Dell XPS 630

Dell can make some very pretty PC packages, but David Hollingworth thinks this latest isn’t quite up to scratch.

Since the early days of Dell’s breakout from the beige box jungle, the company has endeavoured to produce cases a cut above the average, both in raw case functionality and the manner in which the componentry has been assembled within. The XPS 630 continues that trend.

This is one tidy little PC, and you could do a lot worse than opening this puppy and learning a few lessons about airflow and cable management. One thing you do notice right away is that the motherboard is upside down, which might seem odd, but it actually makes access to memory and graphics slots super easy, and creates a lovely open area with all the major hot spots in the main airflow corridor. This consists of a 200mm fan set behind the case’s front fascia, through the CPU’s fan/heatsink combo, and out of the open mesh at the case’s back plate.

The case itself, however, does raise a few curious eyebrows – at least it certainly did while it had pride of place on our testing bench. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly why the case design doesn’t seem to fit right; perhaps it’s the odd, two-tone brushed matte silver and gloss cherry-red colour scheme? Maybe it’s the BMW-style dual air intakes that adorn the front fascia, or perhaps the canted overall design. Regardless, it’s not something that sat well with the picky aesthetes of Atomic HQ.

Then again, we may just be hard to please and the 630’s case might rock your socks off. At the very least the case does offer a very easy to use sliding lock to open up the side of the unit, and the side plates themselves are super solid. Not so solid are the plastic additions, some of which were even warped slightly off true in our review model.

There are no complaints, however, about the 24in Dell monitor that comes with the bundle, which is of the usual high quality and looks as good as the picture it displays. The XPS 630 does come with bundled speakers, too, but given that the 630 features integrated 7.1 sound output, the 2.1 set you get in this bundle might not be the best choice. That said, it does the job with no complaints, as do the keyboard and mouse. All solid, if a little uninspired.

So far it might seem a common litany – the 630 is almost great, but for a few odd decisions. Sadly, that same story gets told when it comes to the single most important aspect of any PC: its performance.

Don’t get us wrong – for the price, this is a damn good package, but our benchmarks simply don’t return the kinds of scores we were hoping for. Running at our standard 1280 x 1024, with medium settings, 3DMark06 did its pretty thing and awarded the 630 with 10,543 3DMarks. That’s solid, sure, and if you’ve been following the recent spate of gaming laptops we’ve been reviewing it’s a stark reminder of just how much more performance you’ll get out of the average desktop PC. That said, we’d been hoping for something a bit higher – maybe in the area of 11,000. Similarly, you’ve got to respect any machine that can manage Crysis, with all the pretty bits turned on, at 1280 x 1024, while maintaining a 17fps average and a peak fps of 20. But, again… not ideal.

The main culprit is certainly not the 8800 GT, nor the perfectly adequate CPU. No, in our minds, the four sticks of non-Micron D9 memory – and only 3GB of it at that – is the bottleneck. Choice of memory was the downfall of the 720 (reviewed issue 79), and it seems that it’s a lesson that Dell’s yet to learn.

Of course, you can easily tweak the build to advantage on Dell’s website, but the system we had in our office fell just shy of our expectations of performance for its price. It makes an excellent base for a system you can expand into, however, but it doesn’t quite seem to earn the XPS moniker.