DELL INSPIRON COMPACT DESKTOP
A capable little system at the right price.
$1,339 | www.dell.com.au
If a work from home user is looking to buy a new PC, the chances are they will look at a Dell, and why not. It’s a big company with a reputation for good after sales support and generally well made and well-appointed machines.
The Dell Inspiron Compact Desktop is a relatively slim mATX-sized machine. It looks good and it comes with a DVD burner. Other key specs include an excellent Core i5-12400 processor, 16GB of RAM and a decent 512GB SSD. Dell includes a wireless keyboard and mouse for a little bit of extra value.
Dell systems are known for their bespoke hardware, though in this case, you can add additional SATA drives, swap out the NVMe SSD or install a 16x expansion card, though with a 180W PSU, it doesn’t include any PCIe power connectors, so you’d need to put a sub 75W GPU in there if you want extra graphics grunt.
The little Dell performs well in the benchmarks, but it cannot match the much better i7-12700 of the PCCG system. As a general-purpose work from home PC it does a good job, staying relatively quiet. It’s got a good set of ports and Wi-Fi 6 is a welcome inclusion.
The Dell Inspiron Compact Desktop can often be found for hundreds of dollars less that its $1,339 sticker price. At its full price, we’d spend the extra $160 for the higher spec and upgradeability of the PCCG system, but at closer to $1,000, this little Dell goes from being an adequate machine, to an excellent one.
"The little Dell performs well in the benchmarks."
This little Dell offers a solid spec for the money, but do keep an eye out for large discounts, which changes it from good to great value.