XPS 8960, 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700 and motherboard

It supports Up to two M.2 2230 or M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe solid-state drives

PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe, up to 64 Gbps

Suggestion - Buy Primary SSD with max capacity available through Dell. In case of warranty claims it's easier to deal with tech support when the OS is running from a Dell branded drive. Also, choose liquid cooling option if it's available in your country

XPS 8960 Setup and Specifications | Dell US

Some users have complained about the noise from the liquid coolers. You might consider the Dell premium tower air cooler if it is available. It is quiet.

Hope this helps.

While I do like the XPS lineup, the Alienware Aurora R16 is just a better choice overall.

@Element115s4 ​ Alienware won't come without a discrete graphic card

so you will end up paying for something which you don't need

Yes, that is true but the low end option isn't so bad really.

They do need to offer it with just onboard gpu for a nicer entry price, I agree.

I have this computer and am very happy with it. Two suggestions:

Pay an extra $100 for the 13700K, even if you will never test its capabilities, because at the present time only 'K' models come with Dell's tower cooler, which cools very well and is more quiet than the water cooler.

Order the computer with 8GB of RAM and a single 512GB NVME SSD. You can add more RAM and a larger NVME SSD from third parties for much less than it will cost to buy upgrades from Dell. I replaced the single 8GB module in my computer with 2 x 16GB of RAM from Crucial for far less than what it would cost for 32GB of RAM from Dell, and I added a second NVME SSD of 1GB for much less than the Dell configurator price.

In addition, you might consider upgrading the standard power supply to 750 watts for future needs. If you need more power in the future, it will cost much more than the extra $50 to replace your existing power supply.

@MastiffX ​ This is very bad advice.  If anything get the water cooler as it will work better than the Dell tower cooler  IF you need to you can always get the dimensions of the fans and order some high static pressure after-market fans and make it more effective than the Cheep Dell metal that will just throttle the PC.

Note you can order the NON-K version with a Liquid cooler. the difference is that the K version has overclocking however that cannot be done on the XPS.

Yes, the tower cooler can sometimes be quieter, its cooling capacity is not even close to the water cooler. You are 100% doing them a disservice.

While you can get RAM cheaper in other places, they will need to ensure the new RAM will run at the same speed at JDEC and not XMP. This means if they are not tech savvy they can order the right RAM but if it's XMP it's going to downclock that RAM to the maximum supported jdec speeds.

I just checked the XPS you are looking at save yourself the torment pay the +50 for the liquid cooler.

Yes always go for the higher-wattage PSU, even if you won't use it all right now.

@XPS_Man You can always add a second  m.2 NVME SSD since this board supports it 2 or add an SSD as well.

Just please don't listen to the bad advice.

Yes, water cooler is a no-brainer and the only noise I can sometimes hear from my XPS is the GPU.

@Element115s4 ​ Even if they used really bad cheap fans, you can also replace those with some high static pressure lower RPM fans that will just push more airflow. It's a fix that is 100x better than the cheap dell tower cooler that isn't worth the 5c of metal it was manufactured with.  Which is just going to cause it to throttle under any load.

Honestly looked at the service manual for that PC, and the front fan is fine, I would just swap the Dell Closed loop cooler fans with High Static Air Pressure fan and call it a day runs you 20-50 bucks depending on the quality you want and call it good.  Just keep the of fan incase you need to send in for service.

@JamieLinux ​

Hello!

One of my clients has a Dell XPS 8960 with the i7-13700(non-K). This PC came with the Dell “Standard” air cooler so I ended up getting the Dell Liquid cooler and ran some test with it. Here is the result: https://youtu.be/_98AMFuB--E

I also ordered the Dell Advanced (Tower) Cooler and the I9-14900K CPU, so the second part of this test coming out later this week, where I will compare all coolers with the i7 and the i9K as well.

@S.Tech9 ​ I saw your video's very bad testing methodology, secondly test at a load not at idle,. idle speeds are the worst for testing any cooling efficacy.  Even if there was testing there were no graphs so forth.  5% to 8% means you were not testing the actual load on the stock pancake cooler.   If you were to cinebench or prime 95 that pancake cooler would throttle in under a second.  Where the water cooler would not.

@JamieLinux ​

Thanks for your thoughts!

How do you mean “test at a load not at idle”? Multiple rounds of Cinebench 2023 and 2024 were ran back-to-back, screenshot at 0:22. I also ran the 3DMark over and over. Ran five different test software back-to-back for hours and it all came down to this result. This Dell liquid cooler is about half of the size I usually use (Kraken X63) on other desktops.

What numbers do you think we should see between the coolers?

I am not a pro tester for sure, if you have any specific software or method which results in numbers what we can compare at the end, please let me know and I will incorporate that in the next video with the tower cooler.

Thanks,

Scott

@S.Tech9 I went through the video and did not see any test results it was just you talking about the cooler, can you link some time indexes where you posted the numbers?

@JamieLinux ​

Sorry, it`s my fault, I cramped all the images in the first few frames, will have more time for those in the second part:

Dell XPS 8960 i7-13700 Liquid Cooler Vs Dell Air Cooler

In the next video will test all three Dell Cooler options for this XPS. Usually running 8-10 hours of tests with each cooler so it will be out by this weekend. I wonder when the 14 gen i9 K CPU is installed how much of a difference will we see in that case.

If there is any test software or method, you think I should include to make a better test, please let me know.

@JamieLinux ​ isn't that what I said?

It supports Up to two M.2 2230 or M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe solid-state drives

PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe, up to 64 Gbps

Suggestion - Buy Primary SSD with max capacity available through Dell. In case of warranty claims it's easier to deal with tech support when the OS is running from a Dell branded drive. Also, choose liquid cooling option if it's available in your country

XPS 8960 Setup and Specifications | Dell US