Dell XPS 8940
The Last Bastion of Great Value Prebuilt Computers
Updated October 12, 2020
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.
And it is fast. The system as recommended (Order Code xd8940se05s) comes with an Intel 10900K 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 archive projects), the NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super, which will handle complex model display for years to come along with some light GPU rendering. Be aware that the NVIDIA RTX 3070 is nearing release, and would make a worthy upgrade for a similar price. If you can wait, do so. There is a two year warranty with on-site service . 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. The 10900K is worth the upgrade over the base model or the 10900 for its better guaranteed speeds, but the base model will work fine if you are very financially constrained. Stepping down to the 256 GB SSD is certainly possible but you’ll lose more than $50 of productivity unless you’re certain you can get by with fewer models stored locally. 32GB of RAM is fine for now, but 64GB will become beneficial in the next few years, so having the extra slots is valuable. 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 more high powered needs like VR, real-time rendering, and rendering locally on the desktop, the XPS line is not able to meet them. You need to move “up” to Dell’s Alienware Aurora system (Order Code wdryzr1041h). This machine’s 16-core CPU (about to be replaced by a new model for a similar price, again wait if you can), upgraded and just-released NVIDIA RTX 3090 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 $4,600 with a two-year warranty. To my mind, aesthetics aside, it’s well worth an additional price increase to switch to a boutique builder at this level. Check out Puget Systems and Boxx for great options.
It’s becoming harder to recommend the XPS and similar products. I still think that the XPS 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, all of which in turn will increase the length of the time the machine runs at peak performance. 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.