All-in-Ones Finally Grow Up, With Fast Graphics, SSDs, and CPUs

MojoKid writes "Historically, all-in-one desktop systems like the iMac, HP's TouchSmart and similar designs that incorporate a full system on the backside of a monitor, haven't offered performance that was competitive to their full-sized desktop counterparts. Part of the reason is that many of these systems are comprised of low power notebook platform PC components inside thin chassis designs with minimal airflow. However, as mobile platforms have become more powerful, so has the all-in-one PC. Dell's recently launched XPS 27 Touch, with Intel's Haswell mobile processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M on board, is an example of a new breed of AIO hitting the market now. The system is based on a 27-inch panel with 2TB of storage, a 32GB SSD cache drive, 8GB of RAM and performance in the benchmarks that keeps pace with average midrange full-sized desktops. You can even game on the machine with frame rates at the panel's 1080p native resolution with medium to high image quality. It's almost like the all-in-one finally grew up."

Comments

What fud

[Billly Gates]

The imac had decent specs for years.

The fact is most pcs sold have value oriented junk as only workstations and alienware bother with nice components. Most enthusiasts and gamers build their systens as a result.

Re: What fud

[Anonymous Coward]

true, but as this post is obviously a dell commercial, truth doesn't matter too much

Re:What fud

[Immerman]

As a rule, yes. Basically bigger system = better cooling. Airflow, heat exchangers, etc are all very much volume dependent.

Generally speaking (and oversimplified) if you can halve the power consumption (=heat generation) of the CPU, GPU, etc. then you have two options:
1) Smaller - halve the capacity of the cooling system, roughly halving the minimum volume of the device.
2) Faster - double the number or power of chips, roughly doubling the performance at the same minimum device volume.

Of course if your desktop system uses a standard full-sized case and motherboard then there's probably lots of "wasted" space that can be trimmed - basically trading expandability and ease of maintenance for a more compact form factor. Once you're down to an compact motherboard and case though you can't really get much smaller without sacrificing cooling capacity. You could push things a little farther by doing away with upgradable, standards-compliant components in favor of custom-engineered solutions, but that increases costs and probably isn't worth it in most applications - once the cooling system becomes a major portion of the volume your options for further size reductions start being severely limited.

Re: What fud

[tverbeek]

Considering that the iMacs have been far and away the best-selling AIOs on the market pretty much since the first iMac was introduced, calling it a "minor exception" seems like a bit of tunnel vision. While they've never been the cutting-edge powerhouses that the Power Mac/Mac Pro have usually been, the iMac line has always included configurations with very respectable "desktop-grade" specs, especially as of the dates when new models are released. (The current line-up is about a year old, which might explain why it seems so "last year".) I know plenty of visual-arts professionals who've used iMacs as their primary work machines for years, a phenomenon that has contributed to the persistent (but evidently incorrect) rumors that Apple was abandoning the Mac Pro line as superfluous.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that lab full of 2 year old existing Dell AOIs we have running liquid dynamics simulation software with tons of RAM and high-end Core i7s is just my imagination. This is a Dell advertisement in disguise under the cover of linking to a third party review. Products like this come out every week, why aren't they here? They're just as relevant as this thing.

Not a story.

[redback]

This is an advert.