Thanks

i was thinking of just paying a little more a g getting the 990 pro with heat sink 

@Vanadiel​ the cost to do so was a lot higher

j honestly expected better Black Friday offers if I’m honest this year was disappointing 

Thanks both. I understand the oem aspects but as you say the drives are the easier to change than others. 

The Dell P/N for the NVMe thermal pad is 

It looks like it is 20mm x 20mm x 5mm thick.

Easiest is to order it with what you want for storage options and other hardware, especially RAM and cooling.

Well, you are going to find out these OEM systems can be though to upgrade, as they often have limited support for anything besides the OEM components.

The one component that seems to be the most easily up-gradable is boot drive and storage.

I am also watching this model. just to confirm that the 1TB hard drive limit is that Dell only provides up to 1TB HD, while we can upgrade to a larger capacity, like the 8TB HD in the link ??

another limiting thing is it only support up to 64GB RAM with reduced BW. wish it could support 96 or 128 with 5600MHz

another option is Precision workstation but seems more expensive with more HD slots that I don't really need that many.

thanks

The drive sizes Dell lists are the validated sizes. Yes, anything larger should work just fine. Drive size is not an issue these days. Just format in GTP format and you are good to go.