News Dell's next generation desktop PC

Yeah, but is "virtually junk" still junk if it is not really junk? Er...

 

I like the idea of this case. I really like the cartrage PC parts.

 

Looks like a nuke....

 

I think it's a competely horrible idea. PC parts are already standardized. Trying to create such a crazy new standard with virtually no advantages would be em, stupid. Trying to incorporate a connector for those 6 slots would require a ton of work. I doubt various manufacturers are going to creat a whole new standard for Dell. . .

The only advantage to this is to make it easier for the average consumer to swap his hard-drive or CD-ROM. But as the years go one, the interfaces will become obsolete- then what do you do? Multiple versions of this XCS system?

I hope PCs stay as they are and never get those cartridges. . .

L J

 

I don't know, it IS a concept and and it's NOT a beige box. Lets face it, outside of WMD and the Lian Li anniversary edition, case design hasn't come very far. Absoutly there have been a few exceptions, but most have been handmade mods, not production cases or even concepts. If those are indeed hot swapable drives, they are a good, perhaps better, implementation of an existing technology, one whth which Dell has lots of expierience in the server market. Imagine for a moment if hot swapable went mainstream and you could yank your secondary drive from your comouter and take it to wherever with you instead of transferring files to a USB drive or what-have-you.

In the end I think it's a neat idea and I hope they at least develop it some.

 

I can see your point, but did we not say this at one time about the AT format? The connectors would actually be easy to do. And interfaces change every 5 years or so: think of ISA slots being replaced by PCI, and now PCI-E; EIDE being replaced by SATA; Serial and Parallel being pushed out by USB. All this happening without having to significantly change the form factor -- although now there is BTX waiting in the wings. Personally l think PCs are really held back by a stubborn adherence to outdated form factors. Any new idea is a good one. And given Dell's huge market share, they would be influential enough to introduce one.

 

Well, SATA drives are naturally hot-swappaple and that could well be just some funky USB enclosure. I doubt there's really anything revoltionary in there, just an elongated PCB and a wacky wiring scheme.

 

It reminds me of those Droid Army landing craft in Star Wars: Episode 1. And I now have to go get the memory of Ep1 out of my mind.

*shudders*

Not at all impressed with this design...

 

To my understanding, BTX is almost dead. When PCI slots were intoduced in the traditional PC world- motherboard makers included some PCI, and some ISA slots. You wanted PCI? Just upgrade the motherboard. PCIe instead of AGP? Solved by a new motherboard. However, if the idea of cartridges for the GPU comes along, then you have to re-work the connections to those cartridges. That would require a new main-board, and most likely with a new version of the cartridge, you would probbably need a new case- you would at least have to replace the section of the case that routes all the connections. Would all the old cartridges be compatiable with the new case and cartridge scheme?

I think such a scheme would deffinately fail amongst PC geeks. Their modular system has made the case part of every hard-drive, disc-drive, and expansion card. The power-supply is no doubt a custom job- once you get that new higher power CPU and GPU you've got quite a problem to deal with. Want some new features on your motherboard? Now you need to buy a proprietay module which includes the CPU too.

I think a modular PC is a far too drastic change. disc-drives and hard-drives have been 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" for years now- but now they need to change so Consumer Joe can change his hard-drive easier? I see this an attempt to dumb down the world of PC parts, but parts are already almost perfect, and not hard to work with. Not long ago, my sister- who knows almost nothing about PC hard-ware, managed to install RAM on her own. I never thought I'd see her installing RAM, but I'm willing to bet she could learn all the other tricks in building a PC if she wanted to learn them. I don't believe PCs are too complicated for the average consumer to install more RAM or upgrade a hard-drive.

L J

 

It is a drastic change to the case and motherboard, although HDD and disc drives would barely have to change. l agree with most of your points and l do not see it catch on either, but the modular idea has been proposed in various different forms before. The idea is valid. Perhaps it just needs a design that forces a less radical departure from current component norms.

 

The problem with something like this is that PCB's are traditionaly flat. This leads to square components...in a tube. It really doesn't work unless you have a large enough diameter (such as G-Gnomes WMD did), and even then you waste a lot of space around the edges.

EDIT: As for "I think a modular PC is a far too drastic change", aren't PC's already modular?

 

OMG that looks wicked.

 

As for the modularity concept: the PCI-Express specification actually allows for connection over a variety of different media and is also, with supporting devices, hot-pluggable. Combine that with SATA's similar characteristics and some funky custom motherboard designs and this looks fairly plausible.

 

I think he means that a PC in which all components are the exact same size and are interchangeable would be too drastic a change. PC's aren't modular in a conventional sense, they just have parts that can be removed and replaced. But so does a car, so would you say you own a "modular" car?

 

it looks sw33t, but am I the only one that thinks it is a rip off of the WMD casemod with a dell logo on the front?

 

Apparently anythign that is a tube is a rip off of WMD now... notice the lack of LCDs, Resivoirs, Fancy endcaps. This is just a tube with a computer...
I like the idea of change, though not the cost of it. And im willing to bet that the only reason this wont take off is the cost of all the fancy parts.
I imagine though that dell fanboys might be willing to pay the price for it, but its a concept so far.
As for components the same size, what wont fit into a 5.25 bay? I would wager that the cartridges are all roughly a 5.25 size with a pcb for the fancy connector, so you could open it and put in your own drive if neccesary.
Mind you, this is all conceptual, and it looks nice a new. Not practical, but its a breath of fresh air, which is why we are part of this mod comunity right? Because we want to see new stuff and ocasionally creat it.

 

Don't like it.

Here's why. It is way to large for what it is (supposed to be) or way to advanced for what it is (supposed to be).

What do I mean? Well, if this is, given the styling, intended for consumers then having hot swap drives are really pointless. Many consumers are just barely able to handle USB drives, let alone swaping things like HD, DVD, etc. around.

And if this is targeted towards the advanced consumer, looks like a lot of wasted space for a bit of appearance. Or someone will mod or create their own case anyway.

Now if this is targeted to the server market then the drive cartridge idea makes sense however the design is pointless. Any real shop with more than 1 or 2 servers is ususally using 1U/2U based units all in a rack. In my racks I could see fitting at least 4 and maybe with some creative mounting or positioning even 6. Compare that to 2-3 dozen servers designed for the rack in the same space... and they already have hot swap (almost) everything.

Personally I think this is just Dell (or whoever's) equivilant of the really exotic stuff you see at the car shows.... an interesting concept but it'll never see the light of day. Now perhaps bits and pieces (like the cartridge drives) might but that would be it.