Date:
Tuesday , July 03, 2007
Author:
Jason Wall
Editor:
Josh Norem
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Dell Dimension E521

Dell has been our most-frequently evaluated integrator, but we’ve never had a Dell system quite like this one. It has an AMD processor and sells for for about $1000. We find out if it’s a good budget buy and if it will tolerate a third-party hardware upgrade.

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From the Dell Website

The Dimension E521

Digital photos and images, video, audio and more, the Dimension E521 offers robust features to help you view, create, edit and present business-related multimedia. With integrated 7.1 channel audio and optional ATI® or NVIDIA graphics cards, the E521 can deliver high-quality sound, video and graphics, bringing all your multimedia to life.

The Dell Dimension E521 can be built with a range of AMD processors, including AMD SempronTM , AMD AthlonTM 64 and AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 series chips. The AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 maximizes your system’s performance by offering dual-core technology, which helps boost performance over similar single core processors.

It’s interesting to note that Dell used to badge its mainstream consumer PCs with the Dimension label, while its run-of-the-mill notebooks received the Inspiron badge. Dell recently reversed this, and is now calling its home and home office PCs “Inspiron,” while its Small Business PCs are branded “Dimension.” Why did it do this? We have no idea, as it has no doubt created confusion among customers and techs alike.

Purchasing

We’ve covered the Dell purchasing process many times before, and not much has changed. In general, it’s simultaneously unimposing and unwieldy. For those that don’t know exactly what they want, it could be a long purchasing process that’s somewhat confusing and lacking in good information on potential upgrades. Dell offers two tools in an attempt to make the process a bit easier. One is a running summary of what components have been selected, which is displayed on the right side of the purchasing window. The other tool is being able to display more of the component categories at once in a list format instead of selecting one component at a time. However, there are still several pages of configuration choices in the list format.

Since our 710 H2C article, and even since we purchased this computer, the format of the purchasing portal has changed a bit. We begin our purchasing process from the main Dell page and roll over “Desktops” which allows us to choose between Home and Home Office, Small Business, Medium and Large Business, and Government, Education, and Healthcare. We chose Small Business to get access to the Dimension desktops. Of the five Dimension systems offered, the E520 and E521 are identical expect for the choice of processor between Intel and AMD. The third system is a slim-line form factor that is “52% smaller than the E521.” There’s also a Dimension 9200 that offers more high-end components over the E520 series, such as an NVIDIA 7900 GS and 7900 GTX. (The highest that is offered on the E521 is the ATI X1300 Pro.) The final Dimension that is offered is the super slim-line form factor 9200C that we saw in our XPS 200 evaluation.

We selected the E521 to get the AMD processor and lower-end video card so that we could try upgrading it. On the E521 page, we saw three variants offering a Sempron-based system, an AMD X2-based system, and another AMD X2-based system with more storage and memory. When we purchased this computer, only Windows Vista was offered for this system. Since then, Dell has brought XP back to its systems and now offers the choice to “customize with Windows Vista” as well as “customize with Windows XP.” We haven’t been blown away by Vista yet, and we’re obviously not alone, so we applaud Dell for having the moxie to reverse course and bring back XP as an option.

We selected the beefed-up AMD X2-based system and saw the first page of the configurator. As stated above, there are two ways you can do this: use the default “icon” view, or use the “list” view. For those that get a little overwhelmed by seeing all of the component categories at once, the icon view lets you do things more piecemeal, but it gets very tedious.

We selected the AMD X2 5000+ processor, 2GB of RAM, an NVIDIA 7300LE with TurboCache, and a 20” widescreen display.

Since that time, the processor choices have been expanded a bit to include the X2 4000+, 4400+, 5000+, and 5600+. It also currently comes with only 1GB of RAM by default, which is probably okay for Home Basic (the default selection), but not for any premium package. If you’re planning to select a premium Vista version, we would suggest upgrading to 2GB of RAM. Speaking of Vista, Dell has also expanded the choices of versions. Home Basic is selected by default, but there are choices for Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. (Note that there is no option for Home Premium, which is the version that we received with this machine.) Along with the OSes, Dell also offers a Belkin “Easy Transfer Cable” for an extra $40 that will allow you to transfer your data from your old XP system to your new Dell. A DVD-ROM drive is included by default, so if you want a combo or DVD burner, you’ll need to shell out an extra $30 or $60, respectively. There is no display included by default, so be aware of that. Six months of AOL is also included in the price, so if you don’t want that on your computer, definitely make sure to choose “No ISP requested” in the “Support and Services” tab.

Once you’re finished running through all of the components and upsells, your configuration is reviewed. The configurator will suggest certain “Dell Recommends” items that are largely upsells. It would be nice if Dell’s notice about the hardware demands of Vista were a bit more prominent. When selecting your RAM, there is this proviso:

Note: Some Windows Vista features -- like the Aero user interface require advanced hardware, including 1GB of system memory and a 128 MB graphics card. Check www.windowsvista.com/getready for complete system requirements.

Note that this rather important statement is in essentially “fine print,” which could lead to customer frustration.

We placed the order on February 12th, it was shipped on the 15th, and was delivered on the 16th. We’re used to three-to-four week turnaround times on custom systems, so the fact that Dell was able to deliver our rig in a scant four days speaks volumes about its massive production capability.