When Dell announced its latest line of XPS desktops, I was quite surprised by the specs; I didn't expect a PC with kit like the RTX 2070 Super and 10th generation Intel Core i7 to be so modest. It's as if someone knocked the RGB off this rig and left a cool, slim build that would fit on any desk. Subtle, incredibly functional, but still hard to justify at this price point.

The first thing I noticed about the XPS desktop out of the box was how small it was. At just under 370 mm high and just over 300 mm deep, it is impossible to even see the case from behind the monitor. It is also a bit slimmer than your usual desktop, at 169 mm wide. It is also quite lightweight, and thanks to this form factor, I happily move this PC around physically as needed. When I'm at work, I keep it on my desk, but it barely bothers me. And when I need to relax, I carry it to the TV in the lounge and plug it in there.

There's a full array of ports on the front, including USB Type-C and an SD card reader, and plenty more on the back; it's the kind of PC that makes me nostalgic for the old LAN days, when no more than two people were allowed in a closed room.

The small size also presents the problem I feared the most: cooling. I quickly cracked open the case to take a look inside and found that the cooler for this CPU is huge. Since it is not liquid cooled, it requires a simple, large block to cool the i7 10700K, as well as carefully placed fans and other components.

And this cooler seems to do its job. In most of my regular use with this PC, including playing games like Microsoft Flight Simulator at the highest settings and rendering videos, the temperature tends to peak at 80°C, and I did not feel the system struggling to maintain this temperature! . A little higher than I would like to see, but very stable and quiet, which is quite impressive for such a small form factor. The room temperature where I live is still below 20°C (68°F), so I don't know what will happen when it gets warmer.

While quite impressive for its size, this is by no means the most powerful PC. The 10th generation Intel Core i7 10700K processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super are great performance parts, but not crazy overkill. At this price, we'd expect 32GB, but at least it's dual-channel memory.

The Dell XPS Desktop scored 4,877 points in the Cinebench multi-core test, and in various 3D Mark benchmark tests, it consistently places exactly where you'd expect it to, between a gaming PC and a high-end gaming PC.

Actually using this PC is a dream come true. Some programs are pre-installed, but in any case, what you need is fairly limited. The exception is the McAfee software, which I ended up having to uninstall manually, even though I checked "no" when I installed it. The good news is that it can be done.

The boot drive is a 1TB SSD, so boot time is a breeze. And with enough space, installing a few of my favorite games shouldn't be too big of a deal; loading times when playing games like Control and Flight Simulator were much faster than what I was using on my old machine. The other 2 TB of storage is also solid. I wish the other 2TB of storage was also solid state so I could play many games at their best, but it is still a good size for a media drive.

Playing the game really feels good as it is so effortless while being quite high performance in almost every aspect. Controls are beautiful on the 2070 RTX Super, with great reflections with the RTX on, but between 60-70 fps is preferable at the highest settings. At least I didn't notice any visible lag or moments when the frame rate dropped below acceptable levels.

Switching to Overwatch and setting the graphics settings as high as possible tended to maintain around 90 fps throughout the game. During most gaming tasks, the average temperature of the XPS Desktop was around 60°C, but it could go higher. In other tests, the temperature never exceeded 80°C. Perhaps most importantly, however, the system was painless to start up and run. It runs at a happy median and the drivers work.

The Dell XPS Desktop lives up to its expectations with flying colors. If you do intense work where this setup is a problem, you already know that. The combination of compact, work-ready looks and rugged hardware is truly a brilliant compromise. What makes me a bit hesitant, however, is the price. At just over A$3,000 (a little over US$2,000) for the review configuration, and with new 30-series graphics cards available in pre-built systems, it could certainly be made larger for less.