Desktop PCs

Back in the year 2007, Dell had purchased the Alienware, which seemed to be a very controversial merge of two very different companies. Alienware, which was hungry to raise its capital in order to fund its world-wide expansion, found that Dell would serve to be a great partner as it would benefit by being able to meet the demands and also by Dell’s famous supply-chain efficiencies, both being great advantages for the company. And in turn, Dell has also an advantage of gaining access to the lucrative high end PC gaming market.

Many of the consumers had thought that Dell’s XPS gaming brand would disappear into darkness after the company had bought Alienware. Dell has proven everybody wrong by moving on to manufacture some of the remarkable gaming rigs and the flagship model being the Dell XPS 710 H2C. Basically, this new model resembles its predecessor, the Dell XPS 710, so what is the difference? Dell has introduced in the model two key elements that the company has never used in any of its previous PCs. The first fact being that the PC is factory overclocked and the second key element is that, the system makes use of a Space-age Water-cooling System.

Most of us would say that a thousand pounds is quite a handsome sum to spend over a PC. So, why not take an ultra big leap and spend three times that amount over this absolute stunner from Dell? And keep in mind that this price is even before you have even paid for the monitors and speakers.

Like it or Hate it design:

The Dell XPS 710 H2C Desktop PC has been built into the familiar XPS 700 chassis and has a very intimidating chassis with a love-it or hate-it styling. It looks as though it is ready to swallow you up like a real monster. We are not hesitant to call the PC a monster because of its big size and the loud whooshing sound that it makes as you hit over the power button. And the chassis is subtly slanted towards the front as though it is going to pounce right on top of you, and for those who are ready to go near it, there is a real treat waiting. The exterior of the desktop is made out of glossy black aluminium and that is not similar to the cheap plastic crap that you get from the Alienware PCs. But unfortunately, this sturdy material is not provided throughout the system as its rear is constructed out of a flimsy looking plastic grille that looks as though it will break off on heavy handling.

Ignoring the flimsiness, you will able to find a set of four funky LED lights on the tower that would glow down on the grill in such a way that the glow beams disappear gradually into the case. These lights are very attractive and there will be hardy anybody who would not like it. Another place where Dell has lit up the PC is on its rear, that is, the IO panel has been fitted with LED and you can easily see in which port hole you are jamming in your cables.

Add or Remove to the order:

By default, a Dell 2007WFP 20″ LCD Monitor is included with an order. Dell also offers a Razer Tarantula gaming keyboard and a Razer Copperhead mouse. We would frankly ask you to cut down these options to save some money. All H2C systems also come with a pre-installed copy of McAfee Security Center, complete with a 15 month subscription.

Features:

Quad-Core Processor:
Coming to the part of features, the Dell XPS 710 H2C Desktop Computer has a very serious set of specifications. It runs on the Intel quad-core QX6700 Processor, which has four separate cores over a single die. In addition to this, the PC has been factory overclocked from the default 2.66GHz to an unimaginable 3.2GHz. This is like putting in the masters of all types of sciences into a single chip and feeding them with a whole lot of protein and Omega 3. We hope now you understand how quick the system is going to be.

The Cooling System:
There is more than simply speed to the XPS 710 H2C. The tag “H2C” (Hot to Cold) in its name specially refers to the CPU cooling unit inside the PC that keeps it super quiet. Dell has done a great job by installing a Space-age two part cooling system which has been custom designed for the Dell XPS 710 H2C. This technology combines the standard water cooling with that of thermo electric heat dissipation, this is something of the sort you can find in the NASA space shuttle. The principle behind its working is that, the ceramic tiles in the system deflects heat away from the processor and the clever circuitry employed by Dell makes sure that the chip is not destroyed by condensation just by regulating the temperature.

One major benefit of this system is that, it does not involve any fans for the sake of CPU cooling which in turn has made the system an exceedingly quite operator. You will really thank Dell for employing this system if you had ever seen the noisy Velocity Micro Raptor Signature Edition and even the WidowPC IX2 SLI with their very annoying side panel fans.

Limited Memory Bandwidth:
The standard RAM provided in Dell XPS 710 H2C is 2GB although it can handle a max of 4GB. And this 2GB memory has been split across as two 1GB DDR2 667MHz modules that run in a dual channel pact for quicker memory access. So far we have said you about all the good part, and here is the sour part of the story; the Dell motherboard in the 710 H2C does not have support for the 800MHz memory. And for the price tag that the PC has got on it, the buyer will be mad to know that he will encounter issues while trying to upgrade, however, the current performance of the PC is not affected. The system’s memory bandwidth is limited as Dell remains to be tied to a slightly older motherboard chipset than its competitors.

Stunning Graphics Card:
When you have a look at the graphics card offered by Dell, you will be absolutely blind of all the other shortcomings of the PC. Dell has equipped XPS 710 H2C with two Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards that run is a tandem Serial Link Interface (SLI) configuration.  Each of it has 760MB of RAM for a total video memory of 1.5GB and each of those have enough power to make F.E.A.R run like pong. In addition to this, to make things work hundred percent, the PC has an Ageia PhysX card and this sits in a port that is next to the graphics card and offers you with additional 3D physics processing in attuned games. This also helps you to calculate how the objects in a 3D space should react, this is a task that will be mostly handled by the processor and graphics card. And whether it is worth having such a card totally depends on the type of games you play, we say so because there are very few titles in the market that are compatible with PhysX.

The 1TB HDD:
Though we cannot say that the storage offered by the Dell 710 H2C Gaming Desktop PC is generous, we will have to admit the fact that it has been well thought out. You will be able to get about 1TB of disk storage, but the default configuration is very basic. Yet, this is plenty of space for games, home videos, and other data. We find that everything has been installed on a pair of 160GB drives on a RAID 0 stripe, this is a type of arrangement where the data is interleaved across two disks for faster file access. The drive has a very swift spindle speed of 10,000rpm, which you must have never heard before as a standard hard drive spins at about 7200rpm. So it is not at all a surprise that the Dell XPS 710 H2C PC is no stoop in the tasks that are disk intensive. Note that, the 1TB split is done in such a way that there are two 10,000rpm 150GB drives and single 750GB 7200rpm unit.

Additional features:
In rest of the system, you can expect features that you will be finding in a high end gaming PC. Dell has included a Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music sound card, a DVD burner, and a standard DVD/CD-RW combo drive to lend multimedia punch. You will also find a media card reader and a floppy disk drive behind the front panel door. It is disappointing that Dell has not included a Blu-ray burner as an option in this model as it has already extended the next generation movie hardware to its XPS laptops. Bear in mind that you do not get a flat panel or speakers as standard, Dell is assuming that you will want the XPS to slot into an existing home entertainment setup. Anything less than a large plasma or LCD screen and a thumping audio system would fail to live up to this astonishing PC.

Operating System:
Initially the PC came with only Windows XP installed; this was mainly because there was no SLI Nvidia Drivers for Windows Vista at the time of PC construction. However, they are available now and so you can enjoy the incredible capabilities of both 710 H2C PC and Windows Vista, but keep in mind that Dell does not yet offer Vista Pre-Installed.

Performance:

This is the only word that actually describes about the H2Cs performance capabilities. The HDD of speed 10,00rpm RAID 0 aided the system to boot up in under 30 seconds and scores the highest ever in the PCMark tests. Its gaming performance let us down in no ways, scoring the highest in all possible tests it is put into. It is playable at both 1280 x 1024 and 2560 x 1600. Thanks to the dual graphics card technologies and the very expensive high watt power supplies that are necessary to run them.

Warranty and Support:

Dell offers its XPS 710 H2C a standard one year warranty for parts and labour which also includes the overclocked CPU. You also get 24 x 7 toll free phone support and one year onsite service. We should also appreciate Dell for its “Dell Connect Service” which is a remote control tech support feature that gives a Dell Tech direct control over your PC.

Verdict:

The Dell XPS 710 H2C desktop PC is a stunning looking PC that works at a lightning speed. On the negative side all that we have to mutter about is its rather limited default storage and the limited memory bandwidth that prevents us from using the other technologies employed in the PC to be used to the fullest. However, after using this system, any other PC you work with will feel like a pocket calculator; such is its impact. We have nothing to stop you if you have three grand and urge to play all the high tech games.

Read reviews of Inspiron 545, XPS One 24, Inspiron 530 from Dell in this
website.

Dell XPS 710 H2C Gaming PC – Technical Specifications, Configuration Details

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