Dell vs. DIY

Posted at: Monday 30th July 2007

You've got a grand for a new PC - do you buy it new? Or do you spend £1,000 on hardware and build it yourself?

Building a PC is always a satisfying process. It's a great feeling to push the 'on' button for the first time and have your own creation successfully whirr into life. However, the time that a good build entails, and the lurking potential for disasters means that this round has to go to the Dell.

Winner: The Dell

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3 Looks

The appearance of the compact Dell case divided the office, with one CPC staffer even going so far as to brand it 'uncompromisingly ugly'. Others were more appreciative of its automotive-style air intake grilles, but no one loved its three-colour style. The 1K Wonder's Antec Nine Hundred is a total contrast to the Dell's 'lifestyle'-inspired looks, with a focused, aggressive appearance. The plastic parts of the fascia look a little cheap, but its forceful styling works well with the illuminated fans and the illuminated PSU. The case comes with a side window, too. With any PC you build yourself you have complete control over what it looks like, so this round goes to the 1K Wonder.

Winner: The 1K Wonder

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4 Core PC spec

The core of a PC is the CPU, memory, motherboard and graphics card, as these are the components that have the most dramatic effect on performance. While the Dell beats the 1K Wonder by close to 300MHz in terms of CPU clock speed, and provides an equal amount of memory, the 1K Wonder has the better motherboard and graphics card. The 1K Wonder's motherboard is based on the P35 chipset, so it's compatible with Intel's upcoming 45nm Penryn chips. It also allows for BIOS overclocking, a feature that's completely foreign to non-XPS Dell machines. When it comes to graphics, the 1K Wonder is streets ahead, since its GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB offers tons more power than the Dell's underpowered GeForce 8600 GTS.

Winner: The 1K Wonder

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5 General PC spec

Graphics and motherboard aside, the rest of the Dell's spec is excellent. Its TV tuner, Sound Blaster X-Fi and half a terabyte of RAID 0 storage give the 1K Wonder a good pounding, as we couldn't afford either a TV tuner or X-Fi, and could only stretch our budget to 320GB of storage. With Windows Vista Home Premium now including the full Media Center app, the TV tuner is a useful addition, as it makes the PC ideal for use a PVR. Plus, when it comes to MP3s and gaming, I miss the abilities of the X-Fi.

Winner: The Dell

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6 Upgrades

With its P35-based motherboard, 600W PSU, ATX case and hardcore air cooling, the 1K Wonder is about as good as a PC can get for upgrades. We'll be able to drop in a 45nm CPU and upgrade to next-generation graphics without any worries. The BTX-based Dell has more limitations. BTX is on the way out, with Dell dropping it for its upcoming Inspiron desktops, so you won't be able to replace the motherboard or use the case for your next PC. And as the board itself is P965-based, you probably won't be able to upgrade the CPU beyond a current-generation Core 2 Duo either, although there are two free DIMM slots for adding more memory. As the Dell's two main hard disk bays are pre-filled, you'll need to place subsequent hard disks in either the single 5.25in or 3.5in drive bay. There are three free S-ATA ports and three free S-ATA power plugs on the board, but only one free Molex and one PCI-E power plug. We thought this would prevent us from installing a GeForce 8800 GTX, since it requires two PCI-E power plugs, but this wasn't the case. The Dell was happy gaming away with Nvidia's massive graphics card installed. Of these two machines, the 1K Wonder is the better bet for the future. However, since Dell's future PCs will be ATX-based, the company has clearly been working on this.