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Overall Rating:
Computer:
Studio XPS 8100
Date:
30 November 2010
Reviewed by:
namefunnel (Boston, MA)
Level of expertise:
Expert
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Title:
Excellent compact desktop with high performance
Product Uses:
software development, video editing and photo editing, research using the internet, audio editing
Review:
This is an excellent high performance desktop. The Intel i7 quad processor with hyperthreading is very fast, but it doesn't need the huge heat sinks that older quad processor chips required. The case itself is not intended for rapid hardware changes - it uses screws to hold components in place, and it's a tight fit for my fingers to make changes such as pushing in extra SATA cables. There is only 1 open slot (perhaps you could add a modem?). You can add a second hard disk and a second DVD/CD drive, but that's it. I've expanded the disk storage beyond this by adding eSATA and USB drives (eSATA is about twice as fast as USB on this machine). I like the power button on top along with two USB ports and mic and headphone jacks. The ATI graphics card is powerful enough for the engineering work I do (though I would have prefered an nVidia card in order to use their CUDA library). With 2 disk drives you could reconfigure the machine for RAID, but I haven't wanted to try this. At the moment I have about 7 Tbyte of storage on this machine (2 internal drives, 4 external) with 2 DVD drives, and it is very stable so I am very happy.
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