Dell XPS 8900 Review

This 2016 Dell desktop is underpowered and overpriced for what it does. Its old CPU and GPU make it painfully slow for modern tasks. Unless you need a giant case and a Blu-ray drive on a tight budget, skip it. Our score: 41.1/100.

The Dell XPS 8900 is a bit of a time capsule. It's a fully-built tower from 2016, packing an older Intel Core i7 and a now-ancient AMD Radeon R9 370 GPU. For $305, you're getting a lot of PC in terms of physical size and a massive 2TB hard drive, but the core components are showing their age.

It's a classic case of specs on paper not telling the whole story. The 16GB of RAM sounds good, and the i7 badge carries some weight, but our performance database shows these parts lagging far behind modern equivalents. This is a machine built for its time, and that time has passed.

Let's be real: this PC is slow by today's standards. Its CPU performance lands in the 39th percentile, which means most modern desktops, even budget ones, will run circles around it. The GPU is even worse, sitting in the 42nd percentile. That AMD Radeon R9 370 was mid-range nearly a decade ago; it'll struggle with anything beyond basic 1080p gaming and light photo editing. The only bright spot is storage capacity, which hits the 79th percentile thanks to that 2TB HDD, but it's a slow spinning drive, not a fast SSD.

At $305, the value proposition is tricky. You're getting a complete system with a monitor-sized case, a DVD drive, and a big hard drive. If you need those specific, dated things, it's a cheap box. But for actual computing power, this money is better spent elsewhere. You could buy a modern mini-PC with a faster CPU, an SSD, and better graphics for the same price, just in a much smaller box without the optical drive.

Stacked against its listed competitors like the HP Omen or Alienware Aurora, the XPS 8900 isn't even in the same league—those are modern gaming rigs. A fairer fight is against current budget options. A $300 Beelink or Minisforum mini PC with a modern Ryzen or Intel Core chip will demolish this Dell in CPU tasks, include a speedy SSD, and use a fraction of the power. Even Dell's own newer Inspiron desktops offer much better performance per dollar. The XPS 8900's only advantage is raw internal expansion space, which most people don't need.

Anyone who values their time. If you need a PC for daily tasks, browsing, office work, or even light creative projects, you'll hate how slow this feels from the moment you turn it on. The lack of an SSD is a deal-breaker for modern usability. Also skip if you want to play any game from this decade.

Buy this only if you have a very specific, non-performance-critical need. Think: a dedicated machine for ripping DVDs/Blu-rays, a basic file server for a home network where the big hard drive is useful, or a project box for learning PC hardware tinkering on the cheap. For any general use—home office, web browsing, media, light gaming—you will be frustrated by its speed, or lack thereof.