As far as desktops go, the Dell inspiron 545s offers an affordable PC with capable performance inside a slim and stylish tower chassis. At the $569 price, it is an immensely great home desktop option, with sufficiently more powerful specs than many boxes around the same price range.
Despite the attractive frame, it is a considerably large machine at 14.75 x 3.75 x 16 inch dimensions. While that makes it difficult to blend into the background, it also affords greater room for expansion – something you will almost always likely do with desktop PCs (unless you’re willing to throw it away after a year or two).
Core specs include a 2.8GHz Intel Core2 Duo E7400, 6GB of DDR2 RAM, Intel GMA 3100 graphics and a 750GB HDD. It’s a pretty powerful machine right there, though, you will probably be looking towards a graphics card update down the line. Other specs include a dual-layer DVD burner and a good collection of ports (four USB, VGA, FireWire, 7.1 Audio and gigabit ethernet). Sadly, there’s no HDMI, which many machines in the same range usually come with (e.g. Gateways $500+ PCs). Expansion slots included consist of a 16x PCI Express graphics card slot, a 1X PCI Express slot, and two standard PCI slots.
Speed is just what you’ll expect from a similarly-powered processor. The high amount of memory helps, although you’ll see the whole rig begin showing cracks once you begin doing heavier media manipulation across multiple applications. Power efficiency is also among the highest in its market, making it an attractive purchase for a home office or bedroom PC.
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