**A Deep Dive into Dell's Pre-Built Gaming PC: A Mixed Bag**

In this video review, we'll take a closer look at Dell's pre-built gaming PC and assess its performance, features, and value for money.

**The Bloatware Conundrum**

Like many pre-built systems, Dell's offering comes with a significant amount of bloatware - software that you may not need or want. In this case, we've got Microsoft Office, McAfee antivirus software, and other utility programs installed by default. While it's understandable that Dell wants to provide users with a comprehensive set of tools, the sheer quantity of bloatware can be overwhelming.

**The Hardware**

Let's move on to the hardware specifications. We're pleased to see a 10-700 CPU, which is a decent processor for gaming and content creation tasks. However, we were disappointed to find only a single 16 GB stick of RAM, which means that the system runs in single-channel mode. This can have a significant impact on performance, particularly when running resource-intensive applications.

**Storage and Graphics**

In terms of storage, Dell has provided a 1 TB hard drive and a 512 GB Samsung NVMe SSD. While this is a good starting point, we would have liked to see more storage capacity or faster SSDs to take advantage of the system's potential.

The graphics card is where things get really interesting - Dell has opted for an RTX 3070, which is a powerful GPU that should deliver excellent performance in games and other applications. However, as we'll see later, the CPU cooler is not up to par, which can hold back the system's performance.

**Gaming Performance**

Speaking of gaming performance, we were disappointed to find that the system struggled with even moderately demanding titles like Battlefield 5. The GPU utilization was hovering around 50-60%, indicating that the CPU was bottlenecking the graphics card. We also observed high temperatures and low core frequencies, which can further exacerbate performance issues.

**Conclusion**

While Dell's pre-built gaming PC has some excellent hardware specifications, it falls short in terms of overall performance and value for money. The bloatware, single-channel RAM, and subpar CPU cooler all contribute to a less-than-stellar experience. If you're in the market for a high-performance gaming PC, we would recommend exploring other options that offer better value and fewer compromises.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enfor today's video i bought a dell xps desktop with an rtx 3070 in it that cost a surprisingly  reasonable amount of money which weirdly means that buying a dell pre-built may be  one of the most reliable ways at the moment to get your hands on a new rtx 3070 aside from like  challenging scalpers to dance battles in the street or whatever but just because it's a  reliable way to do it does it mean that you should actually go through with it before we answer that  question we have a sponsor for today's video that helped me pay for this pre-built today's video is  sponsored by squarespace a brilliant way to get your own website up and running even if  you have no web design experience squarespace has a whole library of templates which are trendier  than a vegan ice cream shop and they're an easy starting point for a professional looking website  modifying these templates to fit your need is so easy that even i could do it squarespace also  has a whole host of other features like mobile optimized websites so that your site will look  good regardless of what device people are using it on and squarespace has really powerful e-commerce  features so that you can become the next finger paint selling tycoon on top of that you can  optimize the seo of your fingerpaint sales so that you don't get lost in the googles if that sounds  good to you head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and once you're done setting up your  new site and you want to go live use squarespace forward slash david to get 10 of your first  website purchase or domain purchase thank you again squarespace for sponsoring today's video  now before we get into the nitty-gritty unboxing and laughing at a terrible pre-built bit of  the video let me just walk you through the actual process of buying it on dell's website  now it was pretty straightforward i just spec the system that i wanted and it actually had an option  for dual channel versus single channel ram which i very excitedly selected and it means that this may  be the first pre-built that i've looked at that actually came with dual channels so that's pretty  big but other than that it had a 3070 in it with a 10 700 a 500 gig nvme ssd with a terabyte hard  drive and that whole system cost the equivalent of about a thousand five hundred us dollars which is  way better than you can do on the open market at the moment so yeah it's not too bad considering  what you get i am really excited to see what version of the rtx 3070 it comes with  hopefully it's not some like war crime blower cooler but when i finally placed the order i  had an issue with my with my payment method which meant that i had to spend an hour and a half with  a dell representative on their online chat service thing or whatever which is really frustrating  although in all fairness it wasn't the chat representative's fault that it took so long they  were very friendly and helpful it's just because my bank's weird with addresses linked to payment  methods or whatever so yeah it wasn't their fault but it was still pretty frustrating although it  was a much better experience than linus recently had which basically was borderline extortionary  uh yeah so so bear that in mind so with that let's open up this system and have a look at itit's so little it's way smaller than i was expecting i mean compared to the obscene size  that the alienware box was for example this is actually quite a breath of fresh air i'm excited  to get in here it's the moment of truth let's get in here in standard dell fashion you  have just like a big a big cardboard thing with uh with all of your accessories and stuff in it  so in this accessory pouch we have uh e-waste peripherals as is as is tradition these do seem  like alpha e-waste peripherals though that is some plasticky garbage in there uh we've got a power  cable and then the keyboard also just looks like landfill fodder and then in here we have the dell  xps with the same awesome packing foam that they use in the alienware system so that's pretty goodthat's already a letdown i know that it's not a gaming system but does it really have to look  like something that an accounting firm uses to do like a mid-tier exile on and here it is in all its  glory no if you can somehow manage to get over the animalistic lust that it's that it's looks  inspire then actually it's got a really good front io here up here it's got a dvd drive for all of  you that still want to get some use out of your friend's box set down here you've got reasonable  looking front io this is actually really good you've got three what looks like usb 3 ports  and then a 3.1 type c port an sd card slot and a front headphone jack that's really good and  then up here you've got this weird like plastic pattern up the front for airflow so you know it's  got some intake action going on yo i feel like these dowel xps look lamer and lamer with every  generation in terms of the rear i o it looks like every oem pre-built i've pretty much ever seen so  you've got a bunch of usb 3 ports a couple of usb2 ports with ethernet you've got some audio  jacks with display outs which are not going to use on this system because we've got the 3070 in here  i'm really excited to see what variant of the car it's in here and then finally down here we have  the power supply which is as confidence inspiring as the soviet era nuclear power plant operator  but with that let's open it up and see what it looks like inside this accountant's wet dreamwe've got some captive thumb screws which that sits quite nice ah no way okay this is  outrageous i specifically expect two eight gig sticks and look what they gave me dell what the  i was so excited to get a pre-built that actually had dual channel in  it because i had the option to spec it up and look what they didokay now that i've taken a moment to cool my jets from the complete outrage let's have a look at the  rest of the interior which actually looks very familiar it reminds me a lot of the interior  of the alienware actually you've also got this bracket here over the 3070 which actually looks  like a really interesting oem variant we'll have a closer look at that just now and then  over here you have the cpu cooler equivalent of like thumbing in a softie over here you've got a  hard drive i can't remember what size that is and then finally we have the ssd down here which is so  cute look at how little it is oh look at that power delivery and then just like with all  dell products they have airflow on the front pretty much just for the marketing material  because then they just add so much stuff in the back blocking it that it doesn't really do much  but yeah i'm interested to see the temperatures of this system and then finally we have that  power supply which is actually 80 plus platinum rated which is quite exciting  its output is rated for 500 watts which is not the most worrying part the most worrying part  is that it has several 18 amp 12 volt rails which assuming that the 3070 is gonna run  off a single one of those rails that's that's not ideal but other than that there's not  much to talk about in here so let's get this card out and have a closer look at this 30-70oh wow the card barely fits on hey that cooler actually looks pretty decent you can see here  that it actually like blows through the top of the card as well so the actual pcb is just this  long uh i think this may actually be a reference pcb 3070 which means it's one of only three in the  world in there there's what looks like four pretty chunky heat pipes and it's a relatively  dense fin array so it seems as though dell has learned to upgrade the coolers on their oem cards  which is a really good sign because that was a huge issue with most of their products in  the past including the alienware ones so with that let's put this bad boy back in the system  fire it up and try and somehow get over the disappointment of the single 16 gig stick  okay let's fire up this bad boy and see how much pc venereal disease bloatware it comes with dell  is usually quite a bit better than acer with that stuff but it usually still has a reasonable amount  of venereal disease on it uh there's a bunch of dowel stuff and then excel yeah okay clearly  clearly dell knows what people are going to use this system for  then there's like a killer control center we've got mcafee which i mean i guess that's kind of the  only way mcafee can sell any of their products at this point is by forcing it down people's throat  on a on a pre-build down here we've got some power media stuff and yeah again it's it's not too bad  now in here we can see it's got a 10-700 which is a pretty good cpu down here we've got  this single 16 gig stick of ram and i was so excited to finally get a pre-built  that had a proper dual channel ram configuration but nope dell had to take that away from me next  up we've got a terabyte normal hard drive and a 512 gig samsung nvme ssd so with that  let's see how this system handles games with that beast of a graphics card that it's gotit's always the same damn story with these pre-builts isn't it when you look at the gaming  performance it's never nearly as good as you'd expect considering the hardware in the system  it's as predictable as the sun setting in the evening and the tides changing over the course  of the day at this point in fact i'm sure you can all rehearse it with me what the problems  are right so let's say it together kids because the cpu cooler is poo poo garbage it means that  the processor doesn't boost very high and that in combination with the single channel memory  means that you lose a lot of gaming performance so let's have a look at battlefield 5 running  to illustrate this point you can see that the rtx 3070 is boosting to 1920 megahertz which  is good and the temperatures aren't bad but the utilization is hovering between 50 and 60  which means that the graphics card is waiting for the cpu to catch up which only boosts to about  3.8 gigahertz which is not great for a 10-700 even a non-k variant and as is always the case  one of the reasons why the core frequency isn't boosting that high is because it's running hotter  than the earth's mantle and then again that in combination with the single channel means that  you lose quite a lot of gaming performance now i redid the battlefield 5 benchmarks at 1440p  and we got the exact same result which again shows that the cpu memory configuration is holding the  graphics card back even at 1440p which is pretty crazy so if dull actually shipped the system with  dual channel like i specifically asked for and they used the cooler that they very proudly show  in all of the marketing material the system would have performed quite a lot better than it does at  the moment which is a shame because considering the size of dell they have the pick of the litter  for like new graphics cards and they're one of the most reliable ways to get your hands on an  ampere graphics card which now actually has a decent cooler on it but then they pair it  with that thing which is just it's just such a shame yeah it would just be so easy to get this  thing to be better but you know at this point i just sound like a broken record so yeah let's  finish off the video on that note thank you very much for watching if you like the video please  like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one and until the next video byeyou