Customer Ratings & Reviews

Anything is better than what I was using before I bought my XPS 8960, so naturally I'm happy with my new computer, but I wanted more speed and video-processing power since this will probably be my last computer. (I'm old). The XPS 8960 is all I could afford. The bottom line is that the XPS 8960 is a good compromise.

The Dell XPS 8960, on paper, is a reasonably well spec'd machine. With an i17 13th Gen, 16Gb Memory and 512 NVMe+2TB Harddisk and even DDR5 RAM but Dell paired the 8960 with a RTX3050. What this all means is for every day work and school use, this PC is amazing - fast, responsive, and everything you would need for standard home multimedia tasks. Fire up a game, like Fortnite though, and the XPS 8960 maxes out FPS unless you drop down to low. The TLDR; is if you want a good PC for home and office and the occasional sneaky game, the XPS8960 is very good. If you are more concerned with gaming, you may want to consider a PC with a better graphics card. In my tests. General Benchmarks Gaming 88% Desktop 116% Workstation at 100% (with the graphics card the main issue) Gaming Benchmarks (Fortnite) Fortnite @ 1440p, max 20 fps, high 30 fps, medium 35 fps, low 45-50 fps Fortnite @ 1080p, max 30 fps, high 45 fps, medium 50 fps. low 80 fps What this all means? Those specs are mean you really need to be gaming at 1080p on low to get enjoyable game play. Even then, the XPS 8960 fans run loud. Imagine your car AC on high and you can imagine the sound. When not gaming, the XPS 8960 does run quiet. All the internal cooling is fans (no water) and popping open the case (which was easy) there's plenty of scope for upgrades if you want to do so (see photos). Although the power supply may not be ideal if you want to upgrade the graphics card. There are spare slots for another mechanical hard drive and another NVMe. Good to know What is good about the XPS 8960 is you get plenty of ports including a front SD card, 3x USB A, 1x USB C, and a headphone jack. Rear ports are also generous, with more than enough USB A and C ports + ethernet + audio ports. You also get Dell's warranty and driver support (there were BIOS updates on my first setup). Who is the XPS 8960 good for? If you are a home/office PC user not comfortable building your own PC, want warranty and support, and gaming is "nice to have" but not "core. The Dell XPS 8960 is a good mid-to-low-range gaming PC. If you are serious about gaming, this is probably not the PC for you. Tips: Dell install English, French and Spanish versions of Office and Teams out of the box. You can free up space on the NVMe by removing the versions you don't need. There's no real bloat on the default install, but I would recommend uninstalling McAffee.

This is my fourth Dell XPS computer. All but one have been high performance desktop towers which have never caused disappointment, and even the XPS laptop was a powerful decent machine. The Dell XPS 8960 is a compact mid tower packaged in a 14.7”H by 6.8”W x 16.8”D case. My last XPS case was manufactured in more plastic as compared to the aluminum used in this design. I like this one much better. For the most part the tower arrangement provides for some customization of the components configured. I have always used the XPS for creating and primarily computerized drafting and design. Every XPS that I have owned has been plenty powerful to handle the specification of most design software and all of the high -end software design products used in the design/architectural/engineering fields. The Dell XPS 8960 is powerful enough for gaming and almost equipped with what is needed for some serious gaming. The Intel i7 core is plenty strong enough for design software, but the better gaming computers are usually equipped with the Intel i9. Dell always puts a great graphic card in their XPS models. The Dell XPS 8960 is equipped with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 which has been designed with the graphics performance needed to more than adequately handle the latest games. It also has 16 GB of memory, a 512 SSD and a 2 TB HDD. I will probably end up replacing the 512 SSD with at least a 1 TB like I did with my last XPS because windows downloads, software updates, etc. take more and more space and even if you try to direct all the data to the 2 TB HDD, the SSD drive tends to become overloaded. This computer also has plenty of ports, etc. On the front of the sleek and professional looking case is an SD reader, a headset jack, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2. The USB-C is designed to charge a device even when the computer is powered off. I do miss the DVD+/-RW drive that I have always had before in my XPS computers. I still use that quite often even though many computers are starting to leave it out. It is an option in the configuration so I believe that I can still install one if I find that I cannot live without it. External DVD players are usually just much slower. The rear of the computer tower also has many ports. There are two additional USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, another USB-C Gen 2 x 2 port of twice the speed of the one on the front of the case, two more USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet connection, and a surround audio jack. Included within the case are the Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless antennas . The graphics card has one HDMI and three DisplayPort video outputs. Upgrading is limited to two DIMM slots that will handle a total of 64GB of RAM and two storage drive slots. The computer comes with a basic wired keyboard and mouse. I cannot give the mouse very much praise, but the keyboard does include the numeric keys on the right and is designed to be perfect for comfortable speed typing. It is ergonomic enough that it really is not a bad keyboard. The computer starts up and runs like a refined product. The graphics and speed are pleasantly very good, and the computer has the power for complex computations needed for production with creative software. I definitely recommend this product. For a Microsoft Windows based computer, I have never been sorry that I owned an XPS to get the work done that I like to do.

One of my favorite desktops to set up. Many HDMI ports, has at least one USB-C and many USB 2 ports. When you flash the bios or other dell drivers - you will hear the power of this machine.

The Dell XPS 8960 computer is a compact mid-tower desktop with a sleek but “mild mannered” style and excellent build quality. But underneath it’s unassuming good looks is a powerhouse brought to you by a powerful Intel Core i7 13700 processor and a very nice nVidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. It’s the “Clark Kent” of desktop computers. The Dell XPS 8960 Desktop comes with both a wired USB keyboard and mouse. I did not test these as I already have a keyboard and mouse that I’ve gotten used to. The computer comes with plenty of external expansion ports (1 memory card reader, 3 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C port, and a headphone jack at the front of the case along with 4 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C port, 1 Ethernet port, 1 HDMI port, 4 Display Ports and multiple audio jacks in the back) Internal expansion seems good too. There is an empty M2 slot for another NVMe SSD and an empty 3.5 inch bay for another SATA HDD or SSD. I also see an available 1x PCIe slot next to the graphics card. The chassis was very easy to open. All you need to do is loosen one screw, pull up on the lever and the side panel pops out for easy access. The compact graphics card makes the inside very roomy and easy to work with. The computer comes with a proprietary 460 Watt power supply which might limit how far you can upgrade the graphics card in the future. For most people, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem as the nVidia GeForce RTX 3050 is a decent mid range card that can handle most games at a playable frame rate in the present and near future. Since future graphics cards usually offer more power with lower power requirements, it is probable that you will be able to upgrade to a more powerful graphics card in the future if the need arises. But personally, I wish Dell used standard power supplies instead of proprietary power supplies to make this easier. Cooling and airflow seem good with the CPU temperature hovering around 71.7 C average and the GPU temperature hovering at 44.6 C average while playing around with Daz3D software. Most of the time, the computer is very quiet although some of the fans do rev up very loudly for a short period of time before becoming silent again whenever I do something like rendering a scene with Daz3D. This Dell XPS 8960 came configured with the following components: Intel Core i7 13700 processor 16 GB of Samsung DDR5-4800 memory nVidia GeForce RTX 3050 OEM with 8 GB DDR6 memory SK Hynix PC801 MVMe 512GB Gen4x4 SSD rated up to 7000 MB/s read and 6500 MB/s write speeds Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA hard drive Killer E3100G 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet Killer Wi-Fi 6E AX1675i Wireless Adapter I consider all of the components used to be excellent. In its stock configuration, this computer is a powerhouse that is capable of handling pretty much any task you throw at it. Browsing the web, reading email, general office tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, powerpoint etc., and media consumption are all easily handled with this computer. More intensive tasks like software development are also easily handled by this computer. Installing Visual Studio Community 2022 (with a nearly full workload configuration) took only about 15 minutes. Writing, compiling, and debugging programs was very pleasant and responsive on this computer. This computer will make an excellent software development system for programmers and students. The inclusion of an nVidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card makes this an excellent computer for content creators as most content creation software prefer nVidia based graphics cards for hardware assist and acceleration. And lastly, the Dell XPS 8960 plays games very nicely. While a hard core gamer might not be entirely satisfied, I think most casual gamers would be happy with it. I’m the type of gamer that prefers games like XCom and Marvel’s Midnight Suns and both play great with the nVidia GeForce RTX 3050. I am able to play Marvel’s Midnight Suns averaging 60 fps at 2560 x 1440 with DLSS enabled. The game looks gorgeous with this graphics card. I have experienced some issues with loading times but that’s only because I installed the games on the hard drive instead of the SSD. Overall, I can easily recommend the Dell XPS 8960 Desktop. In its stock configuration, it is a powerhouse and can handle pretty much any task you throw at it. It is easily expandable and can grow with the user as their needs grow. It will make an excellent computer for a family, business, or student.

Pros USB-C on front and back SD Card reader 2 hard drive cages Prewired for accessories Clean wiring Most service is toolless Extra NVME slot Fast Processor Subdued chassis design Quiet most of the time Cons Only 2 USB-C ports No thunderbolt Anemic CPU fan Undersized CPU Heatsink Fan profile prefers throttling over better cooling Proprietary Power supply No extra capacity on power supply Proprietary motherboard power connection Proprietary CPU cooler mount No option to upgrade to an optical drive Design and Features The XPS 8960 is the latest version of the 8900 series of desktops. The most notable change is the upgrade from 12th generation Intel CPUS to 13th Generation. The remaining changes are minor. A keyboard and mouse are included in the box which do the job but if your budget allows these should be upgraded immediately. Included on the front of the system are 3 USB-A 3.0 ports. one USB-C, a stereo jack, and a full-sized SD card slot. Around back you have 2 USB-A 3.0 ports, 2 USB-A 2.0 ports, 1 USB-C, Ethernet, and jacks for 7.1 surround sound. There are no thunderbolt ports. The board does have a DisplayPort port which might come in handy if you ever need to use the system without the discrete GPU. Internally there are two 3.5-inch drive bays with one available to add an additional drive. Both are pre-wired with power and SATA connections as well and include the toolless hard drive adapter. The motherboard is a proprietary design with part of the board jutting out of the front of the case for the ports on the front. The board has two ram slots, both filled, so memory upgrades would require removing existing memory. The good thing is 16GB is good for most use cases. The board has two NVME slots with one available to add an extra SSD. The included Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E adapter is upgradable as it is installed in an M2 slot with standardized antenna connections routed to outside the case to reduce interference. With a Wi-Fi 6E 2x2 and a max theoretical speed of 2.4Gbps it is unlikely you need to upgrade anytime soon. There is plenty of room to upgrade to a newer GPU in the future including a factory rail to add a GPU support for larger GPUs if you purchase the bracket that mounts to it. Unfortunately, you would likely need to upgrade the power supply to do this because it is rated only for a max of 460W. The power supply is also a proprietary design leaving you to only upgrade with a larger Dell power supply. Thankfully the chassis has up to a 1000W power supply available if you can get it as spare parts later. The power supply seems to be the newer ATX 3.0 standard as all power connections go to the motherboard and the motherboard supplies power directly to accessories such as hard drives. Most parts don’t require tools for removal or if they do it is just 1 or 2 screws. There is plenty of room for airflow with a large grill up front and back, but you won’t find any sort of dust filtering to keep things clean. A nice touch to see is the voltage regulators for the CPU have reasonably large passive heatsinks. The same cannot be said for the CPU. The heatsink and fan for the CPU cooler are undersized. The fan curve is also set to favor silence. The fans included can get very loud so it is understandable why they might wish to do this but there is also no way to change the fan curve if you prefer performance over silence. Setup and Performance Setup is straightforward with the only extra software installed is a 1-year subscription to McAfee Antivirus. There are no other special utilities beyond Dell Update which handles things like Firmware updates. Performance is snappy for light to moderate use with no discernable weakness in the configuration. CrystalDiskMark returned a respectable 7000MB/s read and 5000MB/s write on average and remained stable throughout usage suggesting it isn’t throttling due to heat. The same cannot be said of the CPU. During the start of any benchmark test the fans would ramp up in speed for a short time getting loud and performance would increase, but then slow down. Next you could see CPU core frequencies drop. While running Cinebench, the test would start off strong but as soon temps rose above 72 degrees the system would opt to throttle the CPU instead of allowing fan noise for maximum performance. This meant that while the system is capable of boosting to 5.2GHz, it averaged between 2.7 and 3.5GHz. It is above base clock speed but leaves a fair bit of performance in the table. While this works fine for basic workloads it would be nice to override this setting and choose maximum performance over noise. Currently, there is no such setting. Dell could have also improved this by putting one of their higher performance coolers such as the tower cooler or water block which is included on higher end models. This would have allowed the system to take advantage of the processor better while keeping noise low. Of course, that is assuming that the system would remain stable pushing to max with the 460-Watt power supply. That said, if you want to try to squeeze out extra performance it looks like the board can work even with the Dell water cooler as it has the pins to control the water block. The other option could be to install a third-party cooler but the mounting system for the heatsink is not standard and would require some DIY work. In any case, if you are interested in the maximum performance the system has to offer you are going to need to do some modifications. For reference, the installed core i7-13700 returned a score of 14,720 in 3DMark Timespy which is below the average of 20,000-22,000 for this processor. For contrast Geekbench turned in a respectable 2572 for single-core and 15494 for multi-core since it finishes well before heat buildup occurs. For the GPU it’s a little harder to test against a standard as it is a Dell specific card, but for reference it returned a Time Spy score of 5557 compared to the average of 6191 for an RTX 3050. In Geekbench, the installed RTX3050 scored 61244 versus the average of 62911. While the Geekbench scores shows GPU performance near average, the Time Spy score suggest there might be a small amount of GPU thermal throttling going on. Final Thoughts Overall performance is decent but not standout. The question is if that matters to you. The system may not perform at its maximum potential, but it performs well and quietly. It doesn’t support as many upgrades as a custom-built system, but the most often upgraded parts can be upgraded very easily with either Dell parts or third party. If your main concern is maximum performance and upgradability, this system might not be for you. If your focus is good performance, easy service, easy upgrades, and support from a single company then the XPS 8960 is worth considering.

Great family PC! Plays games well even with the lower end GPU. Able to edit with Adobe creative with ease. GPU fans are a little load in this particular XPS case, not bad though. I would recommend magnetic filters if you have animals.

Excellent business machine. It runs all my monitors flawlessly.

The appearance of the new XPS 8960 is beautifully understated, and it can be configured to be anything from a basic office computer to a high-end gamer. This version is a good production machine or a basic to mid-level gamer. It’s well-appointed with I/O ports. There are 9 USB ports (7 high-speed), a card reader, a mic/headphone jack, an ethernet connection, a full array of audio jacks, and multiple monitor connections. It’s fully up to date on wireless ability having WIFI 6 and BT 5. Add to this a 13th Gen Raptor Lake I7-13700 16-core processor, 16GB of DDR5 memory, a blazingly-fast 512GB M2 SSD, and a 2TB HDD, and you have a solid system. There are some shortcomings as well … especially if you’re looking to upgrade or for intensive use. Sitting on that great processor is a small, pancake cooler. It spools up often and quite audibly. When under heavy load, the core temperatures quickly shoot very high before settling back into the 60-70 C range as the processor throttles back speed. The SSD boot drive is wicked fast, but 512GB is the starting point these days. There is an empty M2 slot, so it would be easy to add another drive. Two 8GB modules occupy both DIMM slots, so adding system RAM means replacing not adding. The 8GB Dell RTX3050 is an entry-level graphics card for gaming. It does have ray tracing, so will run most, but not all, games at 1080P with a high frame rate. The new XPS 8960 series is most typically available with a 750 or 1000 watt power supply, but this unit has a 460 watt Dell PS, so check if you plan to change to a power-hungry graphics card. As it stands, this is a solid, attractive mid-level workhorse. If it has all you want in a computer, it’s a good choice, but expandability is not its long suit. With that said, I would not hesitate to recommend it to others.

The Dell XPS 8960 Desktop is a powerful and versatile machine that can handle a variety of tasks, from gaming to content creation to productivity. It's powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphic card, which provide plenty of power for even the most demanding applications. This desktop can pretty much take pretty much anything you can throw at it. Unboxing and Setup: The Dell XPS 8960 Desktop is easy to set up and use. The unit is pretty much ready to go right out of the box. In the box you will also find a USB keyboard, mouse, and power cable. Once you have everything hooked up, you are ready to go. I did have to do a few updates which did not take long and after that I was on my way. Performance: The Dell XPS 8960 will not disappoint. The unit comes pre-installed with the latest Windows 11 and 13th Gen Intel i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050. • The 16GB of DDR5 RAM ensures smooth operations, allowing the system to multitask without slowing down. I ran multiple applications and I had no problems switching back and forth even while I was gaming. • The storage in this unit is powered by a 512GB M.2 SSD that provides fast boot times and application load times, while the 2TB 7200 RPM HDD provides plenty of storage space for your files, games, and media. • 460 Watt Power Supply • Ports – There is pretty much a port for anything and everything. 7 USB-A ports 2 USB-C ports SD Card Reader 1 Ethernet 1 HDMI 2.1 4 Display Ports 2 M.2 Slot 2 3.5 Internal Bay Multiple audio-in and out • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 – A good midrange graphics card backed by 8GB of GDDR6 memory. Powerful enough to handle most graphics heavy games and content creating. The Dell XPS 8960 Desktop is housed in a sleek and stylish case that measures just 17 x 7 x 15 inches and weighs about 19lbs. The case is made of high-quality materials and features a graphite finish. The front of the case features a power button, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and an SD card reader. One of the best features of this desktop, in my opinion, is the expandability option. The desktop is easily upgradable as your needs progress in the future. Overall, the Dell XPS 8960 Desktop is an excellent choice for anyone who needs a powerful and versatile PC. It's well-designed, quiet, and expandable, making it a great option for gamers, creative professionals, content creators, and professionals alike.

This is an outstanding desktop computer. It can do it all. I can game on this with frame rates ranging from 60fps to 85fps at 1080p resolution depending on the game. I can process videos I take with my cameras without any problems. It cuts through them like butter. The 13th gen core i7 tears through everything I’ve tried along with the 16gb of ram which I’ll probably be upgrading to 32 gb. The Nvidia RTX 3050 is the lower end of the 30 series cards but it still makes games look great and play great. With 1TB of SSD and 2 TB of HDD space you won’t have to worry about running out of room with your games library. This is an all around great computer from Dell. The 3050 card provides 3 display ports and 1 hdmi port which will allow you to run multiple monitors and have a great setup. The Tower is black and gray and not flashy like a gaming pc normally is but this would look great in a minimalist setup. It’s small and sleek. Plenty of usb ports on the from panel and even a usb C port and a headphone jack. There is an SD card reader too. Just everything you need to be successful. I think this would be a great all around budget friendly PC for anyone looking for something that isn't necessarily dedicated to gaming.

I received the Dell XPS desktop computer and pulling it out of the box reveals a nice-looking tower. There is easy access on the front face for USB, memory cards, and headphones. A corded mouse and keyboard are included, but they are both standard equipment and I opted to keep using my old cordless keyboard and mouse combo. There are plenty of ports on the back for use and the NVidia graphics card has Display and HDMI ports. The tower is easy to open, but once you get inside it’s bare bones with very little for options for future hardware upgrades or additions. There is only one available SATA port and there are only 2 memory DIMM slots, which are currently holding 2 8GB RAM sticks. The case also has no ability to add an internal DVD/Blu-ray drive. In theory you can add an external optical drive, but they are so much slower than an internal drive. Starting it up you get Windows 11. There are some Windows and Dell updates available so make sure to update everything before you get started. The hardware allows the software to run fast and snappy so all the programs I installed ran without issue. I had no issues with Photoshop, Lightroom, Office, etc. All opened quickly and were ready to use in seconds. Getting my laser printer installed and setup was also painless. I have a 27-inch IPS monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate hooked up using the Display Port. I enjoy World of Warships and the game played well on the RTX 3050 in both 1080p and 1440p. I had no issues with the game no matter what quality setting I tried. I didn’t measure FPS but saw no noticeable dip in the frame rate or stuttering. For a pre-built PC this XPS has good bones and is more than enough for the casual gamer. The system works well, and you won’t have any problems running programs. More memory will help with some, but you can change out the RAM sticks for larger capacity sticks in the future if you need it. You just won’t be able to add as much memory as you would with a motherboard that has 4 DIMM slots. If you need an internal optical drive, sadly you can’t add one with this case, so an external drive is your only option. Overall, I’m happy with the desktop since it easily handles all my current needs, minus the ability to add an internal Blu-ray drive, with ease.

Good value to price on sale at time. Easy set up and have used with no issues. Use at home and impressed with i7 processor and happy with RAM and NVIDIA.

This is a great product but I'd recommend getting a K series CPU and a 750 watt power supply. The performance is commendable and the ports are nice. Great but for gaming and productivity. Cheap air cooler though.

Unboxed the Dell - XPS 8960 Desktop - 13th Gen Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 - 512GB SSD + 2TB HDD – Graphite last Friday and started setting it up as my daily PC. My 5-year-old Ryzen 7 was still able to do what I needed, but this is a nice upgrade. Unboxing the desktop, I found the PC, a basic keyboard and a wired mouse. I went to work moving my old pc with its two external drives to a small 24” monitor for use as a streaming PC. That freed up my two 27” monitors that I connected to the new Dell XPS, a gaming keyboard and mouse. The first thing I did was remove McAfee and any of its other software. Then I installed my cable companies’ anti-virus that’s on all my devices. I looked for other bloatware, but if there were any others, I must have breezed through them as I don’t remember any. Nice to have a ready-made PC that isn’t full of software that I don’t want. I then added my subscription office suite software and a few other essential apps. I then rebooted and went to Windows update. There were quite a few as well as a Dell update. All of it installed rather easily and after a few visits to the update page and reboots, the PC was up to date and ready to go. Now how does it perform… Well to tell you the truth, I expected more from such a well spec’d PC. For whatever reason, I thought it would be fast, lightning fast, but it really isn’t. Not that it’s a slouch, it does everything I throw at it, but some things just lag. Like settings. When I went to remove McAfee, it should populate apps rather quickly. There weren’t any new apps installed yet and it took forever to load the uninstall choices. After adding all my games, it takes even longer. I was just expecting it to use all those processes to get stuff loaded quicker. Also, I’ve had Chrome and Firefox just stop loading pages. I have a tab open and go to load another just to have a spinning wheel and nothing load. I must kill the browser and reopen it. Yes, I’ve made sure they are updated, and I’ve only installed the extensions I use on the old Ryzen 7 PC. I then downloaded a couple of benchmark tools and ran them. I was able to take a screenshot of one of them and it did well. It did well, but I think the NVIDIA RTX 3050 is the bottleneck in this system. Not to say the card is slow, especially compared to what I was using, it’s just with the rest of the specs on this Dell PC, something must slow it down and I think it’s the graphics card. I ran a gaming benchmark, and it did well on the two lower settings, but on extreme it struggled. So on to a third benchmark software. I’ve added a shot of the result and it shows a decent frame rate for the GPU at 71 FPS, so maybe it will be okay. So far, the only game I’ve played is, don’t laugh, Lawn Mowing Simulation. I get it, it’s not a game that requires a lot of resources to play, but it is totally relaxing when I just want to kick back and mow grass. Next, I fired up Forza Motorsport 7 and that should make this thing work. Well, I loaded Forza Motorsport 7, and it picked ultra setting for graphics. I ran a career race with it and the graphics looked great. I didn’t notice any lag or stutter and the fan didn’t even kick into high gear. Usually on my gaming all in one or laptop, the fan is loud, but the Dell XPS 8960 just kept its cool. It’s a four-year-old game, but it should still give the Dell a workout. I think it did great! So maybe the benchmark tools aren’t so reliable. Either way, it seems to be able to run the type of games I play without any issue, so in my book, that means it’s a keeper. Testing out of the way, I wanted to see how easy it is to upgrade or add a drive to the XPS. Dell made the case easy to open…once you are shown how. I was able to find a manual online for the XPS 8950, which is pretty like the 8960. There is a large black plastic box at the top of the rear chassis. It has a flat screw in the middle of it to fasten it to the case. Loosen it and pull it away from the case. It will release the top of the side panel. Then grab both side of the side panel and lift straight up and it will pop out. The bottom of the side panel is grooved to saddle the bottom of the case chassis. Putting it back on is just install the bottom, pull the handle and push the top in, release handle, and tighten screw. With the side off, there is an empty slot for a sata drive. It has the power and data cable already routed to the slot, so you just need to plug and play. There’s also an empty M.2 slot for an additional storage card. Well, that’s about it. Overall, I think this is a well-designed PC. A better GPU would have been great, but at this price point, it makes perfect sense. Dell designed it so it’s easy to upgrade should you want to invest in a faster card, but again in my case, this will do just fine. If you are looking for a capable gaming rig or something to handle graphics/photography/video processing, I think you too would be happy with this PC. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to upgrade from their current PC unless you want to bump up the coin to get a machine that’s a bit higher end.

Dell - XPS 8960 Desktop - 13th Gen Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 - 512GB SSD Summary: Great mid-level and budget-friendly gaming PC. Pros: * The price point is good and think is fair for the specs. * Form factor is typical and on the compact side for this range PC. * Reasonable expansion. Since this chassis is a bit more compact, there aren't as many expansion bays. Personally, I have not found a reason to use the expansion bays in decades. As I store most of my stuff on local SANs and in the cloud. But you have that option if you need to add another disk or NVMe drive. Likewise, you can replace the graphic adaptors later as the machine ages. * Speaking of storage. With only a 512GB SSD that also homes the OS, you'll likely want to add an NVMe SSD stick if you want to play games - 512GB is nothing with the size of games these days. We're fond of the Samsung EVO Plus and WD Black NVMe SSDs, which are typically used to upgrade our systems. * There are plenty of ports for most use cases. I did run out of USB ports on the back of the unit. But, I need more, I can use the ones in the front. * The ventilation seems good - I am able to noticeably feel the airflow through the chassis sides/front/rear. * Great support tools and website experience. The site can be a little noisy, but running diagnostics, checking warranty status, and engaging support is much easier than you might expect. Cons: * The unit is noisy. I don't mean the spin-up of booting cold. Minor web browsing will make the fans spin up noticeably never mind playing any kind of game. This can happen while I am participating in Zoom meetings and its awfully annoying. * More noise complaints. The spindled disk in this unit also clicks a lot. I sometimes relive the trauma of my past when those clicks were a sign a spindled disk was about to die! LOL. Not a big deal, just annoying. * I am not sure, but I think this unit has difficulties outputting two 4K displays via DP. I see a lot of display switching coming out of sleep. Since I work from home and work in the tech field, I often leave my computer on when I do, I will often find a BlueScreen waiting for me in the morning. I am convinced it is a setting or driver that is causing the issue and will be engaging support. Diagnostics both quick and full do not report any issues. Use: I use this as my personal desktop. I had stopped gaming on my old desktop because it was starting to fail after a few years. This unit allows me to get back to gaming on my desktop. I also use this unit to connect to my work machines via Remote Desktop (w g/gateway configured). Before the RDG, I was using Fortinet. This machine, of course, works fine as an RDP client. Finally, I use this unit to browse, use Microsoft Office, as well as take care of bills and business. It works well in all of these cases. Since there are already many reviews sharing benchmarks and images, I'll be sparing on mine. As you can see, it sits nicely on my desk and doesn't take up a lot of space. In games like Doom Eternal on 4K and MAX, I can get 60-100+ FPS rates depending on where and what is going on. In World of Warcraft, at 4K and max settings (10) frame rate is poor at < 30 and sometimes as low as 18 FPS. You can feel the jitter/tear. Dragon riding can't be done without getting dizzy. At mid settings (3) with max particle, and a few other tweaks, it jumps to 60+ FPS and is more tolerable. I don't need to see everything in the distance, but it is a bit disappointing given what I was running before (1680). Still given the benchmarks and the class card, I think these are all acceptable for the price point. This unit makes for a great home PC and an okay gaming PC.

Since my two old desktop computers were running slow, I decided to buy a new one. I couldn't have made a better choice! I've had Dell products in the past (desktops and laptops) and have never had any problem with any of them. BestBuy Geek Squad did a wonderful job of setting up the new computer after which they wiped the drive from one of the old one (I'm keeping one of the old ones as a backup...the Dell). The new Dell is incredibly fast, easy to use and spacious, so I (hopefully) will not run out of space for a long, long time. I love the new Dell desktop and will keep on purchasing Dell equipment!

Love this new machine. My old Dell Crashed after several years of use, and it was time to upgrade anyway. One of the main thing I needed was the computer to hand 3 monitors. This machine has plenty of video options and handles all three of my monitors. Its fast and has plenty of memory for my use, and would highly recommend this machine for a home business computer. It would probably even handle some gaming.

This is a very versatile PC. I work on fairly big projects with it and it doesn’t skip a beat. I also play games on it, which has also been a smooth experience. If you’re someone who does a lot of digitally creative things, this is a great computer for it! P.s. I will say that there are points where the fans will get loud but other than that, it is probably the most quiet PC I’ve owned!

This was a replacement for my Dell that failed and was recommended by the Geeeksquad and Best Buy sales agent. The Geeksquad transferred as much of my original data as they could. Thus far the performance was as adverrtized and I have reached almost 90% of what I had before, This purchase is just what I needed for internet, book keeping, correspondence and many applications. I certainly can recommend the speed, memory and overall performance.