Why I prefer this Dell XPS desktop over the M4 Mac Mini for creative work (and its on sale)

What’s the deal?

Several Dell XPS 8960 models are on sale as part of a new Presidents’ Day sale at Amazon. The starting price for the base desktop is now $1,000 instead of $1,250, while the high-end configuration housing a GeForce RTX 4070 GPU is under $2,000.

With laptops so powerful these days, the traditional desktop computer has fallen out of favor for many people. MacBooks, ThinkPads, and the like offer a great experience with the added benefit of portability. However, a solid use case remains for desktop towers, which offer similar, sometimes better, performance at a lower cost. You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for a high-end laptop.

Some people even connect multiple accessories to their laptops in an attempt to mimic a desktop setup. If the intention is to keep the laptop docked at all times, why not just get yourself a tower? If you want to upgrade, I highly recommend the Dell XPS 8960.

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Dell’s XPS 8960 isn’t particularly fancy in design. It’s not a massive desktop with RGB lights everywhere. The model is a simple, compact PC that would be right at home in an office setting. It measures 6.81 x 14.68 x 16.8 inches and weighs about 20 pounds. The weight can differ depending on the configuration you choose at the checkout, peaking at roughly 30 pounds.

Dell’s XPS 8960 also offers access to a wide array of ports. On the front are three USB-A inputs, an SD card reader, a headphone jack, and a single USB-C port for charging devices. Around the back are four extra USB-A ports, a gigabit ethernet connection, an HDMI input, and three DisplayPort outputs, just to name a few. Thanks to these ports, you can connect far more accessories than possible on a laptop or even a Mac Mini, which is very limited in the amount of hardware it can support.

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The XPS 8960 package is pretty barebones. It comes with only the computer itself, a power cable, and a Wi-Fi antenna. Many people will appreciate that antenna because it allows users to connect the desktop to their Wi-Fi network. You won’t be forced to connect the computer to your internet modem via ethernet cable. 

There won’t be this long cable stretching between the devices that you might accidentally trip over. You can just plop the antenna directly on top of the XPS 8960. Since everything is so simple, the Dell XPS 8960 is easy to set up. All I did was connect it to a wall outlet, my two monitors, and my mouse and keyboard. It couldn’t be any simpler.

Dell’s machine packs serious muscle underneath its dull, gray exterior. It runs on a 14th-Gen Intel Core i7-14700K processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card, and 32GB of RAM. Performance issues were non-existent. No amount of open windows, apps, videos, and livestreams slowed it down. It excelled in all of the benchmark tests I threw at it, especially on PCMark 10, which revealed the XPS 8960 handles content creation workloads very well. I spent a full day working on this desktop, and it was a pleasant experience overall.

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What’s great about this hardware configuration is that it enables the computer to perform as a solid gaming rig. For testing, I also played video games for a few hours to get a good idea of the machine’s capabilities. Unsurprisingly, it did great. I didn’t run into any screen tearing or graphical glitches while games ran at ultra-high resolution. The gameplay was engrossing as frame rates stayed consistently high.

I’m actually pretty jealous of the XPS 8960. It runs better than my gaming PC. If I could go back in time, I would’ve probably bought this instead of my current rig.

I do worry about the machine’s longevity because it only has a single cooling fan. Robust cooling is important for desktops to ensure optimal performance. Overheating can severely damage components. If you have the technical skills, you can upgrade the components yourself. But if you don’t, you may be better off purchasing the liquid cooling system — a $50 add-on.

ZDNET’s buying advice

My review unit of the XPS 8960 costs $2,200 on Dell’s website, which is pretty expensive. However, considering gaming laptops with similar hardware can have much higher price tags ($3,000 and up), $2,200 isn’t so bad. The level of performance you get from this machine is well worth the cost.

Of course, you don’t have to pay over $2,000 for the XPS 8960. Prices for the device start at a discounted $1,250 (regularly $1,550). The base configuration has a 14th-Gen Intel i7-14700 processor, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card, and 16GB of RAM. Additionally, you have the option to purchase add-ons like the aforementioned liquid cooling system as well as a mouse and keyboard bundle in case you need them.