Dell XPS 8940 Tower
The Last Bastion of Great Value Prebuilt Computers
Prebuilt PC towers from large vendors are not exciting products. You will not find many reviews for these computers on YouTube. The entire category has been nearly completely eroded by laptops, smartphones, and iPads. There isn’t really a reason these days for the average consumer to buy a desktop PC. For the remaining use cases, expensive desktop workstations and very inexpensively assembled, warranty-less computers coming directly from factories in Asia have taken most of the remaining market. The Dell XPS 8940 is an outlier. Cheaper than a boutique builder, but with onsite warranty support available, it is the easiest way to get high speed components at a low price.
The inoffensive, if messy, tower is also available in white.
And it is fast. The system as recommended (Order Code xd8940se05s) comes with an Intel 10900 10-core processor, 32GB of RAM with 2 free slots for a future upgrade, a fast 512GB SSD for at least two year’s worth of active projects and a bonus 2TB storage drive (enough for years of photos and projects), the NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super, which will handle complex model display for years to come along with some light GPU rendering, and a two year warranty with on-site service available. An upgrade to a four-year warranty runs $150, which I would suggest if your firm is generally slow to adopt new tech like realtime rendering. I recommend the 10900 over the 10900K since the cooling system isn’t really up to the task to cooling the overclocking capable 10900K. The essential value proposition is. that you’re saving a few hundred dollars over building this PC yourself, and then you’re paying a little extra for a four-year on-site one-stop-shop warranty - a worthy tradeoff for almost every firm.
If you have extremely high powered needs, you need to move “up” to Dell’s Alienware Aurora system (Order Code wdryzr1050). This machine’s 16-core CPU, upgraded 2080Ti GPU, and more robust power delivery and cooling system, will be a step up for demanding Revit models, VR walkthroughs, and even more complex quick renders. The price, however, also jumps - to $3,200 with a two-year warranty. To my mind, aesthetics aside, it’s well worth the 25% jump in price to switch to a boutique builder at this level. Check out Puget SystemsPuget Systems, and Boxx for great options.
At the same time, it’s becoming harder to recommend the XPS. I still think that it proves itself with its price, thoughtful and compact design, and speedy components. However, as the pace of innovation in the computer industry in general slows down, it makes more sense to keep computers for a longer time. If you’re keeping a computer for a longer time than in the past, then it makes sense to spend a little bit more to get higher build quality, more flexible future upgrades, and better engineered cooling. These are the main downsides of the Dell. They make their money by using an adequate but cheap motherboard, preventing overclocking and limiting graphics upgrade options. The power supply is proprietary so you can’t replace a bad unit, and prebuilt units typically fare less well longterm than retail units. The small case offers some amount of cooling but not as much as a boutique builder will provide. This will potentially slow your long renders down as the system heats up too hot to keep running at full tilt.
In the end, while higher quality options exist, it’s hard to make the argument, dollar-to-dollar, that you’re getting enough more value to justify the higher cost.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/dell-xps-desktop-2020/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-refreshes-xps-desktop-pc-with-updated-specs-design/