Dell Inspiron 3881
This stripped-back PC offers everything people need whilst packing in a couple of surprises
If we could pick one system to explain the difference between the PCs sold by multinationals and British PC makers, this would be it. Everything here is pared down to the bone to ensure that not a penny is wasted, right down to connectors on the motherboard, which makes a lot of sense when you’re selling millions of them. You can almost hear Dell’s accountants hug themselves with joy.
Let’s start with the motherboard. Despite having room for four DIMM sockets, and spaces for four of them being marked out, Dell only includes two – one of which is filled with a stick of 8GB Samsung memory. Storage expansion is equally limited, with the sole M.2 slot filled and one SATA connector available – but you will have to buy your own caddy or it will hang loose in the case. Hopefully storage shouldn’t be an issue, with the 256GB SSD supplemented by a
1TB WD Blue hard disk.
Dell is gracious enough to include two PCI Express expansion slots, with one x1 and one x16. That’s because this PC relies on the Core i5-10400’s integrated graphics, and in Dell’s defence it does go to the trouble of adding a riser board for a VGA output to accompany the HDMI and DisplayPort on the back of the board. Lovers of surround sound should note the solitary optical output for audio, with two USB-A 2 and two USB-A 3.1 ports completing the connections.
Well, almost. Dell also provides a Gigabit Ethernet port, which is company for the built-in Wi-Fi 5 connector. It’s only 1x1, but it worked perfectly well during our tests. And there’s the added benefit of Bluetooth support, albeit the older 4.1 standard.
By now, you probably aren’t expecting the last word in speed. If so, you are correct to an extent. The Core i5-10400 is tenth-generation silicon, but with six cores and 12 threads it chews through everyday tasks with ease. An overall score of 140 in our benchmarks is far from spectacular for a desktop machine, but that’s a fine score for a laptop and most people will find this a nippy system in use. Those cores mean there’s number-crunching power if you need it, as indicated by a score of 8,050 in Cinebench R23’s multicore test.
Anyone after a gaming machine would be wise to look elsewhere, or dig out their own graphics card, because the UHD Graphics 630 chip sits at the bottom of virtually every chart in our gaming tests. Only the Acer, which uses the same graphics chip, came below it – whilst the Acer crashed during even undemanding tests, the Dell juddered its way to the end of Dirt: Showdown (18fps),
Metro: Last Light (17fps) and F1 2020 (11fps). Those results were at 1080p, whilst a 365 score in 3DMark Time Spy is among the lowest we’ve sseen.
Still, this lack of power is reflected in the amount of power the system requires. In idle, it sipped 10W, and even at its peak its demands stopped at 100W. Dell doesn’t make any promises about the 260W power supply’s efficiency, but even if it’s 75% that gives you around 100W to play with in your choice of graphics card.
There’s plenty of room inside the chassis for such a card, too, and we were a little surprised to see that this “Small Desktop” is actually quite big. It’s around an inch narrower than the PCSpecialist Aurora, and shorter too, but you’ll still need to find space for its 154 x 293mm footprint. The
Acer Aspire is much narrower.
We’d be tempted to tuck it away under a desk, in part because it makes an audible hum even at idle, but we’d draw your attention to two unusual features (in this month’s company) on the front. The first is a DVD writer and the second a full-size SD card slot.
And whilst those both hark back to the past, the USB-C 3.2 connector is far more forward-looking. Nor shall we complain about the 3.5mm jack, two USB-A ports and one USB-A 3.1.
What’s more, Dell wraps it up in a solid chassis. It’s not flashy, but the black honeycomb finish on the front looks attractive. It could sit in a boardroom, which isn’t something we can say about all the systems here.
So, despite it occasional failing, we find ourselves liking the Dell Inspiron Small Desktop. Factor in Dell’s speedy delivery options (at the time of writing, at least) and a competitive price, and this is an attractive budget choice.