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Dell XPS 420

Author	Edward Chester
Published	11th Jan 2008
Manufacturer	Dell
Price	£815.81 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£958.58 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price	Click here

Design & Features
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Being a Dell, it's highly unlikely you will ever venture into the bowels of your PC but if you do fancy a rummage around, the chunky handle-cum-lever on the top makes it very easy to pop the side panel off. Unusually, the case is arranged in a BTX form factor so all the components are in odd positions and it's the right side panel that's removable as opposed to the left. Unfortunately, the rarity of BTX means upgrading your motherboard will be a complete no-no and the odd internal arrangement means adding extra expansion cards will be difficult and extra storage impossible. However, swapping hard drives, adding extra RAM, or upgrading you CPU should just about be manageable.

Looking at the internal hardware in a bit more detail, the 420 range starts with the D01X401, which will set you back £549. This gets you a dual-core Intel E4400 processor (2GHz, 2MB, 800MHz), 1GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and very basic ATI 2400 Pro graphics. Suffice to say, this isn't a configuration we'd recommend as you can get the same low power hardware in a much smaller and prettier chassis.

The system we're looking at, the D01X409, costs £958.58 (currently with £60 off) and has a number of significant upgrades. First is the processor that is quad-core and runs at a higher clock speed - it's an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 running at 2.4Ghz, with 8MB L2 Cache, to be precise. This is accompanied by 3GB RAM running at 667Mz, and 640GB of hard drive space (actually 2 x 320GB hard drives configured in a RAID-0 for lightening fast read/write speeds). Completing the package is a super fast 8800 GTX graphics card and the Xcelerator module. This is a top notch set of hardware that will be more than enough for most people's needs, even if you're past times include video editing and playing the latest games.

Finally, topping out the range is the D01X406 that is basically identical to the review system but includes a Blu-ray drive, ships with a copy of Adobe Elements Studio and is aimed at the video editing enthusiast. At the moment this system has a whopping £300 off the normal asking price (£999 down from £1,299) and comes in at only £41 more expensive than the model we're looking at so if you can stretch your budget just a tiny amount I'd recommend going for that one as it's a bargain. Indeed, even comparing to a DIY system, that price is very impressive.