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Taking advantage of Intel's new Core 2 Duo E6700 desktop CPU (Conroe) and paving the way for a new range of Vista Ready PC's, the Dell Dimension 9200 looks stylish and is diverse in its application, but also employs some different design ideas to make this PC efficient and manageable.

From the outside you'll immediately notice some abnormal design features. First, the mostly white case is starkly different to the usual blacks and greys, or waxy blue seen in previous Dell models. A large space, big enough to put your hand through, behind the mid-section of the front panel exposes a 120mm fan, drawing air into the case. A large lever in the top-rear releases the side panel revealing a BTX motherboard and a complex display of shrouding, fans and cables.

Dell was among the first to adopt the BTX (Balanced Technology eXtended) form factor and using it here gives this unit several advantages. Taking into account the 13-in-1 media card reader, the TV tuner and Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE), it's safe to assume that Dell hopes that people will use this PC as a media centre among other things. As a media centre, both power and silence are essential. Naturally, power generates heat and heat means fans, which in turn means noise. The BTX design places all the hottest components of the computer in the direct path of a front-to-rear air flow. In the case of the 9200, a 120mm fan draws air from the front of the case, which immediately passes over the long fins of a large passive heatsink on the CPU. Before exiting the case via a large vent at the rear, air also passes the system memory, chipset and most importantly the graphics card, providing them with some extra cooling as well.

Combine this quieter cooling system with the powerful, low wattage Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz CPU and you can expect plenty of power with minimal system noise. It's actually the small fan on the graphics card that's the main source of noise in the 9200 when everything is running at peak performance. The extra cooling from the BTX design should help keep the fan rotation down to a minimum, but there's little that can be done during a hefty session of gaming. If you're savvy when it comes to hardware, you might want to consider changing this over to a larger, quieter fan and heatsink combination -- there's plenty of space to do so.

To see if this system, with its 1GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM and Core 2 Duo CPU was up to the job, we put it through WorldBench 5 (WB5) and a number of other tests. In WB5 it scored an impressive 123. This score seems close to normal based on our tests of similarly built systems and will be more than sufficient for any application, including Windows Vista. The 64-bit capabilities of the Core 2 Duo CPU will also allow you to run the inevitable 64-bit applications that will emerge when Vista is finally released.

The GeForce 7900GS is still considered one of the top performing graphics cards on the market. We ran 3DMark 2006, in which it scored 4341 -- an expected result for the specifications and plenty of power for almost all of the latest games. We also ran the FEAR in-game benchmark, which averaged 55fps (frames per second) over the demo sequence on maximum quality settings, a comfortable playable rate.

To maintain an uninterrupted airflow, the Dell 9200 has been meticulously wired to ensure that no cable gets in the way of the main thoroughfare. This involves an ornate series of cable ties, brackets and clips to run cables up against the edges of the case and hardware. This can often make hardware changes difficult, but Dell's implementation leaves the most commonly interchanged components fairly accessible -- though changing your power supply will involve some serious untangling. A variety of quick-release features in the case make upgrades and maintenance easy. A bracket holding all the PCI cards in place unclips and swings open on a hinge, while a sliding release gives you instant access to all forward removable drive bays by detaching part of the front panel.

Storage is one thing that this PC is lacking -- a serious oversight for a system with media centre aspirations. The $2527 price tag on our sample machine comes with only an 80GB (7200rpm) hard drive. A 160GB hard drive is the minimum you can select using Dell's online shop, though it may affect the final price. That said, you may wish to make your initial purchase of a 9200 with a large hard drive, as this case only comes with two 3.5in internal drive bays, leaving only one spot left to add more storage on top of your standard drive. A maximum of one terabyte (2x 500GB) is available through Dell. The drive bays face sideways, giving you quick and easy access and are cooled by one small fan drawing air from a grill in the front panel and blowing over the top of the drives.

Following the grand-plan design of BTX style systems, the Dimension 9200 provides no PS2 or serial ports, but instead supplies an abundance of USB 2.0 connections, starting with six USB 2.0 ports at the rear of the case. Take away two of these for the mouse and keyboard and you still have four to play with. For quick connections, like USB keys or MP3 players you can use one of two USB ports on the front panel. A headphone jack and microphone port have also been placed on the front panel for easy access. The motherboard uses integrated Sound Blaster Audigy 7.1 HD audio software, with the associated analog ports found at the rear of the case. The Dell TV tuner has S-Video and composite ports available, while the media card reader, located in the front panel of the case, supports a wide range of memory cards including CF I&II/SD/mini-SD/MMC/RS-MMC/MS/MS-Pro/Duo/SM/xD/MicroDrive. A Gigabit Ethernet adapter is available onboard and there's also a 56Kbps modem installed.¬¬

For under $1000 the Dell C521 comes with a 17in LCD screen, keyboard and a mouse, making it a complete package that's ready to go from the moment it's delivered. As a budget option we were reasonably happy with the performance of this AMD-based machine, and as Dell units are built to order this system can easily be expanded to better fit your needs.

The compact design makes it ideal for cramped working conditions and the case can be positioned upright on its side or laid flat like a DVD player. The clean white chassis has a silver fascia, which houses a few helpful devices for a diversity of uses. In our budget model a DVD-ROM is installed, though this can be upgraded during the purchase for a small additional cost. Two USB ports as well as both audio and microphone ports are easily accessible at the front. One of the nicest additions though is the inclusion of a 13-in-1 media card reader for transferring your photos to the PC.

We ran World Bench 5 to see how the system performed. The PC completed all but the MusicMatch WAV to MP3 conversion test due to an error with the benchmark software. For this reason, an overall World Bench 5 score was not obtained. However, individual results show that that it was above average in performance across most of the essential software tasks, such as using Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. Media encoding tasks and the multi-tasking test showed less impressive results. However, the installed AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU is a good piece of hardware and upgrading the base systems 512MB of RAM to at least 1GB would likely bring a welcome performance boost in these areas. We also encoded 53 minutes of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3 files using Cdex, which the Dimension C521 completed in one minute 59 seconds. This time indicates that the C521's encoding capabilities should be fine for most peoples music encoding needs.

The system includes a GeForce 6160LE integrated graphics chip, a simple graphics solution not aimed at gamers or high end rendering, but a score of 4622 in 3DMark 2001 SE shows it can handle some older games at least.

There's only one PCI Express and one standard PCI expansion slot for upgrades, but the clip-in system on the rear panel makes this an easy task for quick changes even if you're doing an upgrade for the first time. Due to the size of the case only one hard drive slot is available. Increasing your storage space will require an external storage option or a replacement hard drive. Dell has used an AMD BTX motherboard. Although only a DVD-ROM is installed in the system, it is a SATA DVD-ROM, the first system we've seen with one of these. A passive heatsink on the CPU is cooled by one single case fan. This fan also pushes air across the chipset and out of the case. This configuration results in a fairly quiet operation.

The Dimension E520 may look like its cousin the E521 on the outside, but inside it's a different beast. It has a faster processor, more memory, a bigger hard drive, and a dedicated graphics card that makes it a more desirable proposition for a wider range of activities. But it's also more expensive at $989 (as of November 6, 2006) versus $489.

For the higher price, you get above-average components--including a 200GB hard drive and dual optical drives (a dual-layer DVD burner and a DVD-ROM drive)--and reasonable performance. The system contains a 1.86-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor and 1GB of RAM, and it achieved a respectable WorldBench 5 score of 105. That's well above the average mark posted in our roundup of cheap PCs, but it's 29 percent lower than the 148 turned in by the Micro Express MicroFlex 66B.

Still, the E520 is not for gamers. Its nVidia GeForce 7300LE graphics board generated hit-or-miss graphics performance; our test games were playable, barely, at 1024 by 768 resolution. For example, at a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels, the system achieved frame rates of 24 frames per second on our Doom 3 test and 32 fps on our Far Cry test.

Like most sub-$1000 PCs, this system doesn't leave you much room for expansion. Housed in a standard Dell Dimension midsize tower case; our test configuration provided a single internal 3.5-inch bay, and two expansion slots (one PCI and one PCI Express x1).

The system is Vista-capable, according to Dell, which offers Vista upgrade information on its site.

Windows Vista Home Premium. Sure you could run that Vista edition with less (1GB instead of 2GB, single core instead of dual core), but in my opinion, this E521 is the effective minimum configuration to keep you computing in good stead for the next few years. With the introduction of more programs that take advantage of Vista's new features, and with the extra add-ons like Vista Gadgets and (missing) security software, you'll need the future-proofed features if you're the type of user (beginning multimedia enthusiast or budding power user) who wants Vista Premium instead of Vista Home Basic.

The Dimension E521 comes in Dell's standard mid-tower BTX case, with room for a couple of hard drives, a couple of optical drives, expansion cards, and memory. It's got the standard Dell level of tool-less upgradeability: you don't need to turn a screwdriver to add memory, an extra drive, or PCI or PCIe expansion card. Not that the system requires anything else: the E521 I tested came with a discrete ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics card, though the system can accommodate more powerful enthusiast graphics cards, too. You could argue for a higher-powered graphics card or a TV tuner, but these components cost extra, and I'm not sure if they're necessary on a basic midrange PC.

Last year, finding an AMD processor in a Dell would've been notable, now it's routine. The E521's AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor is a decent midrange dual-core processor. Along with the ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics, it's more than powerful enough to run Vista in full-blown Aero mode. Day-to-day activities like web browsing and casual games were snappy and performance was as expected. The E521 came with 2GB of memory, which is plenty for even multimedia tasks like video encoding and photo editing. Gamers and professional users may want to upgrade to 4GB or more, but mere mortals should be able to run with 2GB. The E521's 160GB SATA hard drive is good for a mainstream system, and you can add DataSafe for about $80 extra. (DataSafe adds another 160GB hard drive as a live backup.)

The E521's 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics card is enough to activate the neat Aero features in Vista. Windows pop up in a 3D effect on the system's 20-inch widescreen, and the translucent window borders are lovely. Vista is a much more attractive operating system than the six-year-old Windows XP, but if you are an XP power user, you'll need to learn where certain things are. The control panel layout has totally changed, particularly the "Personalize" control panel, which used to be called "Display". It will take a few hours of using the system to get used to it, but it's all still there. Whether on Vista or XP, the Radeon X1300 isn't a gaming graphics card: we were only able to get 10 fps on our Company of Heroes test, exactly matching our results testing the same system under Windows XP. That said, the Aero interface didn't seem to slow day-to-day operations down either.

The E521 came with Dell's standard set of trialware and freeware, including a 30-day trial of PC-cillin's Antivirus suite. I'd like to see at least a year to fifteen months as standard on all PCs, but you can add your choice of AntiVirus utilities on Dell's website for under $100. Media Center is now part of Windows Vista, and it's a beaut. Media Center works well with the Dell USB multimedia keyboard, including dedicated playback buttons. It's still not quite as polished as Apple's iLife suite, particularly since MCE has to contend with competing music and movie stores online, but Vista's MCE is noticeably improved over the 2005 version.

The Dell Dimension E521 is attractive when compared with other mainstream desktop systems, like the HP Pavilion a1600 series and Gateway dx420 series. Sure, the E521 doesn't have a TV tuner, but these days you can legally watch many of the most popular programs on the network's Web sites or through online stores like iTunes. The system's 160GB hard drive is enough for digital photos, music, and home videos. The E521's optical drives work with neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD. I'm sure that one or the other format, or better yet a combo drive, will appear in Dell high-end and mainstream systems before the year is over. (Dell is going with Blu-ray on laptops.)

At just over $1,000 when bundled with a 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor, the Dell Dimension E521 represents a good value for a mainstream dual-core desktop PC with Windows Vista Premium. It will serve a moderately demanding user well, and does so at a decent bang for the buck. Keep it on your short list if you're looking for a PC with a bit more than a budget PC, especially if you don't want to pay more than about $1,000.

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