Dell Dimension XPS R450

Dell Dimension XPS R450

Versatility is the name of the game with the Dell Dimension XPS R450, our top-rated home office system. This all-around powerhouse delivers both vapor-trail speed and high-quality graphics; you'll find that it runs office suites, multimedia applications, and even fast-paced 3D games with equal agility.

The XPS R450's PC WorldBench 98 score of 218 makes this midtower the fastest home office PC we've seen--with plenty of strength to handle large spreadsheets, databases, or graphics files. You can expect to pay for top performance, too. At $2729, the XPS R450 is easily the most expensive home office system here.

The Dell's on-board MPEG-2 decoder--the only one in this roundup--produced the best DVD video playback score here. The system's 17-inch 1000HS monitor displayed sharp, rich colors, with impressively clear still images, DVD-based video, and fast-moving animation.

The XPS R450 delivered consistently quick, smooth game play in our 3D game tests. Thanks to the NVidia RIVA 128 TNT chip set on its STB Velocity 4400 graphics card--and the card's 16MB of dedicated SDRAM--it outperformed all but the Micron Millennia 450 Max.

After you shuck the sturdy, easy-off case, you'll find a large well-organized interior that provides plenty of room for upgrading--three open drive bays and two open slots. Unfortunately, you won't find many extras for the home office except Office 97 Small Business Edition.

According to the PC World subscribers in our recent reliability and service survey, Dell's service was middle-of-the-pack, but its home systems ranked at the top of our reliability ratings. Dell PCs had an extremely low rate of component failure.