Dell Dimension 8300

I have had my Dell 8300 Since Sept 2005 and it was about 1 year old when I got it. Since then I have installed the following Upgrades:

Ram to 3gb, Graphics card to a 128 Nvidia. replaced all 3 of my IDE/ATA hard drives with one 750GB Samsung SATA. Installed XP Pro , it came with XP home. Installed an LG DVD/RW

Apart from driver issues which I solved by joining Driver Update Pro, I can say it was a very good buy.

At time of purchase seemed to have reasonable features for the price.

Does not feel like it has quality components anymore. Plenty better out there, Often likes to go on a go slow. Have had 3 (yes THREE) new hard drives. This seems to be a feature in all dell products I bought over the years including inspiron laptops that required new hard drives. Therefore I do not recommend the Dell Dimension 8300.

Outstanding machine!

My Dell is a great PC, no problems whatsoever with it.

I love this PC. Have had it over 3 years, upgraded the Ram to 3 GB, Hard Disk space to 1 TB, and replaced the 2 crashed Maxtor drives (the only repairs I have had to do in 40 months). That is IT in 3 years plus ownership. Very dependable, reliable machine.

The speed of the processor has held up, it is still pretty fast by current standards, and is a heck of a machine for its age. I use it for home office, digital photography, music, and videos, and it seems to keep running strong. One well built quality machine, knock on wood.

The Dimension 8300 will be my third Dell desktop upgrade over the past eight years. I have always favoured them, due to the customised nature of their business, good quality components and good value pricing.

Aside from sheer processing power, this is the finest of the three I have had (and the others were great). The thought that has gone into the design of the kit and case alone say that this is serious bit of kit.

I've never been much into 'fiddling under the bonnet' as it were, but this case makes such activities really easy - even to the point where I have fitted a second hard disk and extra RAM with so much ease as to make it a joy.

The whole case is simple to open up, with a mechanism like the one on the boot of your car. Adding a hard disk was as simple as snapping the disk sliders (to spare are inside the care ready for you) on to the new disk, slotting it in the hole under the existing disk and plugging in the cables. The whole process took two minutes.

Whilst you're nosing inside, it is clear that the standard of the components is high and that there is none of the usual 'spagetti' of wires inside - everything is neat and tidy, and there is plenty of room for all the bits inside, plus some more if you so desire.

I've had this PC for about 10 months now, and have had no problems with it at all (aside from an iffy modem, but more on that in a moment).

Noise can often be a problem on some of the more powerful PCs these days, but it is really not an issue with this model, the fans are both effective, well placed and quiet.

My model came with a Radeon 9800 graphics card, other are available - however all but the most serious of gamers will be enamoured with this card. It produces staggering results on the supplied Ultrasharp 18" LCD panel, just remeber to buy the DVI cable as the performance through the analogue cable supplied is a bit pasty. DVI makes the picture supremely crisp and bright with great colour depth.

The best thing about Dell is that you customise your order to more or less exactly your requirements, so there's little point in telling you about my personal specifications, however if you select one of the newer processors with the Hyper-Threading, I would highly recommend turning it off. Bizarrely an invention to make your comuter work faster actually slows it down a little if you are not using programs that take advantage of it. It's marginal, but it is definitely faster with the HT switched off!

Dell's choices when it comes to the software you want on your new PC are somewhat limited to Works or Office - which is fine but you can't elect to not have either and pocket the change, which is a shame. You also can't elect to not have any sort of monitor supplied, which is crazy if you have a great one already.

Some of the web-only offers can be great, however if you prefer to deal with them over the phone (as I do) you can usually get better deals with a bit of negotiation. I negotiated a few free upgrades on top of what the current web offer was, things like memory keys, multimedia keyboard and fancy mouse are all things they can throw in for free (rather than paying for them via the website). You can also choose not to have the monitor via the phone for quite a discount.

I had a little problem with the modem, sadly Dell have outsourced all their technical support to another country now, and the staff there do seem to be somewhat robotic in their answers. They are nice enough however, and they have to ask reams of questions before they agree to do what you wanted in the first place - which for me was send me a new modem. You get the impression that they don't really have much (if any) knowledge of the product, but they do have at their disposal, a huge list of questions to ask the customer, like a giant flow chart.

Once we'd gone through the motions, however, they ordered a new modem from stock and it arrived next day - so not too much of an inconvenience and it all worked again.

As standard on all 8300 cases, you'll find six USB2 ports. These are lightning fast compared to USB1 if you've got compatible kit. Four of these are on the back, the other two are under what seems to be a rather flimsy door on the front of PC case. I say seems to be, because despite using it a lot, it's not shown any signs of wear and has never fallen off!

Also under the trap door on the front is a headphone and microphone socket - but these are on the back too if you prefer.

The USb ports on the front are angled downwards, which can be annoying if like most people you have the case on the floor. It's also very tricky to insert the Dell memory keys into these slots - but these are tiny niggles.

You have the option of a firewire card or a soundcard that comes with the firewire (Creative Audigy). I went for the latter, this is a super soundcard and if you have a DV movie cam then you will appreciate the firewire. On the subject of ports, the PC comes with an Intel 10/100 ethernet port round the back as standard.

Round the front, there are two CD drive bays. For some reason Dell would not let me have a DVD burner and CD burner in the same box, so I went for the DVD-ROM and the CD-RW instead. Both are excellent, there is no jitter on the picture quality delivered from DVDs, and the 48-speed CD writing is very good too. CD ripping on both drives is super-fast.

Below these bays you have the option of a floppy drive - I got one of these thrown in for free, but I don't think I've ever used it.

If you don't already have a great keyboard, I would recommend the Multimedia keyboard available for little extra. It has most of the buttons you're likely to need regularly, including a robust volume knob and media player control buttons. The keys themselves are firm to the touch, and you feel like you have a quality bit of kit under your fingers. A lot of thought went into the functionality and design of the keyboard, and it is a pleasure to use - much more so that many keyboards I've paid a lot of money for in the past.

One thing that gets me is the cost of some of the extra bits you might like at the time of buying. The cost of pre-installed memory for example is almost double what you can buy it for on the high street. Sure, it's much better to have it factory fitted, but if you don't mind diving into the case you will save some money by putting extra RAM in yourself (from somewhere like Crucial.com).

However, as long as you're aware of this, for the money that Dell are asking for all this well thought out and sturdy equipment, you'll find that you're paying less than you would for something flimsy from one of the PC superstores. Highly recommended - you won't be dissapointed.

I have recently purchased a new Dell Dimension 8300 and I am amazed just how good it is. I chose a few extras like a large digital flat screen, 1Meg of memory and top of the range sound and graphics. Apart from a rather noisey cooling fan, I cannot fault this machine. At under two grand for the lot, it really does represent fantastic value for money and even when working whith very intensive graphics programs, it performs like a flying machine. Definitly recommend it.