Dell Studio XPS s7100-3011NBK Desktop (Piano Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this PC from Amazon when the motherboard died on my HP (m9100t) and I needed a capable replacement fast (As a member of Amazon Prime, I got next day shipping for $3.99). I'm not a PC gamer, but I use mid range video editing, as well as the office suite and some pretty resource intensive corporate IT tools. I spec'd this exact model on Dell.com (An XPS 7100) and it was actually more expensive than what Amazon was offering, with a ship date of about 2 weeks. That made the financial decision easy.
Now, as far as the PC itself:
Likes:
Fast boot (30 seconds tops to the password prompt with the included conventional hard drive)
A very capable machine, with tons of space inside for components. It just feels more "solid" inside than the HP I had, where everything was a little cramped.
Runs quiet.
The case is sleek, somewhat of a mix in size between a mini-tower and a full tower.
I love the USB ports on the top of the machine.
There's ample space and power inside for add ins.
Dislikes:
The expansion slots on the motherboard are limited; there's 1 PCI Express x16 (the graphics card is in it), 2 PCI Express x1 (1 in use by the wireless card) and a PCI slot.
The 2 USB ports on the front of the machine are hidden behind a 5.25" bay sliding panel which makes them more obtrusive if used.
The graphics card is the weak link here. It's fine for everything I do, but with 1 gb of on board memory, I'd have expected more based on the caliber of all the other components.
There are no USB 3.0 slots as far as I can tell.
After running it for a month, I've tweaked it to my liking; it handles all of this with ease and I decided to add this to give an idea of how easy it is to expand:
-added a cheap (~$100 on sale/rebate) Kinsgston 120gb SSD as the primary boot device
-added a 500gb hard drive from my old PC in addition to the 1gb hard drive which originally came with the PC. You will need a SATA power cable splitter and some extra data cables to do this.
-added a tv tuner card cannibalized from my old HP (uses a PCI Express x1 slot)
-upgraded the video card to a 2-slot Radeon 5770 family card. This blocks a PCI Express x1 slot leaving only the PCI slot free.
My 2 cents on Dell quality. No, I don't work for them, never have.
I've bought or helped friends/relatives buy 12 Dells in the past 12 years (I know, they're all on "My Systems and Peripherals" at Dell.com so I can help troubleshoot and advise on possible hardware upgrades). The most significant problem I've seen is failed hard drives and a failed graphics card.
I work in IT. I've bought and/or used about every make and model out there (HP, Acer, Gateway, Compaq, IBM (though not Lenovo)) in the past 10 years. Dell is still my first choice.

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A superior powerhouse at an affordable price, the Dell Studio XPS 7100 desktop PC in piano black (model s7100-3011NBK) will help you unleash your creativity with an AMD six-core processor, high-performance ATI Radeon HD graphics, and 8 GB of installed RAM--perfect for smooth multitasking on high-end multimedia projects.
The stunning Dell Studio XPS 7100 desktop.

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