Dell OptiPlex 9010 Small Form Factor

• Pros Tools not required to open chassis and swap components. Solid multimedia performance.
• Cons Cramped interior. USB 3.0 ports aren't color-coded.
• Bottom Line With an easily accessible, IT-friendly chassis that can pop open without any tools, the Dell OptiPlex 9010 Small Form-Factor is a solid choice for businesses looking to save space without necessarily compromising performance, though more nimble systems in the same price range are readily available.

By Ahmer Kazi As its name suggests, the Dell OptiPlex 9010 Small Form Factor (9010 SFF) ($1,618 direct) falls toward the smaller side of Dell's OptiPlex 9010 commercial desktop lineup, landing between the Ultra Small Form-Factor and the full-tower desktop models. Despite its compact size, though, it packs solid hardware into an IT-friendly system that doesn't require any tools to open the chassis or swap components. For businesses looking to preserve space without necessarily compromising performance, it's a good option. That said, it's fairly pricey, and both similarly sized systems and better performers are readily available.

Design and Features
The 9010 SFF is housed in a compact chassis that measures 11.4 by 3.7 by 12.3 inches (HWD). Overall, it's not nearly as small as either the Polywell Poly i1000A-3770T or the Alienware X51 , but those systems are arguably too small, as neither can accommodate any internal expansion whatsoever. The 9010 SFF can be positioned vertically or horizontally, as demonstrated by the four rubber feet on its right side. The left side of the chassis, meanwhile, can easily be removed by pulling on the built-in handle?a convenient feature that lets your IT staff open the system up and swap out components without any tools.

The front panel is primarily covered by a gray plastic grille and features a slot-loading DVD burner, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks. The rear sports even more USB ports, with a pair of USB 3.0 ports alongside four USB 2.0 ports. Additionally, there's an RJ-45 port, a VGA port, three DisplayPorts, and two PS/2 ports. It's a healthy serving of ports, though it's worth nothing that two of the USB ports will be occupied by the included wired mouse and keyboard. On a related note, the 9010 SFF's USB 3.0 ports don't sport the familiar blue that's typically used to distinguish speedier USB 3.0 ports from their slower USB 2.0 counterparts. Instead, Dell has opted to place a barely noticeable "SS" (Super Speed) insignia above the USB 3.0 ports; it's not a major design flaw by any measure, but it will require your IT staff to do an extra bit of squinting when plugging in USB 3.0 peripherals.

As mentioned earlier, the real draw of the 9010 SFF is its ability to be upgraded and maintained without the use of any tools. Simply pull the handle on the left side of the chassis and you'll be greeted with an easily accessible?though densely packed?arrangement of hardware accented by easy-to-see light blue handles and grip points. Sliding out the optical drive allows for access to the 3.5-inch 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD that's encased in a metallic bay, which one removes by pulling on a circular blue lever. Removing the HDD reveals four DIMM slots on the 9010 SFF's motherboard, two of which are occupied by 4GB DDR3 SDRAM. Beneath the discrete 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7470 card is an empty half-height PCIe x16 slot, which can be outfitted with something along the lines of a low-powered graphics card or a WLAN 802.11n card after you swing out a plastic hinge that, in turn, allows you to pop out the metallic grille locked into the chassis. Overall, the 9010 SFF is remarkably easy to service and maintain despite its somewhat cramped interior.

Performance

The 9010 SFF performed admirably against other small form-factor desktops, though it was handily outclassed by the larger enterprise-class HP Z220 CMT Workstation nearly across the board. Its PCMark 7 score of 2,980 landed at the bottom of the pack, coming within striking distance of the Alienware X51 (3,055 points) but trailed the rest of its peers, including the Shuttle X6100 (4,514 points). On the other hand, the 9010 SFF led the pack in our multimedia benchmark tests. It completed our Handbrake video encoding test in a brief 1 minute 4 seconds, edging past both the HP Z220 (1:05) and the Poly i1000A-3770T (1:11) by a thin margin. Likewise, it completed our Photoshop CS5 in 2 minutes 48 seconds, breezing past the Shuttle X6100 (3:00) and the Alienware X51 (3:36) without breaking a sweat. And while the 9010 SFF's Cinebench R11.5 score of 7.48 points fell a little short of the HP Z220 (7.55), it nonetheless muscled past the rest of the group, especially the Shuttle X6100 (5.68) as well as the Alienware X51 (4.91).

Despite its discrete 1GB AMD Radeon HP 7470 GPU, the 9010 SFF had difficulty breaching the 30 frames per second (fps) playability barrier in our gaming tests. To nobody's surprise, the X51 dominated the group in this arena, leaving the rest of the group gasping for air. In our Crysis benchmark tests, the 9010 SFF's performance (40 frames per second or fps in medium quality at 1,280-by-720 resolution; 4fps in high quality at 1,920-by-1,080 resolution) fell way below that of other systems, especially the HP Z220 (84fps and 11fps, respectively) and, to a more pronounced extent, the class-leading X51 (88fps and 22fps, respectively). Similarly, the 9010 SFF struggled in our Lost Planet 2 benchmark tests (16fps in middle quality at 1,280-by-720 resolution; 4fps in high quality at 1,920-by-1,080 resolution), missing the Poly i1000A-3770T by a narrow margin (18fps and 5fps, respectively) while, once again, being thoroughly outgunned by the X51 (86fps and 35fps, respectively). As far as 3D rendering goes, the 9010 SFF's 3DMark 11 scores (1,094 in Entry mode, 185 in Extreme mode) came close to that of the Poly i1000A-3770T (1,200 and 201, respectively), but, unsurprisingly, fell below both the HP Z220 (3,097 and 570, respectively) and the Alienware X51 (5,184 and 1,059, respectively).

Overall, the Dell OptiPlex 9010 Small Form-Factor is a good system whose shortcomings are tempered by its remarkable accessibility and expandability despite its compact profile. It doesn't perform with unbridled power like some of its peers, but its IT-friendly design makes it an appealing choice for businesses. Still, its high price tag is difficult to justify in the face of more nimble competitors, and, moreover, businesses that are purely interested in sheer computing power would be better off with our current Editors' Choice for single-processor workstations, the HP Z220 CMT Workstation.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Dell OptiPlex 9010 Small Form-Factor with several other desktops side by side.

More desktop reviews:
??? Dell OptiPlex 9010 Small Form Factor
??? Toshiba LX835-D3230
??? Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p Tiny
??? Vizio 27-inch All-in-One PC (CA27-A1)
??? HP Z220 CMT Workstation
?? more

By Ahmer Kazi

Ahmer Kazi is a junior analyst for the PCMag Hardware team. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Television and Film from St. John's University, where he also minored in English. He additionally holds a Juris...

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