Dell's XPS 430 tower makes a stealth entrance

Dell made a lot of noise about its otherwise-ordinary Art House laptops today, but we didn't hear a peep about the XPS 430 desktops that slid online as well. The update to the XPS 420 ditches the SideShow display but now starts with 6GB of DDR3 RAM and features a newer slate of Intel Core 2 Quad processors running on a 1,333MHz bus with 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics -- the base $1,307 model has a 2.33GHz Q8200 while the higher-powered $1,767 configuration has a 2.5GHz Q9300 and comes bundled with a 22-inch SP2208WFP LCD. True to Dell form, you can go crazy on the BTO tip and order the 430 jacked with a 3.0GHz QX9650 Core 2 Extreme, 8GB of RAM, a 2TB RAID, and Blu-ray burner for $3,267, but we've got a feeling those less-insane stock configurations might sell just a hair better when orders start shipping in November.

[Via Electronista]

[Pip @ Nov 11th 2008 6:31PM]

I'm actually quite impressed by Dell's recent offers, including the 430. For many years, Dells were fairly dull but their most recent computers have a sleek, standardized look and Dell seems to be quickly becoming the Apple of PCs. Dell still has some areas to improve on but overall, good job Dell. The 430 looks like a good machine at a decent price.

[Uncontrol @ Nov 11th 2008 6:41PM]

Sony is still the Apple of the PC world.

[Lowest Ranked @ Nov 11th 2008 6:41PM]

$3,267 is good?

[Pip @ Nov 11th 2008 6:54PM]

Sony? I disagree, personally.

$3,267 is the highest config possible. The machines start at $1,099...

[icepop4who @ Nov 11th 2008 8:36PM]

Sony fail at desktop. But i'd still agree that sony laptop line is the Apple of the pc world.

[Adam @ Nov 11th 2008 8:57PM]

erm no, Dell is not becoming the Apple of PC cause if it is, then it will be expensive and will have the best quality build. Dell don't offer these 2.

I agree with uncontrol, Sony is the Apple of PC cause its expensive and its one of the best quality build in the PC world. Currently Apple tops with the unibody construction and glass trackpad.

But I do like that Dell finally begin to take care about its product look, its been awhile since they do that. Anyway good job dell :)

[john @ Nov 11th 2008 10:25PM]

WOW, WMP 10, does this run XP SP1 or wut?

[Fusion Fuzo @ Nov 11th 2008 11:58PM]

@john

Its running xp because xp runs better on these specss, vista would need better specs just to open a word, vista just isn't capable to run on these specs, im a technician so i know about these thing i woud recommend getting this with either windows 95, ME or XP

[TareX @ Nov 11th 2008 6:31PM]

The $1,767 model is awesome. I'm glad I didn't go for a gaming laptop...

[JohnTitor @ Nov 11th 2008 6:46PM]

why wouldn't you get a gaming laptop?

and whats with it using WMP9

[kastonie @ Nov 11th 2008 6:32PM]

Before you guys read this im sorry for this joke....


MAN DELL MUST HAVE been freaking high to come out with the 420, im glad they came down from that cloud to make the better 430....

[Lowest Ranked @ Nov 11th 2008 6:43PM]

I respect your premature apology, but I still can't forgive you for that poor attempt at a 'joke'.

[Atlas @ Nov 11th 2008 8:01PM]

There's a Yoga studio around here; its address is 420 Mendocino Ave.

[collegekid13 @ Nov 11th 2008 6:34PM]

if hp's taught me anything its not to buy anything with high gloss. it only looks good in the box

and thats from experience

[Gabe @ Nov 11th 2008 6:38PM]

Then the new MacBook should be your best bet.

[iofthestorm @ Nov 11th 2008 6:46PM]

Oh man, I love my TX2000z for the most part but damn it is the biggest fingerprint magnet I have ever seen, and the screen is so ridiculously reflective it's impossible to see outdoors, which kind of sucks since it's more usable outdoors than other laptops otherwise since it's a tablet.

[Stephen @ Nov 11th 2008 8:01PM]

I just got an XPS 420 last month and mine looks great. One of the best cases I've seen which helped me choose it. And I haven't experienced any of the vibrating others mentioned. Mine's quiet as hell, even when running Crysis, UT3, and rendering poster quality images in 3dsMax. Best machine I've ever had. Now if only I could get rid of Vista...

[telepheedian @ Nov 11th 2008 8:46PM]

I know I say this a lot, but contact paper on the lid looks nice, and stays that way under almost any condition. Much cheaper than a skin too.

[Pikl @ Nov 11th 2008 7:47PM]

Goodbye, XPS 420!! You were so unremarkable amongst your other OEM friends...

*smokes doobie*

[Kevin @ Nov 11th 2008 6:41PM]

Hopefully the fit & finish is a bit better than the 420. My XPS 420 has all kinds of buzzing going on, constantly. A little internet research showed that others had the same problem and calling dell results in a game of "disable each individual component in your computer so we can figure out what is causing our case to vibrate". Just a warning based on my experience.

[StalematE @ Nov 11th 2008 6:54PM]

the Dell 420 was inspired by the great stoner steve... dude...

[Prokanda @ Nov 11th 2008 6:55PM]

on the product page for it there's a gallery of images.. one of them showing off the "Deck-top" storage area with cable routing... I love the caption "Camera sold separately."


......it's a nokia n95.

does that mean the phone is free? I see no "camera".

[inno8sky @ Nov 11th 2008 7:06PM]

"Dell made a lot of noise about its otherwise-ordinary Art House laptops today"
who hires these writers? Say what you want about the new art house laptops, say you don't care for them, that you'd never use one, that they're even hideous.. but ordinary they're not. Just because they're not your RUN OF THE MILL, BORING apple POS doesn't make them ordinary or commonplace.

Nice to see that Dell are offering more good value to the computing public..

[inno8sky @ Nov 11th 2008 7:36PM]

One more thing, at least this is doing some good.. when have apple given a god damned dime away or contributed to any worthwhile cause.. NEVER. The other designs are also pretty nice..

[bolezhinkov @ Nov 11th 2008 8:08PM]

I think the internet you are looking for is off that way --------------------------------------------->

[EricBrown @ Nov 12th 2008 5:19PM]

I think it's funny that you're saying Apple has never donated to a "worthwhile charity", when the red iPods they sold a little while back went to the exact same charity as the Dell laptops you speak of. Also, whoever "hired these writers" clearly picked someone with more grammatical ability than you.

You're fired.

[RYan @ Nov 11th 2008 7:12PM]

Wow this is a ripoff. 2.5 months ago i bought a dell with q6600 quad core, 3 gig of ram, and 640 gb hd for 417$ new at best buy. I then proceeded to upgrade the ram to 6 gb, the power supply to 700w, and graphics card to gtx260 and bought a 22" monitor for dual 22" for roughly 1050$. Why would anyone waste their money on an xps lol

[KAIKAI @ Nov 11th 2008 7:57PM]

wow you just figured out that dell rips people off.........
as with any other Pc desktop manufacturer......if you know how its better to build your own :D

[Shambles @ Nov 12th 2008 1:13AM]

Wow you had access to a product from BestBuy at below cost. Way to make an irrelevant post moron. Let's see what the cheapest Q6600 desktop that BB is offering at the moment...

Oh look! It's a 680$ model with no dedicated graphics, no monitor, no keyboard etc...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9032316&st=q6600&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218010533213

These Dell setups are getting to be a damn good value considering they are selling for nearly as low as if you built the entire rig yourself.

[Laughing Man @ Nov 11th 2008 8:41PM]

you then could have just bought a barebones kit for like $299 to $350 and saved some more money as well as not having Dell written all over a computer that you basically built. Or just build from scratch and get a wicked case for it.

[hamiltonguy @ Nov 11th 2008 7:30PM]

wtf.......................no more sideshow display.............that is the best part of the 420.

[Fanfoot @ Nov 11th 2008 7:43PM]

I'm pretty happy with my 420. You can install 3 drives inside, the expansion is easy and simple to do, the cabling is well laid out, and you can configure it as you wish. My only bitch is they didn't offer the ATI 4850/4870 so I went with their cheapest video card and swapped it out after the fact. Looks like the 430 DOES now offer the 4850, though oddly (I think) not the 4870, which presumably makes more sense than the 3870 X 2 they do offer.

The biggest change seems to be they're now shipping with 64-bit Vista rather than 32-bit, which is probably a good call. Supposedly makes up about 20% of Vista sales these days, and sounds like most of the driver issues have been resolved. I think I'll wait for next summer and use the opportunity to bump up the disk drives and install 64-bit Windows 7. Will have to verify all the stuff I use works in 64-bit though, like Tivo Desktop and such.

Personally I haven't looked at the sideshow since I first installed the unit. No loss there.

[SDreamer @ Nov 11th 2008 7:55PM]

Uh... does that ship with XP? Isn't that Windows Media Player 10 on there, and not 11? Lulz.

[chambo622 @ Nov 12th 2008 8:46PM]

Am I the only one surprised that SideShow is gone?

Only 2 PCs I think were every made with it...that Asus laptop a few years ago and the XPS 420, which I thought had an awesome implementation.

Too bad, I guess MS really wasn't realistic with their SideShow vision. I personally think its a great idea.

[Jon @ Nov 11th 2008 9:01PM]

i love my 420 .. yeah i upgraded to 8 GBs of RAM .. but this thing smokes .. and has a Cablecard tuner so i got what i wanted ... sure i dont use the mini lcd on it but everything else is sweet

[Phate @ Nov 11th 2008 9:05PM]

Seems to me that Core i7 is just around the corner. I think I can wait for such a ridiculous performance boost.

[Stevooo @ Nov 11th 2008 9:21PM]

why is it shown running windows media player 10? last time i checked, vista came with wmp 11, and 10 was for XP MC. maybe it comes w/ xp mc? please dell?

[dixonmiller @ Nov 11th 2008 9:43PM]

Couple notable points around TV tuner options for the XPS 420 & 430:

1) The XPS 430 does not list the ATI digital cable tuners as an option. In fact, neither does the 64-bit XPS 420. Dell is behind the curve here as HP.com has offered the ATI digital cable tuner + 64-bit OS for about a month now on the m9400t and d5100t Elite Pavilion desktops.

2) The XPS 420 with 32-bit still lists the dual digital cable tuner as an option but it costs $533. WTF! Dell has charged ~ $370 for dual DCTs with the XPS 420 for the longest time. Then - bam - Dell drops a nearly 50% price increase?!?!

Now granted a single DCT costs b/w $230 - $270 most other places (eBay, google shopping, HP.com). But Dell's price always made it more attractive, and the XPS 420 has been the HTPC of choice for most folks. That may seriously change considering Dell has upped the DCT price and it still is only 32-bit.

Only potential upside I can imagine is if there is a shortage of DCTs either because a) they are finally gaining more market share or b) cable labs & ATI are getting ready to release bidirectional DCTs (BOCRs).

Regardless, Dell's price increase won't help adoption...

[Mobius_1 @ Nov 11th 2008 10:10PM]

3K for a Ferrari is a really good.. oh wait... Switch to Engadget mode first...

That computer looks very stylish, would fit in well to a home studio or office, and the SideShow, as cool as it was, is nothing but a gimmick, good to see Dell getting rid of that unnecessary feature.

And nice to see a read link that works once in a while, Engadget ;)

[Casper42 @ Nov 11th 2008 11:11PM]

So they release an updated 400 series 2 weeks before Intel formally releases the Nehalem (aka Core i7) processor on the world.
Looks like the main difference is just the change from an Interl x38 Chipset (DDR2) to the x48 Chipset (DDR3)

Leaves me a little confused. But I guess it makes sense.
There will be no low-mid range i7 machines released in 2 weeks, only the top end stuff. The low to mid range i7 doesnt come out till next year sometime.

So perhaps this means a new XPS 700 series (also DDR3 since that is determined by the processor now) will be released in a few weeks with a similar chassis design.

[shimeng @ Nov 12th 2008 1:56AM]

Well it certainly looks nice, until you pop open the hood and discover it's using a BTX based motherboard. Most OEMs have stopped producing motherboards in this form factor, so you're painting your upgrade path in a corner should you get one.

[Oli D @ Nov 12th 2008 3:03AM]

Are they running 64bit Vista?
I guess so with the amount of RAM they pack as standard.

ATX towers make me mad, how ugly are those unused 5.25" drive bays!!!

I would pay the same money for a Mini ITX board with an AMD Quad, (embarrassingly only 2Gb memory), and a 500Gb HDD. It puts out HDMI, DVI and VGA, it has 5.1 surround, and with the momney left over you could get a nice 22" or larger.

Except that my computer (had i the money) would have the footprint of a piece of paper and only 2.5" high!

[Andy TGD @ Nov 12th 2008 5:50AM]

According to the monitor, running Windows XP. Oooh.

[dixonmiller @ Nov 12th 2008 9:38AM]

Interstingly, although the ATI digital cable tuner (DCT) is not listed with the XPS 430s yet, the 430 comes with digital cable support included (as evidenced by the version of Vista). For those unaware, b/c of cable industry regulations a PC has to have a special bios to work with DCTs, and PCs that are compatible are marketed as having Vista with digital cable support.

The 420/430 SKUs are listed at the following link and I've compared the available OS's below.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-xps-430?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

XPS 420 32-bit (1 SKU):
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium w/ Digital Cable Support SP1 [Included in Price]
Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate w/ Digital Cable Support SP1 [add $150 or $5/month-1]

XPS 420 64-bit (2 SKUs):
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit

XPS 430 (2 SKUs):
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/Digital Cable Support, 64-bit [Included in Price]
Genuine Windows Vista™ Ultimate w/Digital Cable Support, 64-bit [add $150 or $5/month-1]

Based on this a) someone can buy the 430 from Dell and use DCTs from elsewhere (buy them online or use ones you already have) and b) I'd expect Dell to add the DCT tuners to the 430 configuration options very soon.

Base price of the 430 is a lot more than the 420 though, so I hope they either keep the 420 around or drop the 430's price to match the 420.

[bossbob @ Dec 28th 2008 4:56PM]

I just got a dell xps 430 for christmas and I got the stock setup. Im buying an ATI Radeon HD 3850 512MB (because the 3450 sucks......)and i need to know if I should get a better power supply(500watt) or is my 450watt good enough?

[Dennis @ Jan 1st 2009 9:50AM]

What is your opinion of the 430 performance? Is it fast? Stable? Any issues or lockups? Other than the video card, what DON'T you like about it? I am considering the 430 as an upgrade to my 410. What option/upgrade do you think you SHOULD have pruchased? Thank you!!