Dell's XPS 720 H2C Hot and Cool

[alex_barros]

One thing that caught my attention is the fact that the system uses 4GB of RAM in a 32-BIT Windows XP.

How is this possible if this 32-BIT system can only recognize 2GB? What can be done for the system to recognize the entire memory - without compromising the performance? 'Cause I've added the /3GB to the boot.ini, but the system became too slow...

What did DELL do that all 4GB are recognized?

 

[deadhead_matt]

What did DELL do that all 4GB are recognized?

Nothing dell has offered 4 gigs for there computers and done tell you that only half of it will be there. Same as for other things they don't tell you.
Go look at the site! upgade to 4 gigs and not a thing about the 4 gigs not all being seen on the buy this now if you go to the fine print on the bottom there it is!! nice trick :twisted:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWAA3&s=dhs

Dell thinks that there PC buys are dum A$$e$ If you are ever have noting to do call them some time and ask a lot of :?: there sales team has no idea

long story short Dell makes a lot of $$$$ off the people who have no idea about PCs.

Little old lady calls dell for a pc for the net and e mails and they try and sell her a 1000.00 USD PC. come on

this what happend to my mom. now for the kick in the nuts. After buying a 500 USD PC that was to have 512 of ram come to find out that there was only 256 in it and had to fight with them to ship the right stix

 

[alex_barros]

What did DELL do that all 4GB are recognized?

Nothing dell has offered 4 gigs for there computers and done tell you that only half of it will be there. Same as for other things they don't tell you.
Go look at the site! upgade to 4 gigs and not a thing about the 4 gigs not all being seen on the buy this now if you go to the fine print on the bottom there it is!! nice trick :twisted:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWAA3&s=dhs

:

Well... so why THG didn't mention that??????? At least the part that only 2GB wil be recognized by Windows...

What's the point in testing a 4GB machine that only "sees" 2GB?????

Why didn't THG just say 2GB machine????

Why didn't THG test under x64 OS?

Why don't we ever see a midget burial or an ex-gay? 😀

 

[deadhead_matt]

What did DELL do that all 4GB are recognized?

Nothing dell has offered 4 gigs for there computers and done tell you that only half of it will be there. Same as for other things they don't tell you.
Go look at the site! upgade to 4 gigs and not a thing about the 4 gigs not all being seen on the buy this now if you go to the fine print on the bottom there it is!! nice trick :twisted:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWAA3&s=dhs

:

Well... so why THG didn't mention that??????? At least the part that only 2GB wil be recognized by Windows...

What's the point in testing a 4GB machine that only "sees" 2GB?????

Why didn't THG just say 2GB machine????

Why didn't THG test under x64 OS?

Why don't we ever see a midget burial or an ex-gay? 😀

the test machine is what dell gave them to test

I read the review vary fast as for I was pi$$ that Tom's would review a Dell
didn't care about a PC that i could build for a lot less $$$$

Also I'm a dell hater so with that in mind

The Pc at base price is 5999.00 USD if you look at the test PC it has every thing you can upgrade on it. So the price is a hole h3ll of a lot more then 5999.00. Look at the price of the ram for 4 gigs and then go look at geting 4 gigs of the same ram from the egg and see a huge price diffrents

Also just to let you know the link is to a random PC. Here is the link to the test PC if you build your own PCs than you should get a good Hehe out of this!!
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DXCWZH4&s=dhs

 

[poisondeathray]

"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"

Thanks for the review. I would like to know:

1) What sort of BIOS options are offered e.g. is multiplier or fsb unlocked? What memory options, and voltage options for CPU, Memory (screenshots would be nice)

2) What temperatures are you experiencing idle and under load?

3) You mentioned Dell demonstrated a 4.0GHz system; were you able to duplicate these results? and is this still under warranty?

 

[Whizzard9992]

Hahaha. Well, if you ask me this isn't the sign of the apocalypse. The real first horseman of the apocalypse for Tom's is "Tech Darling". :lol:

Well said. I don't know why I stick around. I guess it's the hope that an article might be of use to me. They usually just piss me off at this point.

Builders might be able to save a scant few dollars by assembling a similar system themselves, but such home-builds don't come with a one-year in-home service warranty, 24/7 tech support, or the exclusive fit of Dell's H2C cooler in a custom-designed, ultra-thick aluminum case.

Are you f*&^ng serious?????

Did someone at Dell write that? A 'scant few dollars', huh? How about most performance systems can be built for 50% or less than what they retail for? Oh wait, yeah, you're paying for support from some guy in India whose support consists of reading from a set of scripts. In-home support from Dell is a joke; just google it for more info. NY State is sueing Dell.

I can build an 8-core XEON with 15k SAS drives and 8GB RAM for $7500. Really, you'd have to be an idiot to buy this POS.

Wow. A thick aluminum case? That must add at least 100 3dmarks!

What about comparing the performance of the machine to something tangible??? You're comparing a QX6800 @3.73GHz to an X6800 @ 2.93GHz. 2 8800 Ultras versus 2 8000 GTX's. 10k Raptors versus 7k Caviars. 4GB PC-8500 versus 2GB PC-8000.. Wow. The dell is faster? Really?


What about overclocking? Power consumption? Noise levels? What about the revolutionary cooling?


This article is total BS. Ridiculous. THG has become a shameless marketing machine. It's done. The forums have gone in an uproar more than once over this, and it doesn't change. This site just sucks now, and it's not going to change.



/edit: added clock speeds to rant...

 

[Aivas47a]

"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"

Thanks for the review. I would like to know:

1) What sort of BIOS options are offered e.g. is multiplier or fsb unlocked? What memory options, and voltage options for CPU, Memory (screenshots would be nice)

2) What temperatures are you experiencing idle and under load?

3) You mentioned Dell demonstrated a 4.0GHz system; were you able to duplicate these results? and is this still under warranty?

What he said. We can't know if this is a real overclocking machine without knowing what's in the bios.

 

[warezme]

"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"

Thanks for the review. I would like to know:

1) What sort of BIOS options are offered e.g. is multiplier or fsb unlocked? What memory options, and voltage options for CPU, Memory (screenshots would be nice)

2) What temperatures are you experiencing idle and under load?

3) You mentioned Dell demonstrated a 4.0GHz system; were you able to duplicate these results? and is this still under warranty?

What he said. We can't know if this is a real overclocking machine without knowing what's in the bios.

There is a reason they don't go into detail..., thats because the Bios has NO details.

Here is what you can expect from the proprietary motherboard/BIOS for overclocking:

So your options are like overclock - YES/NO (warning)...and how high do you want the CPU to go? No enthusiast in their right mind would buy this thing.

This is from an XPS at work, and BTW the power supply is proprietary also with a square plug and and offset pins.

If Toms is going to do this kind of "reviews", I feel let down by what they have become.

 

[Luscious]

It seems the forum members are doing a better job here than these two inflated THG editors.

Being an experienced editor (and getting paid for it) is one thing, but if you cannot critique something properly, expose significant flaws and provide full details then your "review" is nothing more than a bloody marketing exercise with some "oh wow" benchies thrown in to entice a sale.

When I'm only able to use 2 out of 4 gigabytes of RAM, constrained by overclocking options, get reduced performance under Vista (notice how they DON'T comment on Vista SLI support) and have no knowledge of the internals of the system, then I will still need to decide if the "ready-built convenience" is worth it - fancy case, fancy cooling, 4-year warranty or otherwise.

I'm not saying it is a bad system. I like the look and the performance. But I'm interested also in HOW it runs. Because when I build my own system, at least I KNOW what the hell is in there - every single component. And every single component I would use I expect has been nit-picked and reviewed somewhere by someone at some time.

Dell will always make its revenue off of idiots because the ready-built convenience is the biggest rip-off out there. Being stupid has it's price, and Dell will cheerfully charge you for it.

It's just unfortunate that now EVEN THG has forgotten that the majority of it's readership DO NOT come from the idiot, ready-built crowd.

 

[poisondeathray]

Thanks for your reply and screenshots warezme,

This product is obviously marketed to a very small segment, rich folks who don't want to bother adjusting their own BIOS, settings, etc... and are willing to pay $$$

However, if any of you have tried to OC a 24/7 stable quad core @ 3.74Ghz you would know its no easy feat - Especially on a 680i motherboard! The article mentioned a 4Ghz, so in my earlier post I wondered if this was possible in the BIOS settings.

I agree with the above comments that the review could have been improved.

 

[Whizzard9992]

Actually a 3.73 GHz overclock is actually not difficult with the QX6800. You can get 3.73 on air cooling and PC-6400 RAM @ 4-4-4-12 timings or better, with little effort.

The only part of the computer that is 'truly' overclocked is the processor. The chipset and RAM will run in excess of 1600MHz FSB on passive cooling.

As long as you can keep the CPU cool enough, everything will very easily take the overclock without much fuss or muss. You can cool the QX6800 to about 4GHz on a tuniq tower (air), thanks to the unlocked multiplier.

There's a lot to overclocking, and anyone willing to spend > $5,000 on high end parts will NOT see the same benefit they might if they purchased and tweaked the hardware themselves. It's worth taking 6 or 8 hours and learnin how to overclock. It's not difficult.

 

[poisondeathray]

Actually a 3.73 GHz overclock is actually not difficult with the QX6800. You can get 3.73 on air cooling and PC-6400 RAM @ 4-4-4-12 timings or better, with little effort.

The only part of the computer that is 'truly' overclocked is the processor. The chipset and RAM will run in excess of 1600MHz FSB on passive cooling.

As long as you can keep the CPU cool enough, everything will very easily take the overclock without much fuss or muss. You can cool the QX6800 to about 4GHz on a tuniq tower (air), thanks to the unlocked multiplier.

There's a lot to overclocking, and anyone willing to spend > $5,000 on high end parts will NOT see the same benefit they might if they purchased and tweaked the hardware themselves. It's worth taking 6 or 8 hours and learnin how to overclock. It's not difficult.

I respectfully disagree. Getting a quadcore to run >3.6Ghz 24/7 (not a suicide run) on a 680i SLI motherboard is quite difficult, with high end air or watercooling.

I think its more likely with the P5K deluxe > P5B deluxe >> 680i mobo.

I admit I haven't tried the new QX6800 (not available yet in my area). But I don't think they would differ that from the QX6700 much in terms of overclocking success?

 

[deadhead_matt]

Now the Foumz and beer don't mix

but

this is just wrong Where the fuck is Tom???

OOOOOO

He is on a beach some place cool and well sold out so we can all see a reveiw on Dells

 

[yakyb]

Hahaha. Well, if you ask me this isn't the sign of the apocalypse. The real first horseman of the apocalypse for Tom's is "Tech Darling". :lol:

Well said. I don't know why I stick around. I guess it's the hope that an article might be of use to me. They usually just piss me off at this point.

Builders might be able to save a scant few dollars by assembling a similar system themselves, but such home-builds don't come with a one-year in-home service warranty, 24/7 tech support, or the exclusive fit of Dell's H2C cooler in a custom-designed, ultra-thick aluminum case.

Are you f*&^ng serious?????

Did someone at Dell write that? A 'scant few dollars', huh? How about most performance systems can be built for 50% or less than what they retail for? Oh wait, yeah, you're paying for support from some guy in India whose support consists of reading from a set of scripts. In-home support from Dell is a joke; just google it for more info. NY State is sueing Dell.

I can build an 8-core XEON with 15k SAS drives and 8GB RAM for $7500. Really, you'd have to be an idiot to buy this POS.

Wow. A thick aluminum case? That must add at least 100 3dmarks!

What about comparing the performance of the machine to something tangible??? You're comparing a QX6800 @3.73GHz to an X6800 @ 2.93GHz. 2 8800 Ultras versus 2 8000 GTX's. 10k Raptors versus 7k Caviars. 4GB PC-8500 versus 2GB PC-8000.. Wow. The dell is faster? Really?


What about overclocking? Power consumption? Noise levels? What about the revolutionary cooling?


This article is total BS. Ridiculous. THG has become a shameless marketing machine. It's done. The forums have gone in an uproar more than once over this, and it doesn't change. This site just sucks now, and it's not going to change.



/edit: added clock speeds to rant...

totally agree with you.

when i started reading at toms 4 yrs ago the forums where filled guys willing to help teach me a few things now they are filled with one minded people arguing over who is better

i have found myself drifting offf to other forums in the last few months in search of deeper knowledge of stuff that used to be so readily availible here

im going to stick around still to help those guys who ask for help in first builds or diagnosis of problems but i feel i shall head elsewhere for hardware debates.

i do really appreciate what DaClan are trying to do, and i love the News reports you have started doing also Mpilich your doing a great service to the forums.

i just think reveiws like this one are doing a great diservice to what some of us are trying to do here, that is educate those who want to learn how to build a good value / performance for price / high powered Machine.

Telling them that a Dell will out perform our high end build Machine when clearly that is not the case Is not at all helpful esspecially when there is only a fleeting mention of costs associated

and i urge anyone for the time being to ignore the front page and go straight to the relevant forum section and read how we have helped others in the past

 

[Crashman]

Obviously dean7 feels betrayed and doesn't want to read the site any more. You see all the great coverage of components and how to articles, yet he feels one system review is enough proof that none of the other stuff matters.

He doesn't have to read the stuff he's not intersted in. All the stuff that he says important, the stuff that still exists on the site, can be better consumed by someone who isn't so easily upset by the occasional diversion.

 

[americanbrian]

I think you'll find that there are many nay-sayers on this particular article. I agree that some people are taking it a bit harder than I would expect, but I really would like to see some like 4 like tests done instead of giving the advantage squarely to dell by not overclocking the high end system.

In fact I insist. Not that I can leverage anything out of anyone at tom's but it is important not to alienate your target audience by transparently offering disproportionate representation to ultra-capitalist multi-national conglomerated businesses.

 

[yakyb]

my only real concern is that someone like i was about 5 years ago comes along reads the article and goes

'oh maybe im just better off buying a dell'

at the end of the day who is that article aimed at?

the one percent of the population with $6000 to burn on a gaming rig? so that they can go yeah dell makes a powerful computer (which there are no arguements about it is one bloody powerful computer)

but to say that it is better than the high end custom built of the system builders marathon is an insult to enthusiasts.

i suggest THG get one of the repected system builders here and challenge them to beat the Dell (with the same budget) or at least equal it (with a lesser budget)


IIRC there was an article a couple of months back about two budget systems (Intel and AMD) that many people picked loads of holes out of dont have the time to find the thread but they also listed some problems in other articles

 

[Crashman]

Yeh, well, 5 years ago you probably didn't have $6k to drop on a computer anyway.

At least Dell lets you overclock under warranty, even if that warranty is only a year. Heck, if I had more money than time and wanted a fast system like that, I'd probably splurg on the extended warranty too.

 

[warezme]

Yeh, well, 5 years ago you probably didn't have $6k to drop on a computer anyway.

At least Dell lets you overclock under warranty, even if that warranty is only a year. Heck, if I had more money than time and wanted a fast system like that, I'd probably splurg on the extended warranty too.

you would, huh?

how sad, for you.

 

[yakyb]

Yeh, well, 5 years ago you probably didn't have $6k to drop on a computer anyway.

not quite sure what thats supposed to mean


besides im merely trying to suggest areas of improvement and highlight areas that have flaws.

as i said earlier tho to compare the dell against a high end (not topend) homebuilt is misleading

 

[Crashman]

Sad for me? Sad for you of little understanding

 

[yakyb]

guys can we stop the arguing we dont want this thread going the way of many of the threads here recently

can we come up with some suggestions for improving the reporting instead of making snide little comments

 

[wyarn]

At least Dell lets you overclock under warranty,

But it wont let you overclock so thats BS

This should have been tested against another system built for the same money and see which came out top cos TBH the high end matthon system wasnt all that great and not a good comparison sorry ill rephrase that it was a F***in W**k comparison

Never read a more Bias review THG must have been paid allot of money for this! the worst kind of sales tactics!!! Maybe THG has been bought out by Dell i wonder....

 

[yakyb]

actually thats unknown whilst its true for the XPS posted above we dont know what the options where for the machine in the article (although i suspect it may be similar)

 

[wyarn]

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 !!