Dell XPS 8950 2022

This thing has storage for days and still packs a punch, but at nearly seven grand, you're paying a luxury tax for a machine that's already a generation behind. Buy something with an RTX 40-series card and spend the leftover money on, well, literally anything else.

The Dell XPS 8950 is a beast of a desktop that's stuck in a bit of a time warp. It throws a 12th-gen Intel i9 and an RTX 3090 at you, then pairs it with a downright absurd 10TB of total storage. That alone makes it a standout for anyone drowning in massive video files or a Steam library that's gotten out of hand. But here's the catch: you're paying nearly seven thousand dollars for parts that were exciting two years ago. The performance is still plenty good, but every time you look at the price tag, a little voice in your head will whisper, "Shouldn't this have an RTX 4090?"

What surprised us most, honestly, is how well this thing holds up in real-world use despite being a generation behind on the GPU. In our database, the 3090 sits at the 76th percentile among all desktops, and the 12900K lands in the 81st percentile, so it's still well above average. Ripping through 4K video edits or maxing out Cyberpunk 2077 at high frame rates feels effortless thanks to 24GB of VRAM and that fast DDR5 RAM. The real star, though, is that 2TB NVMe SSD plus an extra 8TB HDD combo. It's a 99th percentile storage setup that means you literally never have to uninstall a game or archive a project again. And the Killer Wi-Fi 6 kept our online sessions smooth with no perceptible lag.

This is where the XPS 8950 falls flat on its face. For nearly $6,800, you're paying a premium for a machine that's not cutting-edge. The performance is solid, sure, but you can get a faster, more modern prebuilt with an RTX 4080 Super and a 13th or 14th-gen CPU for hundreds less. Unless that 8TB HDD is your holy grail, this is a tough sell. It's not worth it.

Stack it against the HP OMEN 45L GT22-3080, and the OMEN pulls ahead with better thermal management and often a more modern GPU for a similar price. The ASUS Republic of Gamers GM700TZ offers newer Intel chips and sometimes an RTX 4090 at this price point, making the Dell look like a clearance rack relic. Even the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 10 gives you more future-proof performance for less cash. If you're set on that 10TB setup, the XPS is unique, but for everyone else, the competition smokes it on value.

If you're looking for the best gaming performance per dollar, this isn't it. Go get a system with an RTX 4070 Ti Super or 4080 Super instead. You'll get newer features, lower power draw, and twice the frames per dollar. This XPS is only for the rare soul who needs 10TB out of the box and refuses to build their own.

Don't buy it. Not at this price. The XPS 8950 does a lot of things right, like giving you storage for the apocalypse and still tearing through AAA games, but Dell is charging a luxury tax for year-old hardware. If you find one heavily discounted, maybe, but as it stands, we can't recommend dropping almost seven grand on yesterday's flagship parts.