Dell XPS420- Buying Advice Please

Mr_Tinkles

Morning,

I've been looking to replace my now ageing computer with a brand new shiny one. Been following various threads on here and elsewhere and got very confused and mixed up.

I don't want to build my own PC. I know there are advocates here but to be honest i'm worried about compatibilty, warranty and the fact that i'm rubbish at that type of thing and just know i'll mess it so.

So I want to buy a newly formed PC that I can just switch on and go. I will use the PC for watching DVDs, surfing the internet and some gaming including newer games but frankly i'm not that bothered at having all the bells and whistles as long as the game plays ok. However, prepared to spend up to £650-700 because of how quickly this current PC (bought 3 years ago) became outdated.

On other threads, others have recommended looking at Dell. I went in to the HMV's Gamerstation to look at the Dell range which they have on display (the XPS720 is huuuuge but I digress) and I fell in love with the XPS 420. This morning Dell put on their new year deals and they have this one for £649 including shipping:

Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8MB, 1066MHz)
3072MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024/2x512]
500GB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 Stripe (2x250GB - 7200rpm)
SINGLE 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT card
16x DVD +/- RW Drive
Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio
19-in-1 Media Card Reader
Keyboard/Mouse tc
Vista Home Premium

Is this a good set up for the price for a "shop bought" machine? Also Dell only want £10 to add a DVD player to the machine is that worth it?

Sorry for all the questions, I count myself as quite PC savvy when actually using them but the insides is something I tend to steer well clear of.

BillScarab

"Also Dell only want £10 to add a DVD player to the machine is that worth it?" What do you mean by this? The 16x DVD +/- RW drive will play DVDs anyway. It looks OK, personally I'd prefer a Mirrored raid array as that makes two copies of all your data whereas a Striped array improves performance slightly but doesn't provide any redundancy. It's got a slightly unusual memory configuration too, not a problem though..

A colleague recently bought some sort of XPS from Dell and he has been happy with it. It may be worth shopping around though as you may be abel to get something better for the money.

spakkker

IMHO Dell start to charge a lot more once the spec. goes up. I don't play games so I wouldn't get a 175 quid card. Quad core still has a lot of compatibility issues as it is a new cpu. £10 for a dvd rom is cheap if you need it.What is more important for future-proofing is the m/board, which dell are always cagy about, eg which chipset does the m/b have. It isn't in dell's interest to sell a pc that lasts for too long w/out upgrade. What is the spec. of your old pc?

Mr_Tinkles

Thanks for your advice, as I say I'm not really up on the technical stuff but reading around the net a lot of people talk about the 8800 series being the minimum spec card for gaming.

I was wondering whether anything might come out in the January sales but previous years the online retailers didn't really reduce their PCs too much and i know just about enough to know to avoid PC World.

Spakker- I'm typing this on an Acer T180. System Properties tells me that it is a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.00GHZ with 512mb RAM. Its got an integrated graphics card that struggles to run Battlefield 1942 well! As it is, I'm going to give this PC to my mum when I upgrade as her one is struggling to run XP very well (its much older).

BillScarab- Feel pretty foolish, that's obvious now you mention it re the DVD R/W

BillScarab

The 8800 range are the best for games at the moment. The 8800GT is probably the best around at the moment in terms of price/performance. It may be worth having a look at PCspecialist they get good reviews and you can customise them. If you do buy from Dell remember to go through Quidco to get a bit of cashback.