I'ma proud owner of a Dell desktop computer I purchased 12 years ago and it's still running strong. Yes the operating system is obsolete but I just do the maintenance and keep it running. When Amazon offered me this new Dell I immediately jumped on it. Even though my original Dell has been a dependable machine this X8700 knocks it out of the park when it comes to hardware. 1000 gigabytes of storage is incredible and with 16 gigs of Ram for speed I've just entered the 21st century. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 is a worthy graphics card and should play all of today's demanding games. The case looks good, has an easy to remove cover and has plenty of room for growth; 3 extra slots in the back and a slot in the front to add another DVD rom. This bundle does not come with a monitor but does come with a standard soft tough Dell keyboard and a Dell laser mouse.

Ports:
In the front there is two USB 3.0 ports, 4 different types of media card readers (SM/D, CF/MD, miniMMC- SD/RS/SDXC, MS/Pro,DUO)
On top there is a 3.5 headphone jack, 3.5 microphone jack, a USB 2.0 port and a USB 2.0 port with Power Share and the on/off button.
On the back there's the power supply inlet, power supply diagnostic light, network ports and lights, two USB 2.0 and four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI ports, display port, six audio ports, 4 expansion card slots (1 is used for the monitor and printer),security cable slot.

Maybe 10 USB ports is a bit overkill but you have to admit it's nice. Having some ports on the top (sunken in a thing called a tray) is a bit different and unfortunately the slot this computer sits in under my desk does not allow access to these ports.Just not enough room to get a hand in there. Overall it's a great machine, super fast, well designed, comes with plenty of ports and expansion slots, easy to work on and looks good. I would have liked to see 4 rubber feet instead of just the two in front and also some instructions and a specification sheet and most of all a copy of the Windows operating system. Why do we have to make our own copies now? Are a couple DVD disks too expensive to provide with the computer?

--The graphics card, NVidea GEFore GTX 745 is great. It’s approved by Adobe to run Photoshop CC2015 for 3D image rendering and operations requiring Open GL and Open CL. It’s also a great card for gamers, according to NVidea.

--The Intel 7-core processor is incredible. I had a 5-core in my previous computer and didn’t expect to see much difference—do I ever!

--It has a 1TB hard drive 7200 RPM and 2 open ports to install to install 2 additional internal drives which I plan to do.

--It has USB 3, which I’d never tried before and is wonderful—and it has 6 of them, in addition to some USB 2’s.

--With 16 GB of RAM you can easily process photos from any camera, even those huge 24 and 36 megapixel cameras. You can even have several open at the same time as well as multi-task with other applications. I downloaded creative cloud and Photoshop CC2015, Bridge, & Lightroom. I’m in heaven, no matter what I do (and I’ve thrown in 3-D and all the heavy filters) I don’t have to wait for anything, everything happens instantly. No spinning wheel. I can’t believe it.

--The computer itself is 17 inches tall, 6.5” wide, and 16” deep. On all counts, a smaller chassis than my previous Dell.

--It comes with one optical drives that reads and burns and a program called Cyber Link Media Suite that does much more than I need it to do. If you should want to add an additional optical drive, the space is there.

--It also has 4 media slots that, between them can read 19 types of media cards. (I didn’t know there were that many!)

--It also comes with Microsoft Office Trial which you are bound to have to purchase later, but at least you get a breather while you’re buying monitor(s), speakers, etc.

--It does come with a basic wired Dell Keyboard and Mouse both of which are basic and perfectly acceptable (though I’ve lately grown addicted to lighted keyboards).

--It also comes with a one-year Dell support contract (renewable yearly for several years) which is a blessing. I’ve had Dells since 1998 and, besides the fact that they are great machines; the tech support is so good I won’t get anything else. Between laptops and desktops and between my husband, son, daughter, and sister-in-law, this is the 16th Dell in our household—and never have had a bad apple.

--The only thing about the computer about which I am totally unenthusiastic is Windows 8.1 which I’ve found horrible and annoying. Microsoft makes decisions that control the way the computer is configured and operates that are different from what I’d prefer and I’m not given the choice to change them. It’s sort of a battle between two control freaks and Microsoft wins. I understand Windows 10 (what happened to 9?) will get the start button back and that should be an improvement. I plan to download it when it becomes available because it just can’t be any worse

But, others than Windows 8, this is as close to perfect as I’ve ever dreamt of being. The xps 8700 does everything well, fast, and beautifully.