Dell Dimension 5150c review

After its notebook success with the Centrino standard, Intel is turning its hand to entertainment with its Viiv platform.

This is designed to deliver cool, quiet, but powerful desktop PCs; see our FAQ on the opposite page for more details. Dell's Dimension 5150c is the first Viiv PC we've seen.

This PC is an attractive and compact computer, comparable in size to an Xbox. Despite its small size, the Dimension is no lightweight. The dual-core Pentium D 820 processor, backed up by 1GB of RAM, stormed through our tests. It made particularly light work of our video-encoding test. Anyone interested in fast desktop applications and multi-tasking will be more than happy.

However, gamers are going to be sorely disappointed. The onboard graphics make this PC very slow for all games. There's a free PCI-E x16 graphics card slot, but you can only fit a half-height card into it, which severely limits your choices.

One of the key goals of Viiv is to help produce small, quiet PCs. While the 5150c isn't as quiet as Gladiator's Retiarius Extreme GTX, it's better than most PCs we've seen. Dell's decision to use a BTX design helps keep the Dimension quiet, as the PC needs only a single fan at the front of the case to keep the processor and motherboard cool; however, it still gets noisy when dealing with strenuous tasks.

The Dimension 5150c ships with Windows XP Media Center Edition. While there's no remote control or TV tuner provided, it's not hard to upgrade to these items at a later date. In the meantime, Media Center provides an excellent way of organising your photos and videos. You can even subscribe to Sky by broadband and download movies legally.

Watching movies on this PC is a pleasurable experience, thanks to the huge 20" Dell widescreen flat panel. With its high native resolution of 1,680x1,050, you can also use it work on two documents side by side. Colours are rich and bright, though there was a little banding in our greyscale transitions test.

The 5150c comes with a handy four-port USB hub as well as S-video and composite sockets. While the LCD has D-sub and DVI ports, the 5150c has only D-sub. Getting a sharp image from the LCD requires adjusting the settings in the monitor's onscreen menus; with DVI, this would have occurred automatically.

The 250GB hard disk should be sufficient for most people. Any additional hard disks will have to be external models due to the Dimension's small size. The 8X DVD writer may be frustrating if you burn a lot of DVDs; see our Labs on page 99 for more on external DVD writers. Useful extras include a memory card reader and two FireWire sockets.

Microsoft Works is bundled for more serious work, but it is version 7 instead of the current 8.5. The attractive-looking speakers are adequate for listening to MP3s, but gamers and audio enthusiasts may be left wanting.

Although this PC is not suitable for gaming and it lacks DVI, the powerful Windows performance and panoramic LCD make the Dimension 5150c great value, and an interesting introduction to Viiv.

Author: Alan Lu