Difference in Dell desktops?

[Charlie98]

We are going to buy my wife's folks a Dell 660 desktop for Christmas (to replace their aging AMD dinosaur...) MicroCenter has 2 Pentium G2020-powered units, one is a 'business' unit in, more or less, a standard desktop-sized case, and a 'student' unit in a smaller case (with a vertically oriented optical drive.) Judging from the spotty specs offered on MC's site, they are basically the same thing... the only difference is the bigger 'business' model has W7 Pro vs W7 Home for the other... and of course, the case size.... and a $50 price difference.

Does anyone have experience with the smaller form Dells? I'm guessing the mobo is the same, but obviously it has a smaller form PSU. I'm just wondering about the durability of the smaller unit... this thing needs to be 100% solid for the in-laws... or it's my head on a platter. Or do I spend the $50 and get the standard desktop with W7Pro?

For reference:

Smaller Dell

Business Dell

 

[SithSolo1]

Both units will work fine but why not just buy direct from dell? http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-660s/pd.aspx?~ck=mn

Even the $299 unit will be fine for an older couple.

Also you are pretty much on the money as far as the differences: both will be running mATX mother boards but the larger case will come with a larger power supply and supports full size expansion cards vs the half-height cards of the smaller case. They won't need more than Win 7 home/ Windows 8 basic

 

[Charlie98]

Both units will work fine but why not just buy direct from dell?

...because the unit at MC is a better deal... W7 (which I have and understand, because I will be the one setting it up and troubleshooting it...) and a 1TB hard drive (which I will swap out for a 256GB SSD and reload with a clean install of W7.) The units from Dell have W8 on them and 500GB drives.

Thanks for the heads up, though... I hadn't thought about looking at Dell's site. Doh. But that confirms what I thought.