Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook Review – 2012 Version

Inside the Dell XPS14 Ultrabook

Popping the back of the Dell XPS14 off with our trusty crowbar, we can see that most of the inside is consumed by the battery pack. Just in front of the batter pack we can see the sound bar. While there aren’t any identifying marks to let us know who makes the speakers, they do give out nice loud and clear sound.

The battery pack inside the Dell XPS14 Ultrabook is a Lithium-polymer batter rated at 69Wh and carries the part number 4RXFK.

The Dell uses an Intel Centrino Advanced-N wireless adapter (p/n 6235ANHMW)in a mini-PCIe slot.

This is a little interesting. there is only one SODIMM slot inside the Dell XPS14 Ultrabook! This means that we are going to be limited to single channel memory which can hurt our overall system performance.

The heatsink inside the Dell XPS14 utilizes a pair of heat pipes to draw heat away from the Intel Core i7 3517U and the Intel HM77 chipset.

The Dell XPS14 Ultrabook uses Intel Smart Response Technology for the storage system. The bulk of the storage can be found in the Seagate ST500LT012 2.5″ 500GB hard drive above.

The system cache is accomplished with a Samsung PM830 mSATA 32GB SSD. The Samsung PM830 mSATA SSD is a SATA III 6Gbps and is rated for read speeds as fast as 500MB/s and write speeds of 400MB/s. The PM830 mSATA SSD is available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB options, just in case you want to upgrade down the road.