Dell Dimension 8200 review

Casting off traditional beige for a sleek, matt black, this power-dressing PC certainly looks the part.

But the question is, can it deliver?

Features

Yep, that's right - a 100Gb hard drive! We can safely say you won't have any storage problems with the Dell Dimension 8200. Nor, with 256Mb of memory, should you have any difficulty running any software you like. Both the CD writer and the DVD drive are made by well-regarded manufacturers - LG and NEC respectively - so you aren't getting any dodgy no-name parts, and while neither drive is the fastest in its category, both run at decent speeds. Similarly, although it's not as good as the Sound Blaster Audigy, the rather eccentrically-named Santa Cruz Turtle Beach sound card offers support for up to six speakers, providing excellent 5.1 surround sound. Of course, your sound card can be as good as you like, but it's no use without speakers that take advantage of it. Thankfully, the Altec ADA 885 speakers that come with this system are more than up to the challenge. Alas, you don't get 5.1 surround sound, but with four satellites and a subwoofer that sits on the floor and booms out the bass, the quality here isn't bad at all.

Ergonomics

The first thing you notice about this PC is how easy it is on the eye. The black finish and silver features (power button, reset button and so forth) could easily have ended up looking tacky - but they didn't. Two of the USB ports are front-mounted for easy access and, cunningly, Dell have hidden them behind a hinged, flip-up panel. This is a nice little bonus. It stops the smooth, streamlined contours of your designer PC being disturbed by sprouting connector cables. Instead, they're flattened underneath the flap, running neatly out of view till they subtly peek out at the bottom. This might not sound like much, but it's much nicer than having an ungainly spaghetti tangle cluttering up your desk.

They keyboard and mouse are both marked as Dell components, but the mouse is only pretending. It's actually a Microsoft IntelliMouse in disguise. The keyboard, though, is a genuine Dell part, and a credit to its maker. The action is nice and firm, and the keys are well spaced. Finally, we come to the monitor. Although it's not right up there with the likes of NEC or CTX, the Dell P793 is pretty impressive. Its focus is needle-sharp, its power regulation is perfect, and there's only a little misconvergence in the corners where the red, green and blue images that combine to make the picture don't line up perfectly.

Expansion

Only the industry's really big players can afford the kind of innovative design displayed by the Dell Dimension 8200 - a shame, because it really pays dividends. The hinged case opens easily at the click of a button. All the cables are neatly tidied away and colour-coded, so if you have to unplug them for any reason you'll know exactly where they all go. It's a bit of shame that no 5.25in bays are free for extra CD drives. If you do decide to upgrade or swap one of these, however, remember to get one in the same matt black as the PC chassis - easier said than done, unless you buy from Dell. The good news is that there's space for a 3.5in Zip drive and an extra hard disk if you really do need more storage space. With 100Gb, we can't imagine you would. If you want to add new features to your PC, you can take advantage of the Dimension's two free PCI slots, or use one of this system's four USB ports.

Performance

One glance at the Dimension's 3DMark scores should be enough to convince you that the pairing of a fast Pentium 4 and a GeForce3 graphics card is a match made in heaven. It's a shame that Dell couldn't have stretched to a 2GHz Pentium 4, or even a 1.9GHz. That said, a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 really isn't to be sniffed at. The problem with the Pentium 4, though, is that it's heavily memory-dependent. Stick a Pentium 4 with slower SDRAM and the performance doesn't just dip, it plummets. Thankfully, Dell chose the much faster RDRAM instead, maximising the processor's performance.