Alienware - Aurora R9 Gaming Desktop - Intel Core i7-9700 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER - 1TB HDD + 512GB SSD - White/Lunar Light

This PC has been amazing so far. Graphics are awesome and the FPS in games have been very high, “solid 120 and above,” including Forza Horizon 4, Destiny 2, and Rainbow Six Siege..just to name what I’ve ran. Just be sure you have a good gaming monitor or you are not going to get the full potential of this graphics card. As far as the fan noise goes, updating the PCs drivers and making sure the graphics card drivers are up to date has kept the fan noise down for me. This PC is air cooled so it will be a little louder than liquid cooled and PC fans tend to differ depending on lay out and case design. This PC is not as loud as my home build. All in all, this was a good purchase and was cheaper than building my own based off of current hardware prices. Would buy again!

I usually build my own gaming systems so this was a first for me. I was really frustrated with one of my builds one day and I said to my self it's not worth it. So I headed to Best Buy and bought me this machine. I don't regret a second of it. This machine really is awesome. All of the hardware seems to work really well together. The O/S is super fast. I went from 71 FPS in Overwatch to an average of 104 FPS with this machine. I really have no complaints with it. Yes it's a little pricey but you get what you pay for and it's worth it.

Had this thing for a year now and it’s a power house. Sadly like other reviews mention it’s a Dell so you luck out sometimes and other times you run into issues with longevity. The fans are a bit loud sometimes but that’s just processing power (or at least I tell myself that instead of getting a liquid cooled build). Overall she plays any game and I’m satisfied. Easy upgrades for el Gato products and other SSD/HDDs. This computer cannot overclock according to manual, but their control tower software says otherwise. Idk just game and have fun and get a new one in 5 years time. Lots of USB ports and other ports. Couldn’t pass up the price. Oh it’s 39lbs, kinda on the heavier side so you’ll need a heavier duty desk mount like I have.

I bought this machine specifically for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and it handles the game very well. The processor and graphics combination are spectacular and it seems this machine has just the right amount of RAM needed for smooth game play. I would recommend this machine to any of my family or friends looking for a reliable gaming computer. Take note this machine has the 2000 series graphics and the 3000 was just announced.. Cheaper and faster, I’m sure it’ll be coming to Alienware shortly.

I love this pc, so happy I decided to spend the extra money for it! I play fortnite mainly on it, and the graphics look awesome. The photo is deceiving though, it is a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and really heavy. But I bought a decent stand to set it on under my desk. Also love how alienware products allow you to customize the light color scheme.

So far this has ran every game I’ve tried at ultra settings 4K at over 50 frames per second, usually over 60 fps. The machine has been perfect so far other than very loud fans while running pretty hot during gaming. So far I’m very happy with the machine.

I was installing my software on this computer and playing Diablo 3 when the computer completely froze up. It would not re-boot. So I called Dell and they said that it is a common issue for this Alienware to fry mother boards and rams at 4 hours!! That’s crazy. Day 1 and it is already fried. My RL family member bought the IBuy power computer that was $100 cheaper then this and it is liquid cooled and it is running 40°C CPU where this Dell air cooled was 75°C and fan was running. Also Dell support is terrible and they said it was out of Warantee because it was over 6 months old!! Best Buy put this on sale just because Of this. Who would want to pay just to have a computer repaired on the day you bought it!!! So needless to say I’m going to exchange it for the liquid cooled IBuyPower because Dell does not stand behind their products and also this unit is over priced for still being air cooled! Oh, and also this is a compact unit and case so it will be building up heat and the fans will have to run full speed to keep it cool. So like others has said, it is super noisy and the fans are not consistent so it kicks on and off constantly like every 5 seconds it shuts off and then restarts.

This review is for the Dell Alienware Aurora R9 with an Intel i7 9700, 16 GB of Kingston Hyper X Fury XMP DDR4 2666 RAM, Nvidia RTX 2080 Super graphics, a 512 GB SK Hynix NVMe M.2 and a 1 TB WD Blue 3.5 inch HDD and Air cooling. The above components are mounted on a Dell Micro ATX motherboard and powered by a 850 Watt PS. There is one 3.5 inch HHD bay and two (empty)2.5 inch HDD bays. It is prewired with Full size and micro SATA power connectors to the empty bays. You will need to provide the data cables if you want to add storage. It has one 16 lane, one 8 lane and two 4 lane PCIe slots. You have room for dual video cards if wanted. It has both WIFI and Bluetooth. The OS is installed on the Hynix NVMe M.2. There is only one M.2 slot. You can use a 15 dollar PCIe to M.2 adapter and put in another NVMe M.2 if you need more fast access for a large gaming library. There is no access for a DVD player. You will have to use a USB DVD if you need one. It will come double boxed so there should be no shipping damage issues. Go here for a complete view and description of all the peripheral ports. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/us/en/04/alienware-aurora-r9-desktop/alienware-aurora-r9-setup-and-specifications/views-of-alienware-aurora-r9?guid=guid-d3cb1479-5af9-4e2f-9a8b-416fc88c775d&lang=en-us and go here https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/us/en/04/alienware-aurora-r9-desktop/alienware-aurora-r9-service-manual/alienware-aurora-r9-service-manual?guid=guid-5b8de7b7-879f-45a4-88e0-732155904029&lang=en-us for a view of the service manual which details all aspects of accessing and changing components. Here you will also see a complete list of the BIOS setup features. Just be apprised that models with the i7 9700 will not have any of the performance / overclocking features available, as the non K Intel i7 9700 is a locked processor. I spent a lot of time with this before I wrote this review. First off it is a really sharp looking unit .The lights can be controlled from the Alienware Control Center App to a variety of colors and effects. Although it is a Micro ATX sized actual case, when you take off all the plastic around it, it will be about the size of a normal mid tower case due to the plastic bezels. Although it is narrow at the front it is nearly 9 inches wide at the rear. It is a full 19 in tall and a little over 17 in deep. The case opens easily and the power supply folds out to reveal the motherboard. Removal and replacement of all components are readily accessible. (Note: the screw in the release handle has to be removed to unlatch the side panel) If you want to install a second video card the power supply cable is already in place. This unit has air cooling. The heatsink is a circular radiator with a 90mm fan. There is one front and one top 120mm fan. There is an extra PWM fan connector at the top of the board that can be used for control for liquid cooling or to add another top fan, which I did. The power supply is a modular design so there are open plugs if for some reason you need them. The graphics is an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super. It is a full length card with one fan. It can be over clocked via the Alienware Control Center or MSI’s Afterburner, but, unless you are an over clocking fame seeker I saw little difference in real world results. At stock settings on my 4K display at 4K settings on Furmark and on the flight sim, I saw 67 FPS using Furmark as a benchmark in full 4K at the highest settings and 60 FPS running DCS World’s P51-D Mustang flight sim. Compared to my old setup which had a GTX 1070, it is running 30 FPS faster and the scenery in the flight sim is remarkable. Furmark benched at 123 FPS in Quad HD and 183 FPS in Full HD. On to the i7 9700. Cons are that it and the RAM are locked. The RAM is going to be controlled by the XMP and is only going to run at the rated speed of the RAM. I substituted a set of 2 x 16GB DDR4 2400 XMP and they ran at 2400 with no options in the BIOS to overclock them. I believe the native RAM speed for the i7 9700 is 2666 so putting faster RAM in it will probably not work as they will probably clock back to 2666. On the plus side the 9700 is probably a $100 cheaper that the overclockable 9700K and it is really quite impressive. Although it is rated at 3 Ghz it has a great turbo boost range. It will spike to 4.6 Ghz and hold 4.4 under a steady varying load such as Puget Sound’s Photoshop benchmark. My old PC had an i7 6700K with a GTX 1070 GPU. The CPU was overclocked and would run at 4.4 Ghz continually and this i7 9700 benches the Puget Sound benchmark at 100 points higher. Granted the Puget Sound Benchmark is partly dependent on GPU power, but Photoshop is still predominantly reliant on CPU clock cycles, so this really shows the improvement of this 9 series i7 over the older 6 series. OK we have a really sharp looking PC with a great CPU and Graphics, more than sufficient power supply, plenty of peripheral Audio, USB, Video ports and lots of storage expansion room. Those are really important pluses, but ,there are usually buts ,and this one concerns cooling. The case is cramped. There is only about an inch between the top of the CPU cooling fan and the side of the power supply. There is one case fan on top and one in front. In its standard configuration running Prime 95, it was thermal throttling at 70 degrees C down to 3.8 Ghz and CPU temp would rise to 80 degrees C. Prime 95 stress is not normal but even running the Photoshop Benchmark which loads the CPU to a maximum normal usage level it ran at 75 degrees C, although it maintained mostly constant CPU speeds of 4.3 Ghz due to irregular loading of the CPU cores as opposed to the constant 100% loading of all cores with Prime 95. So it will maintain top performance in real life although it will run in the upper 70s. Many will say that that is not a problem, but that is for you to decide. I added another fan to the top. There is room above the installed fan. The pod that the fan is attached to comes out so you can easily install it. Just unplug the CPU power cable and take out the RAM and you will have room to slide it out. I did this and it helped lower the temp. Speeding the front fan up helps, but it becomes really noisy. Now on to controls. The Alienware Comand Center which includes two built in CPU overclock settings and frequency controls for the Graphic card and controls for audio and lighting effects, has issues on my computer. I uninstalled it and reinstalled using Dell’s published tutorial, it still didn’t work right. I called Dell before I wrote this review. A tech took over my machine and showed me how to set the fan speeds, but they don’t work. I installed MSI’s Afterburner to control the GPU fan speed and by aggressively increasing the fan curve I was able to drop the temp of the Graphic card from 77 to 67 degrees C when under stress. Afterburner can also be used to overclock the GPU if wanted. If you are a casual gamer who is also going to use it for other uses it should be just fine. It will run way cooler than any laptop, and if Flashy is what turns you on then you should love it. If you are a serious competitive gamer/ overclocking junky, who just loves the case, then maybe Liquid cooling and the K series i7 would be a better choice.