactured varies from wafer-to-wafer, chip-to-chip. To make selling the chips easier, they place them into performance categories (i.e. binning) based on factory performance testing. The clocks at which they're rated are 'safe', almost 'lowest-common-denominator' for the performance class. The point of overclocking is to squeeze that extra performance out of the chip that exists, but has been tucked away for whatever reason.

For the amount of time and effort it takes to truly tweak a system to acheive the maximum potential for the hardware outweighs the cost of simply buying superior hardware. Enthusiasts are more than willing to contribute the time and effort into tweaking their rigs to achieve the best performance for the lowest price. For those with deep pockets whose money is more valuable than their time, they're better off simply buying more powerful hardware.

Companies like Dell, Alienware,etc. sell overclocked PC's because OC'ing is very 'in' right now, especially since the market realized how much enthusiasts determine the direction of sales (AMD turning over the market in < 5 years largely due to enthusaist support).

It's a waste of money to purchase an overclocked system, barring mild OC's on the video cards. If you have more money than time, then buy a server platform. If you have more time than money, then you overclock. It doesn't matter if the Dell had a low-power nuclear reactor powering it. It doesn't change the fact that the cost for Dell to OC the system is greater than the cost of superior hardware.

These are all things the authors of this review left out. It'd be nice to see how the dell stacks up against a computer with similar specs. It's really stupid that the authors felt that pitting a dual-core against a quad-core with half the memory was a fair comparison.

Not to mention that a factory overclocked system is typically a mild overclock.

While Alienware used to (not sure what they're doing since Dell bought them out) overclock fairly drastically and make sure the components were well matched in the process, this Dell system is something anyone could do without fine tuning anything. Its simply a matter of raising FSB and adjusting the RAM timing.

But hey, its your $. If you want to spend more to buy it from Dell rather than do it yourself or get it from a system builder who will take the time to match components and tweak the system AND then be there for support if/when you have problems, by all means go for it. I sincerely hope you don't have to RMA the system in a few months and be without it for weeks.

I deal with people every day who have found out the hard way that Dell/HP/Gateway support is a joke. As I said, god bless 'em. :-)

I already told you, I'm enjoying my system. Probably because I like getting 70+ frames in Vanguard at highest settings. I hate overclocking myself. Blue Ray movies are doing awesome also. Cheap flimsy plastic panels? They seem fine to me. Bios settings? I'm not overclocking dude, I'm leaving my system as is, so i'll rarely see it. PS? Come on, that's nitpicking, and how will the power cable get lost?? If you're not happy with a machine that powerful, you have other problems. Sell it and rid yourself of the headache. I can see it now, the pain of getting 100+ frames in just about every game you play, yet you're pissed off about the bios and the front panel. Geez.

An absolutely ridiculous statement. Come on, that can apply to every single computer ever bought. Next year, I'm buying a new computer, it's going to be the fastest thing out and I'll still consider this one worth it.

Not as big as companies like Alienware have been making off their machines for years. Go figure, a company is trying to make a profit.

I'm screwed for enjoying an extremely fast system?

Darn.

Nah, you've missed the point. The bigger a company is, the more components they buy at bulk, and the more components bought at bulk the cheaper the components are. Thus, Dell has always gotten components for cheaper than Alienware has. But I agree that Alienware products have always been overpriced too.

Making a profit is one thing. Making 50% profit from each system is greedy. I've priced these components from my own suppliers in AU. I can build this system for roughly 70% of what they're charging and we don't get anywhere near the price break on components that Dell does. My profit is a couple hundred dollars, where Dell's profit is a couple thousand dollars. It takes me about an hour to put this system together from scratch, and another hour to install the OS, install software, and run my Windows Updates disc (all automated). It takes a few minutes longer to put a top of the line SLI system together than a basic system. We give a 2 year in house warranty, and Dell gives a 1 year return to base warranty.

I'm happy that you're happy with your system. If and when it fails, and if its still under warranty, I'm pretty sure you won't be nearly as impressed with Dell's customer service. If you didn't pay dearly for that, then the extra cost must have been to save you an hour researching a better price and warranty from somewhere else for the same system. This is the point that others and myself are making. You could have gotten the same system from a custom shop for less money and better customer support. Dell systems are no bargain any way you slice it.

No, you're missing the point. The overwelming majority of people that would buy this system are not system builders or overclockers, and they rarely go into their bios. They also don't read these forums. For them, the article is accurate. They couldn't care less if Dell is making a bigger profit than the competition, as long as they're undercutting them.

You're saying that a guy who pays $1200 for a designer suit and gets an awesome looking girlfriend while wearing it should be pissed off because the designer is getting a huge markup on inferior material, when he could have gone to a tailor and gotten superior quality material and gotten excellent followup CS.

The fact is, he's already spent his money and he's getting awesome looking women. He's happy. I'm getting super frames in my favorite games, I'm happy.

Better customer support? I'll take my chances. I had a Dell laptop a few years ago and the turnaround was days, not weeks. And my system now has home customer support, and I can call Dell 24 hours a day.

The list of big companies that make a huge profit are endless. You want to get pissed off at all of them for making a huge profit while simultaneously undercutting the competition, be my guest, but remember that whoever is responsible for it is putting their job on the line, and their replacement can say "why undercut the competition by $800 when we can undercut them by
$50 and make an even bigger profit?"

I have never found a custom shop that can reliably put together a liquid cooled, overclocked system that will give me in home service. If you can, show me, I'm in the New York/New Jersey area.

You act like these places are on every street corner. They are very hard to find.

And that's my point, which you missed. I would sell this system for much less than Dell does and still make a healthy profit. Dell isn't undercutting anyone on this system.

I deal with Dell's customer support almost every week. Your expectations must be a lot lower than mine or my customers'. A few days ago, their "help" desk had one of my customers making software adjustments for a broken DVD tray (wouldn't open or close). I wouldn't have gotten this customer had Dell's help desk known what they were doing.

I can't speak for your neck of the woods, but we're exactly that type of custom computer builder based in Adelaide, AU. We'll build anything a customer asks for and provide a 2 year in home warranty on all our systems. We have tremendous competition in our area.

Hopefully someone in your area will reply with a few recommendations.

inthere, it's good that you're happy with your system and nobody can take that away from you, but most people here know how dell works and they get worked up because this site didn't use to put this kind of crap selling this "dream system" like it was the best deal.

I just went on Dell.com myself and looked for an XPS 720 H2C, compiled a nearly maxed out list for $9500 not the $6k-7.6k advertised (there was no Crucial Ballistix PC8500 mem unlike it was stated in the article) and after that I took the time to check newegg.com (I checked QX6700 on the dell system because i couldn't find QX6800 on newegg) for the same or better components (I looked for crucial ballistix tracer ram, better sound card, and better speakers) and my list ended up being about $7400-7500. Hell I could've cut down that price tag to $7000 if I had checked 8800GTXs KO ACS3 and not 8800 ultra (clocked at about the same, and it's so simple to overclock to ultra anyway...)

And this is with a PCP&C 1kw PSU and P190 case (which brings dual PSUs that should be able to power dual GTXs without even the need to buy a new PSU). Now if I can get a better system for about $7k (and that's from retail) Imagine the kind of insane profit dell is getting since they buy in bulk from distributors.

The point being is that there's no reason to advertise something as the best when it is clearly not for people who are looking for information not confusion, this is just plain misleading and irresponsible in my opinion.

Well this should give a pretty accurate idea of the markup Dell is quoting and how their systems are not top of the line by any means.

The XPS 720 is not currently supplied in AU, or hasn't been added to their website. The XPS 710 is listed. I updated this system as near as I could to the 720 with Dell's options from their AU website. Then I did a quote on our own system with upgrades to make it much better, and still came out considerably cheaper.

The QX6700 is the best CPU they offer.
OS = Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Support = 3 yr 24/7 technical support ($300AU for this option which we include free) Another $60AUD for in home support, which I added as well.
2 x 1g DDR2-667 RAM
1 x Geforce 8800GTX 768mb
did not include Physics Accelerator as its basically useless
1.44 floppy drive + 13-in-1 card reader
Dell's "enhanced" multi-media keyboard
Razor Diamondback Chameleon Mouse
24" Wide Screen LCD Monitor
2 x 250g Hard Drives with NCQ (RAID 0)
DVD-RW 16x (only drive Dell offers)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music
24 month McAfee Internet Security
Dell's price: $7739.60 AUD

Our system:
Upgrade motherboard to GA-N680SLI-DQ6
Upgrade video cards to 2 x Geforce 8800GTX 768mb
Upgrade RAM to 2 x 1gig DDR2-800
Upgrade card reader to 16-in-one
Upgrade Mouse to Logitech G5 or G7 (if end user prefers wireless or not)
Upgrade Hard Drives to 4 x 150g 10,000 RPM WD Raptors (RAID 5)
Upgrade DVD-RW to 18x
Upgrade AV to AVG 7.5 Internet Security (24 months)
Our Price = $6700.00 AUD, including in home setup, full in home 2 year warranty and 24/7 support.

We've thrown in another vid card and converted the system to SLI, provided the same storage space with a RAID 5 array which has backup as well as performance, bettered many components, and our profit and support are included in the price. We come out $1000 AUD cheaper for a much better system than Dell offers, and aren't far from the XPS 720. I'm confident that we could easily beat the XPS 720 for price and system performance as well.

Building is even cheaper.

I'm sure > 80% of XPS owners love their machines, but that's not the point.

My main gripe is about the article; for many reasons mentioned previously. It's old news that Dell systems are overpriced and under-featured. There's no point in arguing over it.

At no point in the article did they say it was the "best" system, they only asked the question "is it competitive?"

Dell is undercutting Alienware, Falcon, and other "name" system builders with this system.

What about for people that won't put together their own system? Will someone please find one of these mystery "custom shops" that are supposed to be on every street corner? And please, I don't want to fly all the way to Australia to find one.

I know you can put together an overclocked system for cheaper if you do it yourself. But what if you don't want to do it yourself??