Dell XPS Desktop 8950

Still some issues, but significantly better than the Dell XPS8940 and it was the best value for money at the time – My Model: XPS8950 Intel 12th Gen i7-12700K 16GB DDR5 and Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 Graphics Note: The K on the end of "i7-12700K" is very important! Dell XPS desktops without it apparently come with a lesser cooling system! Two months in and I am actually quite happy with my XPS8950. The previous Dell model (XPS 8940 - which I also own) was a bit of an epic fail on many counts especially with things like cooling which effectively crippled performance. This model has fixed a number of the issues with the previous design.

Despite vowing never to buy Dell again after the disaster of the XPS8940. With the 30% off perma-sale that Dell run it would have cost about $1000 more to buy the components separately and due to the 2021-22 worldwide chip shortage there were supply problems. I needed a replacement computer quickly as my main work computer died suddenly so I was left with little choice! Note: Without the "30% off" it is probably not worth the money. Overview ---------- I have been using this system for 2 months now and am generally happy with it but my main problem is it needs more memory (at least 32gb) and I don't currently have $380 (or $684 if purchased as 2x16GB from Dell) to kit it out! Also putting a Bronze rated power supply in sucks. The cost of putting a decent energy efficient supply in is at most an extra $40 which I would have been happy to pay!

Below is a more detailed breakdown of in my opinion the important, good and bad points followed by the Novabench results:

Important ------------ - If you buy one of these make sure it is the "K" version of the processor (eg i7-12700K) or the cooling that will be provided will be useless and you will be plagued by performance issues. - Make sure you buy it in a 'Sale' Dell Desktops are never more than a few days from a 'sale'. 30% to 35% makes it worthwhile. Otherwise you are buying a partially crippled computer for the same price you could buy the bits elsewhere. (If it is not on sale try asking the sales team for a discount.) - I would recommend contacting the sales team via their web page chat or you could end up waiting a while for your machine to arrive.

Good Points ("K" cpu specific) ------------- - It arrived when the sales dude said it would (Within a week) - It has an Intel 12th Gen i7-12700K by all accounts a good processor. - Overall system performance is a significant improvement over previous XPS8940 and in comparison to similar builds as per free 3rd party benchmark software. - The case has a good size front and rear fan and and decent ventilation at the front. (Very much missing from the previous XPS8940) - The Cooling solution (on the 'K' version) keeps the processor below thermal throttling for most of my heavy usage (Blender 3d). - The K series comes with a chunky CPU cooler. (The other ones do not!) which while not perfect does keep the temperatures in reasonable check. - DUAL channel memory 16 gigs (DDR5 8gb x2) Though 2x16gb would have been better. - Very quiet when not doing heavy work and not too bad even when throttled up. - The Bloatware and McAfee was really easy to uninstall unlike the XPS8940 where it kept re-appearing everytime I did an update! - The Dell packaging is really good and ensures it makes it to you undamaged. - The front IO is good - The price 30% off in the sale it was about $1000 cheaper than anything I could find elsewhere and performs well compared to similar systems in the benchmark tests I ran. - They seem to have fixed the issues with the computer crashing in sleep mode. - It is easy to open up the case and does doing so does not void the warranty!

Room for improvement -------------------------- - Dell use non standard sized components (e.g Motherboard, PSU, Case) to ensure that they can not be reused or even easily replaced. This is extremely irritating as it means that this computer will be ewaste once the first of component reaches end of life. - As with all recent Dell Desktops the memory (DDR5) seems to be right at the lowest end of budget memory and compatibility issues mean that using 3rd party memory is risky/costly if it does not work. Note: It is possible to buy a memory upgrade from Dell but the price tag is often more than double that of even decent 3rd party memory. - Somehow IMHO Dell have managed to make a case that is even more ugly than the XPS 8940 case! It doesn't even look good in the pictures! - Only 16GB memory! It would be nice to have 32Gigs memory in 2x16gb rather than just 16gigs! The US versions ALL have 32Gigs or more! - The 2TB mechanical disk drive sounds like it is out of the 1980s when in use (whirs and clicks). (Obviously the SDD boot drive is silent) - Bronze power supply in 2023! For the sake of $30-$40 please FFS just put a gold or platinum supply in! - Windows 11 is very buggy at the moment and I am having issues - Can't really blame Dell for that one though! - Dell upgrades show the MF Part number for the ram to be "SNP29NJ4C/8G" (Dell branded made by ???) whereas the memory actually fitted to my Dell is "HMCG66MEBUA081N AA" made by SK hynix which may or may not be the same thing. It is generally recommended to fit the exact same ram accross the board and this upgrade MAY in fact be the same. It is undoubtedly compatible but compatible doesn't mean it won't cause a perfomance hit!

Benchmark ------------- Note: Novabench is a free (for non-pro use) benchmarking app. I am not affiliated with them in any way. I also have no idea how they come up with their numbers!

Novabench on this PC XPS8950 12th Gen i7-12700k with RTX3060 (novabench.com/view/2520681) Overall 4604 CPU: 2487 Ram: 277 (2x8gb DDR5 but novabench reports DDR4) Graphics: 1478 (This performs well compared to other RTX3060s on Novabench I'm assuming this is due to XPS8950 motherboard using PCI-E v4 rather than version 3 which is what the XPS8940 uses!?) Disk: 353

Novabench on previous model XPS8940 11th Gen i7-11700k with RTX3070 (novabench.com/view/2380400) Overall 3916 CPU: 2070 Ram: 271 (2x8gb DDR4) Graphics: 1452 (Theoretically the RTX3070 is more powerful than RTX3060. The lower score may be due to older version of PCI Express used on the XPS8940 motherboard rather than the graphics card performance) Disk: 123