Dell's XPS 410 series of desktop computers for gamers are one of the least expensive ways to bring home a full-fledged gaming PC with Intel's latest Core 2 Duo processor inside. These powerful systems start out fairly well equipped and offer some impressive upgrades that you don't see on every gaming system.

The starting Core 2 Duo processor is the 1.86GHz E6300, and you can step up the CPU with upgrades all the way to the 2.66GHz E6700 (although this adds 40% more to the overall sticker price). Starting RAM is an impressive 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 memory and you can speed the memory up to 667MHz RAM for $25. These systems will support up to 4GB of memory, so there's plenty of room to add more RAM later. Even at the baseline configuration of these gaming desktop computers, the central components give you great core power for gaming and multitasking.

Dell equips these desktop computers for gamers with a large 250GB hard drive spinning at 7,200rpm. This gives you a solid amount of starting room for storing multimedia files and installing games. Dell also offers their DataSafe options for mirroring the main hard drive so your data is protected in the event of a crash or even accidentally erasing a file. Gamers usually care more for speed than safety, so you might be more interested in the RAID striping options--configurations that offer up to 1 terabyte of space.

The default optical drive in these desktops is a DVD writer that burns CDs and DVDs and handles the Double Layer format of DVDs that can store up to 8.5GB of data or four hours of high-quality video on a single disk. It's a nice all-around drive adequate for any gamer's burning needs.

The sub-$1,000 price tag of these desktop computers for gamers includes a 19-inch flat panel display. It's not a digital LCD (you can upgrade to the 19-inch UltraSharp digital flat panel for $50), but it's a large and well designed monitor that matches the silver and black color scheme of the tower nicely.

On the video card front, the XPS 410 ships with the adequate NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE. It's a PCI Express x16 card with 256MB of dedicated video memory that offers decent 3D gaming performance. Hard-core gamers may want to upgrade, however, and the more current generation NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS will boost your gaming performance nicely for an additional $200. You can also step up to the big gun--a Geforce 7950 DX2 with dual GPUs and 1GB of video memory--but that'll add more than $600 to the system price.

Dell also offers another add-on board that would appeal to gamers: the AGEIA PhysX physics accelerator. This separate PCI card offloads some of the physics calculations from the CPU and the video card, boosting the performance of some games even further, but it adds nearly $250 to the overall price.

Dell includes a basic speaker that clips onto the flat panel monitor, so you may want to upgrade to a surround sound set for gaming and movie watching. Dell's own 100-watt six-speaker set is a reasonable $70, and there are also some thunderous systems available from Logitech, including their Z-5450 5.1-speaker set with wireless rear speakers for around $400.

There's a modem and built-in gigabit Ethernet port in these gaming desktop computers, so you can connect to the Internet via dial-up or broadband. If you're ordering direct from Dell, you can forego the modem and knock a hefty $30 off the system price if it's not needed.

Since these are desktop computers for gamers, Dell offers some nice prices on bundled game titles. For example, you can bundle World of Warcraft with your XPS 410 for only $20.

Hard-core gamers may want to upgrade key components, but shipped as is, the Dell XPS 410 desktop computers for gamers are well-rounded systems at a very reasonable price.


Pros: Great core power, nicely equipped at low starting price
Cons: Hard-core gamers may want to upgrade

Warranty
1-year limited