Dell Dimension 8300

Using a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 CPU and 1GB of DDR400 SDRAM, the $2779 Dell Dimension 8300 earned a score of 128 in our PC WorldBench 4 tests, placing it in line with other systems of a similar configuration. Its ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, which has 128MB of memory, offered decent frame rates in our Unreal Tournament 2003 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein tests.

This Dell system comes with plenty of USB 2.0 ports--eight dot the machine, with two conveniently placed on the front. It has one FireWire port for hooking up digital devices such as video recorders and Apple's IPod. A gray half-moon flap covers the front ports; just flip it up to plug in peripherals, and close it to hide the connections. An enormous 250GB hard drive provides plenty of storage for video and music.

The Dimension 8300 we received was moderately expandable beyond its tested configuration, offering two open front-panel bays (out of four) and one open internal bay (out of two). Moreover, the case is easy to open: You simply press a large gray button on the top of the PC to pop open the left cover, and the system then opens like a book. Inside our test system, we found four RAM slots to increase the unit's memory. Big green clips hold the drives in their bays, letting you remove components with great ease by just squeezing both sides.

A good-looking Dell MMS-5650 5.1 speaker system delivered rumbling audio in games and in music playback. The satellite speakers are a rich blue and shaped like champagne flutes. The speaker connectors, which are not only color-coded for the front, back, left, and right, also have different small plastic spokes so that only the appropriate connector fits each speaker. It's an almost foolproof system for a normally complicated setup. The standard Dell keyboard offered multimedia controls, such as for adjusting volume or turning on the default music player.

Upshot: The Dell Dimension 8300 delivers top-notch components and good speed for a reasonable price.

Roy Santos