Engadget has scored some information and pictures of Dell's upcoming XPS 420 desktop system and we can't say that we think it's very nice or cool looking. It's a fairly black square of plastic with silver coloured side panels.

However, the hardware spec's is what matters and in this case the XPS 420 shouldn't dissapoint too much. It's based on the upcoming Intel X38 chipset and it will feature a Core 2 Extreme, Quad or Duo CPU, depending on how deep pockets you have.

Oddly enough it seems like Dell has decided on a DDR2 route here and the XPS 420 will be fitted with up to 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory. There's no mentione of graphics card and we can't really make out what's in the picture, but it looks like an 8600-series card.

Two features that stands out is the Dell Xcelerator, which is a dedicated media co-processor that's used for transcoding video and it's meant to reduce the time it takes to encode a two hour HD movie by half.

Secondly, Dell has fitted a top mounted SideShow display to the XPS 420, which we have to say seems like a pointless addition to a gaming system. Although according to the information in Engadget, Dell has added hardware system monitoring features, which might just make it worthwhile.

Check out Engadget for a couple of pictures and some more info here