Dell Studio XPS 8000 Reviews
Dell’s Studio XPS 8000 is another desktop from the manufacturer, which gives you plenty of upgrade options along with attractive looks and latest feature set. With the starting price of $699, you can go nearly up to $1500 by configuring the system with the features of your choice. The system in this review is priced at $1,329, which makes it midrange desktop PC that can be a decent choice for gaming and multimedia tasks. However, it doesn’t give you value for money when compared with top performers like Velocity Micro Edge and Asus desktops. But the Dell beats both these system when it comes to its stylish chassis.
Dimensions wise, the XPS 8000 is shrunken version of XPS 9000, which was launched a few months ago. The XPS 8000 measures 16 inches high, 7.25-inches wide and 18-inches deep. As expected, the smaller chassis has lesser upgrade options but you still get enough upgrade options. The major omissions include a hard drive and a few card expansion slots. The plastic exterior definitely tells that Dell paid lot of attention to the design aesthetics. Undoubtedly XPS 8000 is the best looking desktop around.
The XPS 8000 is not only smaller than XPS 9000 but its specs are quite different from its older sibling. On the basis of price, the Velocity Micro Edge Z30 is the closest competitor to the Dell XPS 8000. The Velocity is priced $20 higher, has the same motherboard, the Intel P55 Express, same 1TB hard drive. The Velocity has faster 3.2GHz Intel Core i7 860 processor as compared to Dell’s 2.67GHz Intel Core i5 750. The Velociity is equipped with 8GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, while Dell has slightly slower 8GB 1,066MHz DDR3 SDRAM memory. The two features where Dell excels Velocity are graphics and OS. The Dell XPS has 1,762MB Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics memory and Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) OS as compared to 896MB Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics memory and Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) OS of Velocity Edge.
The Dell Studio XPS 8000 offers spare hard-drive bay, a spare optical drive, one PCI Express 1x slot, 3.5-inch drive bay and single standard PCI card slot. There is no room for extra memory or graphics card. The connectivity options include two DVI ports, 7.1 analog audio, S/PDIF audio output, Ethernet port, media card reader, FireWire 400, eSATA, and six USB 2.0 ports.
