Dell XPS 8940 Desktop

Do not buy! Had to amend review from 4 to 1 star due to unresolvable multiple issues – For benchmarks see end of this review! (Novabench, Cinebench, OctaneBench and Blender Benchmark) Dell XPS 8940 model: SMHDX894005AU Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11700K (8-Core, 16M Cache, 3.6GHz to 5.0GHz) Mem: 16GB (2x8GB dual channel mode) Graphics: NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) RTX 3070(TM) 8GB GDDR6 Note: Benchmarks (at bottom) were typically done from cold. Since using this computer I have had numerous problems and Dell Warranty is not worth the email it is written on! The GPU benchmarks still stand - the OEM DELL RTX 3070 in this computer is great and performs well. But it is the only component that does!

After an hour of use the ambient temperature of the CPU crept up to around 100 degrees c this causes massive throttling making the CPU slower than my 10 year old AMD Athlon CPU!!! This seems to be caused by massively inadequate cooling. I was unable to speak to anyone at Dell who was not in sales or who didn't immediately want to transfer me despite spending over 2 hours trying to contact them. The Bloatware on the system kept reinstalling its self on the system and I was advised on the Dell forums that the best way to get rid of it would be to install a fresh copy of Windows from the MS website. I currently don't have time for this. It did finally uninstall on the 8th attempt but only after I upgraded the system as far as it would go. Unfortunately this is not as far as Windows update goes and it would seem the reason that the bloatware is not reinstalling its self is that it has broken Windows. As I just get errors when I try to update windows! Also the computer crashes if it goes into sleep mode! This it means that you either have to run it in high power mode or lose all your work if you go off and make a coffee!

Ultimately while it seems like a good deal on paper and early benchmarks (if you can get it in the sale). It works out as a terrible deal as the performance hit after about an hour of use makes it pretty unusable for anything more than browsing the web.

There is no way to replace the stock cooler as the mounting is not standard. I am going to try to install a case intake fan and a bigger exhaust fan but currently don't have time to fiddle around with this.

Original review: ----------------- Title: Benchmarks Below! A great deal if you can get one in a sale with 25% or more off.

So I was a little concerned by how many negative reviews Dell prebuilt desktops get, especially when it comes to the professional reviews on Youtube, etc, however, my experience has been quite different to theirs and I have been generally impressed by most aspects of my new computer. At the moment the issues/problems do not outweigh the cost savings over the EOFY sale price of this system (25% off). If I had built this machine myself from parts it would have cost well over 30% more for a similar spec and that is if I could have even got all of the parts!

Good Points: ======== (Note originally tested from cold - big problems happen if you actually want to use this pc for more than an hour!) - It is compact and would be great for students or if space is a premium - In Cinebench it rates somewhere between a mid and high end gaming rig and it should (as of mid 2021) be able to run most modern games pretty well in high detail at 1080p (and possibly above). - For 3D work it is pretty great and more than powerful to run as a blender workstation running at 4k or even 8k display resolutions. - The price in the sale (25% off) was unbeatable compared to building a similarly specked machine using self-sourced parts. - If in stock, delivery is pretty quick. Mine arrived in 3business days. (Note: If not in stock they estimate about a month!) - The Dell version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 which seems to benchmark in the upper middle of the pack with Blender Benchmark (when compared with other RTX 3070 cards). - Other models of the XPS 8940 come with the GTX 1660S, RTX 3060ti. Note: I have NOT used/tried these systems so I can not evaluate them. - If you need a high end graphics card like the GTX 1660 super, RTX 3060ti or the RTX 3070 then this is probably going to be one of the cheapest ways to get one. While the GTX 1660 apparently (according to other reviews) has poor cooling the Dell version of the RTX 3060ti and the RTX 3070 seems to be adequate for the job. I have run sustained benchmarks on my RTX 3070 without any cooling problems. - The system as a whole benchmarks pretty well given the cooling issues - Price vs benchmark performance also appears to be pretty good when on sale with 25%+ off their normal ”online price” - The cable management is excellent - There is room to put additional internal drives and the cables have already been run to the right location. - It is easy to open up the case so you can check that everything is as it should be - They did not make any mistakes in the configuration of my system Eg ram all in correct slots, etc. (This has been a big complaint in other reviews) - Dual channel memory 2x8G dimms - The CPU voltage regulators/mosfets on the motherboard now has a heatsink on them (or at least mine does). Lack of a heatsink was identified as a problem by pro Youtube reviewers so Dell seem to have listened. {Not all of them are covered!!!!} - There are a few spare PCI-E slots available for further upgrades. - On the front there are 3 x USB 3.1 (type A) and 1xUSB3.1 (Type C). There is also an SD card reader and a standard headphone socket. - It is possible to open the case without voiding the warranty. This is a biggy for me as the first thing I wanted to do was take a look under the hood! - The motherboard has onboard graphics which means you can transfer the 3D card to a different system if you only need to do 2D work.

Bad points and room for improvement: ========================== - During normal use after an hour CPU temp often reaches 100C causing massive throttling (makining it run slower than my 10 year old amd processor) - Bloatware keeps re-installing its self despite the fact I have uninstalled it 5 times now with increasing hostility! This is pretty bad! If I can't get rid of this soon I am going to drop it another star. - Airflow is a big issue. They have not put enough/big enough fans in this system. Seriously what would it cost to have installed a 120mm fan rather than an 80mm fan. Also a front fan would have been a good idea in a system that can draw over 400W from the CPU and GPU alone! The CPU throttles almost immediately under 100% load. This affected its performance on many benchmarks. (This was observed in CPUID) - Sleep mode = Crash+Slow reboot! The sleep function does not work. If you put the computer to sleep (or the power settings put it to sleep after 30) it does not come back from sleep losing any work you had open. I suspect that the power supply does not have the grunt to keep it alive in sleep mode?! This is very annoying! - The mechanical drive HDD (it contains a ssd and a mechanical drive) is rubbish. It clicks and whirs loudly and sounds like the computer I had in the early 90s! (I don’t like retro!) Also last night it developed its first bad sector after only 3 days!!! - The base/stock versions of these systems only come with 16Gb of memory. In a system of this level, it should come with a minimum of 32Gb. - The motherboard seems to be crippling the memory speed down to 2.933Ghz despite the fact the installed memory is 3.2Ghz. This may also be contributing to the slightly lower CPU benchmarks. - Memory upgrades with Dell are ludicrously expensive. 2x additional 8Gig strips of Dell generic DDR4 "2933" memory (DDR4 3200 clocked down) costs as much as 4x16Gig strips of Branded DDR4 3200! - The estimated build times for models that are not “in stock for quick delivery” is over a month! I wanted a version a slightly less powerful graphics card but my wife needs the computer it in the next few weeks so we had to go with the $400 more expensive model that was currently in stock. On the plus note I scored an RTX 3070 rather a GTX 1660 for, ahem, non-business use! - Do not be fooled into buying 'discounted' peripherals at the same time without first doing a thorough price check elsewhere (even on dells own site). They claim to be giving big discounts eg 40% off if you buy peripherals at the same time but many of the ‘non-discounted’ prices seem to be either inaccurate or down right fictional when compared to the exact same item being sold separately on Dell’s own website! Eg. (at time of writing) a Dell 27" monitor (P2721Q) claims a 49% discount from $1,299 to $662.49 if brought with an XPS 8940 - but separately on Dell’s website they claim the online non-sale price of this monitor as $695 (currently discounted to $674). So still cheaper but not nearly the 49% mark down they are claiming and also not $599 which is what the same monitor is selling (in stock) from non-Dell retail stores in NSW and Vic. - While the case looks okay from a distance, up close it is butt-ugly. The front looks and feels as cheap and plastic-fantastic as the e-waste peripherals (or at least the bottom half does), however, I will take functionality over looks anytime. - The mesh thing going on at the front bottom is going to have a dust beard in 6 months. It will require vacuuming as it is impossible to wipe down. - Premium Support is useless if you can't actually ever get hold of support. I had a problem with my initial order and tried but failed several times to get through to customer care after more than an hour on the phone. Thankfully, someone in the sales team was actually able to help me out. - The included keyboard, mouse and dvd drive are little more than e-waste out of the box. While I doubt they make any difference to the price, there should be a way of just saying ‘please don’t include them’. - The preinstalled bloatware (useless/unwanted software and trials of things you don’t want) is a substantial problem and has a significant impact on system performance out of the box. It takes a while to uninstall and it also has a habit of reinstalling its-self later on!!! I have had to uninstall the 'MyDell' software 3 times now though most of the rest of it has gone. - The windows image is pretty out of date and takes a while to update also the proper Nvidia drivers (downloaded from Nvidia) work a lot better than whatever comes pre-installed I saw a 40% performance drop in 3D rendering using the Cuda cores on the RTX 3070 with the pre-installed drivers. Optix didn’t work at all! This was fixed by simply installing the latest Nvidia drivers via Nvidia experience. - I really don't want MacAfee Antivirus on my system. I am assuming the 1year licence was was actually free in the hope that people renew it? Microsoft Windows 10 comes with built in Antivirus software that is actually pretty good! - At time of purchase this system was not available (from Dell) with just the on board graphics card. - I don't seem to be able to get any fan speeds in software!? Not sure if this one is Dells fault.

The Elephant in the room: ================= - The GeForce RTX 3070 - This is a high-end gaming card and is overkill for most 3D graphics use, however, it was the only prebuilt desktop they had in stock in the sale. Some enterprising scalpers realised that they could make $1000+ taking the graphics cards out of these systems and selling the bits separately on ebay! Though I don't know if it is worse than the fact that thousands of these systems will never do anything more that run MS Office while there are people paying scalper prices for these cards!

Benchmarks. ======== Note: I am not a pro! These have been done to the best of my ability using the various free benchmark tools available. These are the results using the machine I received. Results may/will vary from machine to machine and Dell may modify hardware such as motherboard, cooling, etc causing very different results. Note 2: This review has been revised. CPU tests were done from cold. After an hour of normal use (3d design in Blender) is when the problems begin to kick in. CPU temp hits 100C then throttles until temp gets back to 80C this causes terrible performance and can make the system nearly unusable.

Novabench 4.0.9 (whole system test): ----------------------------------------- - Overall score: 3916 - Relative performance: CPU Percentile = 75th, GPU Percentile = 64th - Compared to Mid-level Gaming PC (2021) Overall score: 55% better, CPU 107% better, 3D 45% better - See https://novabench.com/view/2380400 for full benchmark results

CineBench R23.200 (CPU test): --------------------------------- - System CPU: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11700K (8C/16T) – Higher score is better - Single Core Test: 1591 - Multi Core Test: 13652 - Single Core 15min Throttle test: 1589 (No throttling observed. In HWmonitor) - Multi Core 15min Throttle test: 12879 - Multi Core Test with bigass desk fan blowing through the front: 13951

Note: Using CPUID HWMonitor I was able to detect the system throttling within seconds of reaching 100% on all cores. When I increased the cooling by blowing air into the system it took a lot longer to start throttling. A front fan (no room) and a better exhaust fan would probably increase the performance of this system significantly in load testing!

Octane Bench Score (2020.2.3) (3D card test): -------------------------------------------------- - Card: Dell XPS 8940 - RTX 3070: - Overall score: 414.52 (Higher = Better) Comparison Scores from website (see https://render.otoy.com/octanebench) - GTX1650s* Average = 102 Median = 94 - GTX1660ti* Average = 128 Median = 135 - RTX3060 Average = 289 Median = 323 - RTX3060ti* Average = 371 Median = 376 - RTX3070* Average = 399 Median = 399 (Dell RTX3070 = 415) - RTX3070ti Average = 451 Median = 451 - RTX3080 Average = 459 Median = 459 * Available as an option for the Dell XPS 8940 at time of writing 26/06/21

Blender Benchmark 2.92 (CPU and GPU 3D Rendering test): ----------------------------------------------------------------- I ran these tests but I don’t have the time to tidy up the data, so sorry, no numbers! - The 3D scores for GPU Cuda and Optix were roughly middle to top of the pack for the RTX 3070 - The CPU scores (as they were sustained/throttled) were about 20% worse than other systems (based on open data). This is most likely due to inadequate cooling/ventilation. Watching HW monitor there was some serious CPU throttling going on from the getgo.