Dell Inspiron 518

The Inspiron 518 is a welcome update to Dell's traditional, mainstream desktop line. Basic configurations start at $399, although our $784 review unit is a competitive showcase of some of Dell's more advanced configuration options. We wish Dell sold this system with 64-bit Windows Vista, as competing mainstream PCs from HP and Gateway have already made the switch. However, even without that forward-looking operating system, the Inspiron 518 stands strong on performance and offers a useful case update. Anyone looking for a utilitarian PC with good value will like what they find in this computer.

Although the Inspiron 518 has a new chassis design, the only significant changes from the old Inspiron 530 are a new black-with-silver-trim coloring and a tray on the top designed to cradle external devices. Dell put two USB 2.0 ports on the rear edge of the tray, which gives you a convenient place to store, charge, and connect your digital camera, cell phone, or other portable, PC-compatible hardware.

Configuration-wise, the Inspiron 518 has few unique features, although Dell charges a fair price for what you get. Dell currently offers fewer options for the Inspiron 518 than the Inspiron 530. You can no longer add a Blu-ray drive or a Draft N wireless networking adapter, and you're limited to either integrated graphics or the low-end ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics card featured in our review unit. If you really want those or other more advanced features in a midtower desktop, you can find them on Dell's XPS 420 or a system from another vendor. Still, we're not sure what Dell would lose by making those features available here as well. Gateway may not offer configurable PCs anymore, but HP's Pavilion m9300t offers a much wider range of options in a similar mainstream desktop.

Compared with Gateway's new DX4200, the Inspiron 518 has half the hard-drive storage and a third as much RAM. If that extra storage is your primary concern, we'd suggest that the Gateway is your better bet in this price range. The Gateway's memory is probably overkill at the moment given the lack of consumer programs that can take advantage of 6GB of RAM, and indeed the impact on our benchmarks was less than we thought.

Cinebench
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Rendering Multiple CPUs

Rendering Single CPU

ZT Affinity 7225Xi-35

8,696 

2,449 

Dell Inspiron 518

8,555 

2,433 

Gateway DX4200

6,987 

1,842 

Velocity Micro Vector Campus Edition

5,442 

2,748 

Dell Studio Hybrid

4,329 

2,270 

If we only compared on-paper specifications without testing, we might have said that the Gateway is far and away the better choice than the Inspiron 518, especially for digital photo editors. However, performance-wise, the Dell fared much better than we expected. We suspect its speed advantage is tied to its faster processor, which comes through in particular on our Photoshop test. We've seen the benefits of 64-bit Windows and large amounts of RAM can have on this test, and that Dell closes the gap with only 2GB and a 32-bit operating system speaks very well of the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 chip in the Inspiron 518. Once 64-bit supporting software hits the market, as we expect it to toward the end of this year, 64-bit systems may have more of an advantage. Keep that in mind for future-proofing, but for now, the Inspiron 518 is just as potent as anything else in its price range.