Dell Dimension 2400 Desktop Computer for Business (discontinued)

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1. Manufacturer's description
2. Product summary
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Manufacturer description

The Dimension line is ideal for home, home office, or Small Businesses with basic networking needs. With the latest technology and multimedia features, you won't sacrifice power for a cost-effective PC. For those who demand fast performance and up-to-the-minute technology at aggressive prices, Dimension is the way to go. The Dimension 2400 Series is an ideal desktop solution for home and small business users focused on value. Offering current technology and stability at an aggressive price, the 2400 series provides affordable performance for essential applications.

Product summary

CNET editors' review

• Editors' Choice: No
• Reviewed on: 05/10/2004

Today's budget systems are typically leagues ahead of their predecessors in the bang-for-the-buck department, and for the most part, the Dell Dimension 2400 is no exception. Our test system carries a price that's just more than $1,000 and is highlighted by a respectable 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor and a roomy 120GB hard drive, along with both DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives. In addition, Dell tossed a creditable 15-inch LCD monitor into our bundle. But to keep the cost down, you'll have to put up with an equally underpowered integrated graphics chip and a two-piece speaker set. With no AGP slot on your machine, you'll be left with no hope of upgrading to a more robust graphics solution, though this is still a fine system for families and for more disciplined students.

The Dimension 2400 gives you room to add a few PCI expansion cards.

But there's little space for adding more drives.

Dell has carried over the 14.5-by-7.3-by-16.8-inch (H, W, D), two-tone-gray minitower case it introduced in the middle of last year for its latest low-end configuration. The Dimension 2400 is diminutive enough to hide almost anywhere, but it's attractive enough that you won't have to tuck it out of sight. One of the consequences of going small, of course, is that your system won't leave much room for upgrades. Our test machine's two 5.25-inch bays were filled with a pair of optical drives, and there's room for only one hard drive in the vertically oriented, 3.5-inch drive-bay enclosure. As has become the trend lately, there is no floppy drive and no bracket to hold one. Opt for an external floppy USB drive if you still have some disks lying around.

No tools are needed to get inside the case, and you'll find easy access to everything once you've removed the side panel. An unfilled memory socket lets you shoehorn a full gigabyte of memory into the Dimension 2400, and with two of the three PCI slots available, you can at least make some card-based upgrades. The tragedy of this motherboard is that there's no AGP slot, which closes off the upgrade path for the woefully underpowered integrated Intel graphics subsystem.

Along with the usual list of legacy ports, an analog (VGA) monitor connection and three audio inputs adorn the back panel, along with four USB 2.0 ports and an Ethernet jack. All of the above connections are integrated on the motherboard, and the 56Kbps modem is the only part that occupies one of the PCI expansion slots. You'll also find two USB 2.0 ports located conveniently on the front panel, in addition to a space microphone jack.

There's no reason to be ashamed of a system powered by a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor. The Dell Dimension 2400's CPU was state-of-the-art not so long ago, and though it has been outpaced by faster chips released since, it remains one of the best bang-for-the-buck processors currently available. Dell also packed our Dimension 2400 test system with 512MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR memory and a spacious 120GB hard drive. That's more than enough capability and capacity to handle the bundled software package, which consists of Windows XP Home, Microsoft Works Suite 2004, Dell Picture Studio, and other programs for playing movies and music and burning CDs.

The halfway-decent 15-inch LDV is just one of the Dimension 2400's highlights.

Still, this isn't to say that Dell hasn't cut a few corners to hit such an aggressive price. The first corner it rounds is with the system's graphics subsystem. Instead of a dedicated graphics card with its own graphics memory allotment, the Dimension 2400 uses an Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chip built directly into the motherboard, which borrows up to 64MB of the system RAM for graphics tasks. This is a perfectly acceptable solution for running all of the apps in the bundled Works 2004 suite or surfing the Web. The system handles basic photo editing without issue and is adequate for DVD playback, because the CPU is doing most of the work in that case. Just don't think about games. While integrated graphics solutions are improving, the Intel solution found here lacks the oomph needed for the majority of today's 3D games.

Along with gamers, audiophiles will also take issue with the Dimension 2400 (and almost all budget systems). The Dimension 2400's bundled Altec Lansing ADA-215 speakers drip out a mere 1.5 watts (max) per speaker. There's also no subwoofer, so don't twist that volume control all the way up unless you really like listening to treble.

Fortunately, the Dimension 2400 boasts some more-capable components. We were surprised that, at this price, Dell manages to sneak in the optical-drive tandem of both a 16X DVD-ROM drive and a 48X CD-RW drive. Dell's bundled 15-inch E152FP analog LCD also features great color and excellent contrast for both video and graphics. An integrated 10/100 LAN port, a dial-up modem card, a wheel mouse, and Dell's multimedia keyboard with integrated Windows Media Player controls complete the package.

Application performance
The Dell Dimension 2400 performed as expected for its configuration. Using an older 2.66GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor and Intel's dated 845G chipset, the Dimension 2400 scored a 129 in SysMark 2004, about average in comparison to the results from our other budget-class systems. Average performance in a roundup of budget systems may not be enough for some, however, depending on their needs. The Dell's older components and the fact that it shares memory with the graphics system hurt its performance. By sharing memory, both the graphics system and the overall system performance suffer, though in general, the Dimension 2400 does what it's supposed to do. You should have no problem browsing the Web, checking e-mail, playing movies and music, or running low-intensity productivity software. If you plan to use this machine for digital-video editing, playing games, or other more challenging tasks, you should look for a system such as the ABS Awesome 1300 at the minimum, since it has a discrete AGP graphics card.