Why You Can Trust CNET Dell XPS 410 Desktop Computer (Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz/500GB/2GB) review: Dell XPS 410 Desktop Computer (Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz/500GB/2GB)
Brand-name shoppers will find that the upper-midrange Dell XPS 410 is an easy, if expensive, way to get into the next generation of CPUs without jumping all the way up to Dell's XPS 700 gaming monster.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
The Dell XPS 410 is housed in the same glossy white BTX case as the XPS 400. It features a silver front bezel and black drive-bay covers. The midtower design is inoffensive enough to fit in with home office or den decor, but it will look out of place mixed in with your home-entertainment components. A DVD burner and a DVD-ROM drive occupy the full-size external drive bays, and one of the two 3.5-inch bays contains a multiformat card reader. Two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and headphone and microphone jacks are mounted below the drive bays. Six additional USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and 5.1 audio jacks are located at the rear of the system. The XPS 410 can be configured with a high-end Creative Audigy 2 or X-Fi audio card; our test system included neither, relying instead on an integrated audio solution. For most users, even home-theater users, the integrated audio will be fine.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The system's chassis is completely tool-free, making it easy to install and remove drives and expansion cards. The XPS 410 relies on two system fans and a BTX airflow scheme to keep components from overheating. We slid off the side panel of our review unit to find a tightly packed interior. The single x16 PCI Express slot holds a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS graphics card. Two PCI slots hold a dual TV tuner card and a dual-port FireWire card, leaving two x1 PCI Express slots and one PCI slot available for future expansion. The two hard drive bays mounted at the bottom of the case hold dual 320GB Serial ATA (SATA) drives in a DataSafe (RAID 1) configuration for added data protection. If you'd rather skip the redundant protection, you can have Dell configure the drives for RAID 0 and reclaim the extra drive space for storing recorded TV programs and other hefty multimedia files.
Powered by Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 processor running at 2.4GHz, the Dell XPS 410 performed as expected. Compared to the other Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme systems we've looked at, it falls right in the middle. We expected it to run significantly slower than the tricked-out XPS 700, which has the high-end Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU, but it was easily faster than the bargain-price Velocity Micro Vector GC Campus Edition, which has a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo E6300. Despite the performance boost, bear in mind the Velocity is literally half the cost and is still our best bang-for-the-buck Core 2 Duo system.
While it can't hold a candle to the gamer-centric XPS 700, the XPS 410's included 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS is a good choice for casual gamers who don't want to invest a lot in a video card. It churned out a very playable framerate of 111.1fps in Quake 4 at 1,024x768, and it will perform even better with high-end options, such as antialiasing, turned off. Stepping up to the $3,900 Falcon Northwest Mach V, which uses an overclocked 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 and an overclocked GeForce 7950 GX2, gave us 114.2fps in the same game, although at higher resolutions the differences would have been more pronounced.
Our XPS 410 shipped with a solidly built, Dell-branded, wireless Bluetooth multimedia keyboard and mouse. It also shipped with Dell's 5650 100-watt 5.1 speakers, which are a decent choice and retail separately for $80. The monitor that came with our review unit was an UltraSharp 2007WFP 20.1-inch wide-screen LCD. Dropping the monitor will cut $400 from the total system price.
Along with Windows Media Center Edition, the XPS 410 comes with Corel's WordPerfect Office 12 and CyberLink's PowerDVD. Dell's Media Center IR receiver and remote are also part of the bundle.
Dell provides a one-year warranty with the XPS 410, which includes next-business-day onsite service and 24/7 rapid-response telephone support by a team of XPS-certified technicians, which is a different level of service than Dell's non-XPS systems--a.k.a. Dimensions--receive. Also included is DellConnect, which allows Dell tech support to remotely take over your system to solve problems. Selecting the three-year plan will cost $189, and for $49 per year, you can upgrade to an even higher level of service, called XPS Plus Solutions. This gives you 30 days of access to Dell On Call, which provides assistance with general how-to questions.
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| Adobe Photoshop CS2 image-processing test |
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| Apple iTunes encoding test |
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| Microsoft Office productivity test |
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| Quake 4 1,024x768, 4xAA 8xAF | | F.E.A.R. 1,024x768 SS 8xAF |
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
System configurations:
AMD test bed
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard; Nvidia Nforce 590 SLI chipset; Corsair 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 512MB Nvidia GeForce 7900GTX; 74GB Western Digital 10,000rpm serial ATA hard drive; Windows XP Professional SP2; PC Power & Cooling 1Kw power supply
Dell XPS 410
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; Intel 965G chipset; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS; (2) Western Digital 300GB 10,000rpm SATA; Nvidia Nforce RAID class controller (RAID 1)
Dell XPS X700
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2; 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; Nvidia Nforce 590 SLI chipset; (2) 512MB Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX SLI; (2) Western Digital 320GB 7,200rpm SATA; Nvidia nforce RAID class controller (RAID 0)
HP Pavilion d4600y
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; Intel 965G chipset; 256MB ATI Radeon X1600XT; (2) Western Digital 250GB 7,200rpm SATA; TVT Hauppauge AmityDT FM+NTSC, RAID class controller (RAID 0)
Windows XP Home SP2; Intel Core 2 Duo E6300; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; Intel 975X chipset; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS; Western Digital 250GB 7,200rpm SATA