Dell’s XPS 720 H2C Spares No Expense

May 22, 2007 By Nick Mokey

The normally sane folks at Dell have thrown price out the window to bring us the company's latest gaming rig.

If you’ve ever wondered what a PC fit for MTV Cribs would look like, wonder no longer. Dell announced its new XPS 720 H2C edition on Tuesday – a beefed up, decked out, overclocked, water-cooled gaming machine that packages every top-of-the-line desktop component into one slick box – to the tune of $5,999.

At the heart of the beast is an Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor, meant to run at 2.66GHz but factory-overclocked to 3.46GHz. The system’s RAM has also leaves the factory with a little extra zip. Its 2GB of Corsair DDR2 memory, meant to run at 800MHz, now runs at 1066MHz. In the video department, the XPS packs twin SLI-enabled 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards. Two 160GB 10,000 RPM SATA hard drives provide storage for the system, and move data at up to 3GB per second. To keep everything cool, the XPS 720 uses Dell’s own liquid-cooling technology, which it has dubbed H2C.

Dell hasn’t skimped on accessories, either. A 24-inch UltraSharp 2407FPW widescreen display is standard, as is a 2X Blu-ray drive for movie playback or storage. A Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music sound card pumps audio to 10-watt flat panel speakers.

On the outside, the XPS 720 H2C is the Cadillac Escalade of desktops. It features an aluminum case finished in high-gloss piano black paint and Dell’s new LightFX technology, which allows users to actually control an array of LED lights that dot the perimeter of the case. Since the lights are programmable with software, they can even be used for indicators in a game, such as flashing red lights to show damage.

If six grand is a drop in the bucket for you, some further upgrades are also available to boost the price of the XPS 720 ever higher. They include a 27-inch display, 5.1 surround speaker system, dual GeForce 8800 Ultras, and physics processor.

The Dell XPS 720 H2C is available immediately, so start filling out those loan applications now.

Showing 4 comments

Keith at 3:51pm 2nd February 2009
Dave G at 7:33pm 23rd July 2007 I just got approved for financing on an XPS 720 H2C, but Dell estimated shipping to be 40 days due to lead times on parts!! I don't know if I can wait that long.. Oh and btw, you can scale down the price tag quite a bit by removing the blue ray drive and some other components.
Tim Stevens at 8:26am 23rd May 2007 I like Alienware's cases. The thing most people don't realize is that the XPS case is HUGE. It is so tall it almost comes up to the bottom of a desktop (if that makes sense.)

I think voodoo pcs are a little bland.
Brett at 7:29pm 22nd May 2007 OMG I think I am in love. Forget Alienware or VoodooPC, I don't want an ugly system (one that looks like an Alien?? come on!) I would take this any day. It's like the Porsche of PC's.