Cheap-O disp-O parts with expensiv-O price tag
Written: Jul 19 '05 (Updated Sep 22 '05)
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Pros: Decent case, fully featured system BIOS, GigaBit EtherNet
Cons: Limited expandability, low-end components, non-standard form factors, price
The Bottom Line: You can buy standard components (especially better video and audio, and bigger hard disk) for under 60% of this price and still get better performance.
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| towwang's Full Review: Dell OptiPlex GX280 Desktop Computer for Business ... |
This review covers features, functionality and software support issues for the various components (case, motherboard, video and audio chips, etc.) of the Dell OptiPlex GX280 desktop computer.
[Introduction]
The GX280 is a mid-range desktop system (positioned at the low-end of the desktop product line for medium-to-large businesses), optimized for business applications. It consists of the following major components and features:
Pentium 4 processor with HyperThreading and 800 MHz FSB
DDR2 memory running at 200 MHz, i.e. 400 strobes/second
PCI express slots
SATA hard disk with controller on motherboard
Intel FW82801FB chipset
Intel 82915G ("GMA900") embedded video chip
Windows NT 5.1 ("Windows XP") operating system
Additional specifications can be found at:
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/optix_gx280?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz
The system being reviewed came with the following configuration:
Pentium 4 2.80 GHz
512 MB DDR2 memory
40 GB SATA hard disk
GCE8483B CD writer drive
GDR8163B DVD reader drive
USB keyboard and mouse
M993 19" CRT monitor
Mid-tower case
Windows NT 5.1 with service pack 1
This configuration is pretty basic for the GX280; most of the components correspond to those that Dell recommends and bundles at no additional cost. The only significant upgrade was the 19" monitor, an extra $50 above the default 17" monitor.
Let us now examine the various components, from the outside going inwards.
[The case]
The mid-tower case is the most spacious option for the GX280, and probably is the wisest choice except for people with very limited space on their work areas. It has a decent number of drive bays for installation of disk drives:
2 half-height 5.25", externally accessible
2 two-third-height 5.25", externally accessible
2 quarter-height 3.5" for internal devices
The choice of having two-third-height 5.25" bays is questionable, because installing additional floppy disk drives and media card readers will require purchasing proprietary mounting brackets from Dell.
The case is made of an aluminum frame with plastic covers. It has a bracket for an external lock to prevent intrusion and theft of internal components. Opening the case is best done by placing it sideways on a flat surface, and simultaneously pressing two release buttons, one on top and another on the bottom of the case. The side panel flips open sluggishly but steadily; it is hinged onto the rest of the case and is not removable. This is a blessing and a curse at the same time: it is awkward to open, but you don't have to worry about losing screws and panels.
On the front panel there is a power button, one headphone output jack, and one USB jack. The two jacks are oriented downwards and were thus hard to connect into; the first time I had to put my head to the floor just to see where the ports open towards.
[CPU fan and heat sink]
Worth mentioning is the big powerful CPU fan installed on the rear panel of the case. A plastic duct forces air to flow from outside the case to the heat sink of the CPU, then out through the fan exhaust. The exhaust is covered by a grill that permits adequate air flow while preventing anything thicker than a screwdriver from being mangled by the rotating blades.
The motherboard can control the speed of the fan depending on the execution load (and temperature) of the CPU. When you run compute-intensive applications, the fan speeds up; when those applications stop, the fan slows down. Unfortunately this only worked under NT 5.1. Under NT 5.0 ("Windows 2000"), the fan only speeds up with CPU load, and never slows down. The noise can become quite annoying until you give up and reboot the machine to slow down the fan.
Several machines were found to have this same problem, and our technicians determined it was the fault of the poorly-designed heat sink. The symptom was literally palpable: the lower portion of the heat sink (close to the CPU) was quite hot, while the prongs and winding metal sheet (meant to dissipate heat to the air) remained cool. Upon replacing the heat-sink to a better-constructed one, the fan no longer had to spin so fast, evidencing that heat dissipation was working properly at last.
[Power supply]
An unbranded ATX power supply claiming "DC output 250W" comes in the case, stamped by Dell as an approved OEM product. This power capacity is really minimal for a Pentium 4 class system. Adding one or two power-hungry hard disks will risk blowing out the fuses.
[Motherboard]
The motherboard is based on the Intel 82801 chipset. Its main features are:
PCI Express bus
SATA hard disk interface
USB 2.0 ports
There are 3 "regular" PCI slots, 1 small PCI 1x slot, and 1 PCI 16x slot for video. There is no AGP slot. The number of expansion slots is rather low for a mid-tower case.
The motherboard has only 2 DIMM slots, limiting memory expandiblity to 2 GB. The system reviewed came with two 256 MB DIMMs and thus has no space for expansion unless you remove either one. This arrangement may benefit performance slightly, as the memory can be operated in dual-channel mode for better data throughput. In my view, this is not a good choice, because applications requiring less than 512 MB probably are not high-performance in the first place; it would be wiser to buy a single 512 MB DIMM for now (which does not add to the cost), and add another one when the need arrives.
Towards the back of the case, the motherboard has the following ports soldered thereon:
6 USB 2.0 ports
1 serial port (9 pins)
1 parallel port
1 VGA analog connector for the monitor
Again unfortunately, the arrangement of these ports does not conform to standard ATX specifications, so you cannot move this motherboard to a standard ATX case, and you cannot replace this Dell motherboard with a standard ATX one. When they designed these components, upgradability was not top priority; profitability was!
Networking capability is good; there is a Broadcom "NetXtreme" 57xx GigaBit chip driving the EtherNet port next to the USB ports. Unfortunately we do not have GigaBit EtherNet deployed yet, so we are limited to using it in 100 MB/s mode. It has worked flawlessly in this mode.
I will cover the other motherboard components, the embedded video and audio chips, in their respective sections.
[System BIOS]
System configuration is done through a series of menus that appear if you press a hot key upon powering up the system. The menus of this motherboard are very thorough and functional. There are plenty of options to enable/disable embedded features, change device boot order, power-saving options, and some diagnostics. Navigating between pages, and options within the menu pages, was intuitive and logical.
Whoever wrote this BIOS deserves praise for a very thorough and user-friendly job implementing the system configuration firmware.
[Video chip]
The Intel 82915G video chip soldered on the motherboard is the lowest-and-cheapest solution you can get in this product class. It has no dedicated video memory, so it shares (rather subtracts) memory with the CPU.
In the system BIOS, you have two choices for the amount of memory to reserve for the video chip: 1 MB or 8 MB. These two options seem barely adequate to me. Most users will have displays sized 17 to 19 inches, and will use resolutions of 1280*1024 or less. With 24-bit color, 4 MB is enough, yet that is not an option. With 32-bit color (whose color improvement should be imperceptible), 3 of the 8 MB of reserved video memory is probably wasted. We don't even need to talk about texture caching and 3D effects, as this video chip is quite underpowered for 3D animation and games.
Putting aside performance considerations, the real problem with this video solution is that it has none of the productivity features expected nowadays for business systems, such as multiple (or vitual) desktops, zooming, support for multiple monitors, etc.
[Audio chip]
Sound capabilities are provided by an Analog Devices ADI 198x (whose inexistent documentation prevented me from finding out what digit goes in the 'x') chip. Its connectivity is as minimal as you can get in this day: 1 headphone output, 1 line-level input and 1 microphone input.
The audio chip proved to be the weakest of the (already weak) components in this system. The driver that came with the operating systems, was unstable in both NT 5.1 and NT 5.0. Java applets Launched using the latest run-time environment by SUN would hang if they produced a lot of sound effects, regardless of web browser used (InterNet Explorer and Mozilla were tested).
Upgrading this driver to version A17 improved, but did NOT entirely correct, this unstability. To make matters worse, the updated driver provided by Dell has 3 INF files for a great number of variants of this audio chip. Choosing the correct INF file to guide driver installation proved to be a sleuthing chore; I had to figure out the PCI vendor and device identifiers for this chip (by digging into the registry), compare them to the identifiers supported by each INF file, and then choose the right one. All this thanks to the inexistent documentation, and the industry-wide practice of making OEM products indescipherable to end users.
[Optical drives]
The Hitachi GCE8483B CD writer drive and the Hitachi GDR8163B DVD reader drive proved to be the better components in this system bundle. The DVD drive played CD, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD ROM discs reliably.
The CD writer did all that, and furthermore turned out to be a champ at reading scratched audio CDs. Whereas all my other CD readers and writers had problems reading a particular audio track in a scratched disc, even at 1x or 2x minimal speeds, the GCE8483B extracted the audio without any hiccups at 16x! Very impressive. Writing data CDs in this drive was reliable and fast, as promised by the product specifications.
[Summary/conclusion]
For my criteria, the tally of the GX280's components has been:
Case: 6/10 (ergonomic but non-standard-compliant)
Fan and heat sink: 3/10 (noisy due to poor heat dissipation)
CPU and memory performance: 8/10
Motherboard: 5/10 (PCI express, but not expandable)
Networking chip: 9/10 (GigaBit capability, untested)
Video chip: 3/10 (eats memory, limited 3D acceleration)
Audio chip: 2/10 (poor driver performance)
CD and DVD drives: 9/10
For an estimated price of $1200, the GX280 is not a good buy. You can buy standard components (especially better video and audio, and bigger hard disk) for under 60% of this price and still get comparable, if not better, performance. Moreover, your standard components would be upgradable, not disposable.
[Revision history]
2005 07 19: Written by and copyright Tow Wang
2005 09 22: Heat dissipation problems
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
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towwang
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Member: Tow Wang
Location: California; U.S.A.
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
Rabidly passionate about computers and electronics!
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