Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition If you're looking for a gaming PC that can handle VR, The Oculus-certified Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition has a relatively small and sleek design and offers good 1080p gaming performance without breaking the bank.

Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition

  • Pros

    Reasonably priced. Sleek, compact case. Open slots and bays for upgrades. Good performance.

  • Cons

    No solid-state drive. Only a single GPU.

  • Bottom Line


The Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition ($1,199.99 as tested) is a midrange gaming desktop that offers a nice mix of power and features for the price. Its performance doesn't quite match expensive midrange gaming desktops, but the XPS is still well-equipped for playing games at 1080p resolution at a reasonable cost. The $1,700 Maingear Vybe  gives you a big boost in performance, thanks to its two Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics cards and remains our Editors' Choice, but the XPS 8900 represents a good value for the power it offers.

The XPS 8900 is an Oculus-certified PC, so it meets the recommended specs for playing virtual reality (VR) games on the Oculus Rift headset. This system doesn't exceed the requirements like more expensive desktops, so it likely won't run games on the highest settings with all the effects on in VR, but it will be able to play at a smooth frame rate. 

Design and Features
The XPS 8900's case measures a compact 16.01 by 7.30 by 17.49 inches (HWD), which is fairly short and slim for the power packed inside. It does weigh 30.4 pounds, deceptively heavy for its size, but, as a desktop, you shouldn't be moving it much. The overall shape is rectangular, but its angled front panel curves at the top, adding a little style. The front is a glossy-black plastic with silver trim, while the sides are black aluminum, and the top and edges are black plastic. There are vents on each side, as well as on the bottom of the front panel. A screw on the rear of the case holds the right panel in place—removing it allows you to slide the panel off, providing access to the interior for maintenance and upgrades.

This rig's relatively small size and width stack up well against similarly powerful systems if you're looking for a space-saving setup. The Maingear Vybe is a few inches larger all around, while the uniquely designed Cyberpower Trinity Xtreme isn't as tall, but is both wide and deep at 15.25 by 17.25 by 15.5 inches, requiring much more desk space. The Digital Storm Eclipse features a more standard form factor, a fairly thin rectangle that measures 14 by 4 by 15 inches. Another option is the MSI Gaming 24GE 2QE-014US, an all-in-one gaming desktop with a thin but wide design (due to its built-in display) that measures 16.75 by 23 by 7.5 inches.

There are plenty of ports available on the XPS 8900. A recess on the top of the system holds two USB 2.0 ports, a microphone jack, and a headset jack. The front panel features two USB 3.0 ports, as well as a card reader. A DVD-RW drive is hidden behind a cover to keep the front panel uniform, only popping open when you hit the button. This is an aesthetic improvement over cases in which optical drives stick out, breaking the visual flow. On the rear, there's a plethora of ports, including four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, audio lines, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort. (Including the four on the GPU, that's five total DisplayPorts.) There's an open PCIe x16 slot that you can use for an additional graphics card, but note that the system only comes with a 460-watt power supply unit (PSU), so you'll have to stay within that power limitation. We think adding a second budget graphics card for multiple-monitor support will be no problem, but another Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 card is probably out of the question. That said, there is room for two more 2.5-inch drives and an optical drive, as well as two open memory slots for a maximum of 64GB.

Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition

For storage, the desktop includes a big 1TB, 7,200rpm hard drive, though it disappointingly does not include a smaller solid-state drive (SSD) to boot from for faster loading. This is still much more storage than the Maingear Vybe, which only includes a relatively small 250GB SSD. The Cyberpower Trinity Xtreme offers the best of both, featuring a 250GB SSD and a 2TB HDD, while the MSI Gaming 24GE 2QE-014US goes for a similar setup in smaller capacities (128GB SSD and 1TB HDD). For wireless connectivity, there's dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi on board, as well as Bluetooth 4.0. Dell includes a USB wired keyboard and mouse with the system, which are basic, but capable. The computer comes with one year of onsite service after remote diagnosis.

Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition

The XPS 8900 features a 2.7GHz Core i5-6400 processor, a 4GB GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, and 8GB of memory. More memory would be useful, and the system is capable of upgrades to 64GB, but these are pretty speedy components as is. In the PCMark 8 Work Conventional Test, the desktop scored 3,088 points. The Cyberpower Trinity, with its 3.3GHz Core i7 processor, scored 3,693 points, while the Maingear Vybe (3,880) and the Digital Storm Eclipse (3,809) were even further ahead. It's worth noting these other midrange machines are more expensive than the XPS 8900 (the Cyberpower Trinity, in particular, costs $940 more, though the Digital Storm Eclipse costs only $100 more).

Related Story See How We Test Desktops

The 3D and gaming tests results, particularly the 3DMark Cloud Gate test, reflected the gap in the XPS 8900's power, compared with more expensive midrange gaming desktops. The system scored 16,915 points, well behind the Maingear Vybe (23,449), the Cyberpower Trinity (30,702), and the Digital Storm Eclipse (19,815). The XPS 8900 scored 4,791 on the more demanding 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme test, also behind those three systems.

On the Heaven and Valley gaming tests at Medium-quality settings, the XPS 8900 scored 165 frames per second (fps) and 103fps, respectively. With Heaven and Valley set to Ultra quality, the system scored 61fps and 69fps, respectively, which is a nice, smooth rate for 1080p gaming. The Cyberpower Trinity, with its Nvidia GTX Titan X graphics card, scored 254fps and 112fps in Heaven and Valley at Medium-quality settings, and still reached 104fps and 102fps at Ultra-quality settings. The more similarly priced Digital Storm Eclipse scored 175fps and 140fps, respectively, at Medium-quality settings, and 63fps and 71fps when set to Ultra. The XPS 8900 generally falls behind these systems—not surprising, given it's the least expensive among them—but is still more than capable of playing games smoothly, even at high settings.

On multimedia tests, the system performed well overall. It scored 522 points on CineBench, finished the Handbrake video-encoding test in 1 minute 21 seconds, and finished the Photoshop test in 3:14. It's not too far behind the other systems, finishing fairly close on these tests (aside from the Cyberpower Trinity's impressive 1,017 CineBench score), but it's still perfectly capable of quickly finishing media projects, and offers good speed for the price.

The Dell XPS 8900 Special Edition is a reasonably priced, well-designed gaming desktop with speedy performance. It doesn't stack up to more expensive systems in its class, and is missing extras like an SSD, and more memory, but it's a good value. The relatively small tower is a bonus if you have limited room on or around your desk, and it's easy to open up. It's a good option if you are working on a budget, but the Maingear Vybe offers a lot more power, including dual graphics cards. The XPS is Oculus certified, powerful enough to run games smoothly on the headset, though the Maingear is even better equipped to handle virtual reality games on the highest settings. Extra spending up front can go a long way toward increasing your gaming system's lifespan, and given the single graphics card in the XPS 8900, you may end up spending the roughly $500 price difference not far down the line anyway. For this reason, and its generally superior performance, the Maingear Vybe remains our Editors' Choice for midrange gaming desktops.

About the Author

blog comments powered by Disqus

Most Popular Stories