Things are certainly heating up for Dell. They recently announced a
partnership with retailer Officeworks last week and on the back of that announcement have announced their new line of gaming PC’s.
The PCs certainly have some grunt, starting at $2,999 for the XPS 730 (with 512MB GeForce 8800 GT) and the XPS 730 H2C for $3,730 (with 1GB ATI Radeon HD 3870X2). Both benefit from the inclusion of the new NVIDIA nforce 790i Ultra SLI and support a multitude of graphics card options including the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 in four - way CrossFireX or NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT with SLI technology.
Considering you're paying up to $4,666 for the dual X2 configuration, we're wondering if the whitebox DIY route is still the better option for gamers on a budget. We've always considered Dell kings of the low-end as opposed to an enthusiast system specialist, though we're open to being pursuaded otherwise.
The optional H2C cooling solution, which was initially co-developed by Dell and a consortium of big name partners (including Intel and Delphi) will provide better cooling to the quad processors, reducing overall temperatures when the computer is running at its highest speeds.
An additional coldplate will help cool the CPUs, which is good news for gamers who prefer to over-clock and push their systems to the max.
