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Dell OptiPlex 745 Review

Executive Class

December 14, 2006
By Eric Grevstad

Do you know the difference between a GX620 and an SX280? Neither did most IT managers and small-business operators considering Dell's OptiPlex office-desktop brand, so Dell has taken the opportunity of recent Intel product releases and its own embrace of AMD as well as Intel processors to roll out a somewhat simpler lineup.

The OptiPlex 320 is the bare-bones box, starting at $499 with Intel Celeron power and peaking with the old-school dual-core Pentium D. The model 740 offers IT buyers a choice of single- and dual-core AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2 processors, respectively, using Nvidia's Quadro NVS/nForce 430 chipset with a promise of platform stability via an 18-month life cycle.

The 740's Intel-based sibling is the OptiPlex 745 tested here, which pairs the Intel Q965 chipset with a selection of Celeron, Pentium D, and up-to-date Core 2 Duo CPUs. Scheduled for a 15-month life cycle, the 745 is available in four sizes: a conventional minitower, the desktop chassis of our review unit, a small-form-factor slimline, and an ultra-small form factor meant to attach to the back of an LCD monitor. The latter two are exclusive to the 745 model.

All four flavors come with Intel's GMA 3000 integrated graphics, but all save the smallest can be upgraded to discrete PCI Express x16 graphics in the form of a 128MB ATI Radeon X1300 or 256MB Radeon X1300 Pro card. Our test desktop had one low-profile PCI Express card slot and two low-profile PCI slots, with an optional riser card that plugs into the PCIe and one PCI slot to convert the pair into horizontally mounted slots supporting full-height cards.

Balancing the Budget

OptiPlex 745 prices on the small-business section of Dell's site start at $661, with a limited-time offer currently cutting that to $536. Our configuration included a Core 2 Duo E6300 processor with two 1.86GHz cores and 2MB of Level 2 cache; 1GB of non-ECC DDR-2/667 memory; an 80GB, 7,200-rpm Samsung Serial ATA 3.0Gb/sec disk drive; a Toshiba/Samsung DVD±RW drive; the riser card and Radeon X1300 Pro with dual VGA outputs; a 13-format flash-memory-card reader; and a PCI card with two IEEE 1394 FireWire ports.

The result is no bargain, but not outrageous for a business desktop with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 encryption and authentication chip and array of other network management tools, as well as sufficiently future-proof hardware for years of productivity. With Dell's 17-inch 1707FPV LCD monitor, the total came to $1,672 discounted to $1,547.

Replacing the graphics card's dual-VGA cable with dual DVI outputs would add $10, as would ordering a Windows Vista Business upgrade for the preinstalled Win XP Professional. Specifying a 250GB instead of 80GB hard drive costs $38. Doubling system memory to 2GB is $139 (4GB of DDR-2/800 is $661).

Dell also touts the OptiPlex 745 to IT managers as an energy- and money-saver, combining the modest power consumption of the Core 2 Duo and its SpeedStep technology with other Energy Star items such as an extra-efficient power supply and a BIOS setting that defaults to system sleep mode after just 15 minutes of inactivity. All told, the company claims, the 745 trims some 40 percent off its predecessors' electric bills.

Pressing a latch pops the 4.5 by 15.7 by 13.9-inch desktop's top (well, side, since it's designed to stand vertically), revealing a crowded but not cluttered interior. The Core 2 Duo processor is, as usual, invisible under a hefty heat sink and the hood of a cooling fan -- the last, Dell notes, positioned to measure ambient as well as CPU temperature in case the 745 sees use in a warm environment such as a factory floor. The 280-watt power supply has a fan of its own, but we noticed neither -- the PC was commendably quiet in day-to-day operation.

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