[996gt2]

From all the hate people give to Dells and other mass-produced desktops, I wasn't expecting much.

But from a quick look inside, I don't see much to complain about. In fact, I was quite surprised that a $350 Core i3-2120 system would have such attention to detail in the construction.

Have OEMs simply been improving in the past few years?

Here's a quick snap of the interior. They did quite a decent job of wire management. HDD is a Caviar Blue, heatsink is an AVC unit. Motherboard has a free PCIe X16 slot and 3 x1 slots. The hard drive is mounted on rubber isolating washers, which I was surprised to find in an OEM build. The 3.5 and 5.25" drive bays are tool-less, and the HDD is easily swapped out.

PSU is a Delta-made unit rated at 250W, more than enough to power an i3-2100 system:

Front fan is a fluid-dynamic bearing Adda:

 

[mark_thaddeus]

I think the problem people have with DELL is the poor customer service support. Overall their products are above average to good which isn't a bad thing.

 

[Birdyz]

^^
Agreed. Dell has pretty good products compared to other brands. So far I think their customer service is okay. Never had any bad experience with them.

 

[trumpet-205]

The only problem I have with Dell is that its driver support is fairly short lived (dropped within 2 years). They do have nice build quality.