What you want is a voltage curve, that is the proper way to do it. You can cap framerates on top of that for very easy to run titles. My GPU could play CS:GO at 700fps. That wouldn’t really hurt anything, but my monitor doesn’t run that high and it’s just using electrons for no reason.
It exists! The 3080 is real!
As a current Alienware Aurora owner (5 years old now), I’ve been thinking of a new one, as I’ve been really happy with mine (zero problems).
However, I’m wondering how easy or how difficult that newer design is to open, with regard to cleaning the dust out. Also, what kind of a layout does it have in there? How difficult would it be to add a hard drive or SSD? Is there even room in there for adding hard drives or SSDs?
If you haven’t had it open yet, don’t do it on my account. But if you have, I am very curious.
With my Aurora R5, there were no provisions to add even one more full-size hard drive, but I did manage to add two laptop hard drives in the SSD bays. I mean, I love my Alienware and would love to get a new one, but things like that kind of bother me about it.
Also, congrats!
I didn’t open it yet. I wanted to verify all was well before I went digging around inside. That said, I’m using the Dell Rewards I got to add another 16GB of RAM and another SSD so I will let you know what I find.
I was an R5 guy too. If I could have found a 3080, I planned to upgrade that box but because they’re like gold, I went with a full system upgrade and oh my is it fast…
As you probably know, the Auroras are the upgradeable line. It should be fine.
You might want to see this…
That’s a good point, thanks for the hint!
Wow. That guy really took a dump all over that machine! The way he was manhandling that machine, it looked almost like he has a vendetta against Dell. I’m no expert, but it looks like the crux of his issues stem from their use of an Intel cooling set-up on a Ryzen CPU, which apparently caused excessive temps.
I’m certainly going to be interested in @DaveLong’s impressions after watching that.
Maybe I just lucked out then with my machine, but I experienced none of the problems that guy had. Or maybe Dell or Alienware was just building them better 5 years ago? Or maybe it’s because mine is an Intel CPU? Anyway, thanks for the link.
Houngan
9156
I have an R6, and I gotta be honest, it’s slightly iffy. Not in any soul-crushing way, but it does like to lock up occasionally. Plus there was this period where, for whatever reason, if I had a media player open in a browser (other than Netflix) and started up Overwatch, it would hard hang. I know that sounds ridiculous but after months of trying to figure out what was going on I tested it down to that scenario and it was 100% repeatable. Fast, the 1080 of course was the perfect card to buy at the time, and usually very quiet, but just a bit unstable.
Between my kids and myself we have three Auroras from the previous case design. This is my first from this one. None of us have had any issues except for 8GB of RAM not being enough in my middle son’s PC for The Division 2 which we upgraded and then all is fine.
I saw that video that was posted and it seemed clear to me he wanted to hate the machine before he even started looking at it. If I have problems, I will report them, but mine is also an Intel computer and not one of their Ryzen boxes and I rarely tinker with overclocking.
morlac
9158
You are now one of us. One of US!
Fwiw it wasn’t just the intel cooler he had an issue with (that’s important). The other problem was putting the PSU right next to the the CPU cooler (despite there being plenty of room on the bottom) and not having much air holes in the CPU area to exhaust from. That’s why it failed all of his temperature tests (not just because of the cooler). A water cooler would have probably been ok with that setup, but not an air cooler.
Aceris
9160
I think Alienware quality has gone down, and also chips have more cores and eat more power than they did 5 years ago so you have to take cooling a bit more seriously. GN do take it way too seriously, but there is a point where bad cooling impacts performance and then Alienware Ryzen system has gone past it.
It’s obvious that review is red meat for the channel. Just read the comments. Not a single one of those people have any experience with a Dell or Alienware computer from the last five years.
When you review a prebuilt computer for a legion of people who tweak everything and won’t settle for anything but an ideal they can’t ever reach themsevles, you know exactly what the review’s outcome will be before you ever watch one second of it. Throwing the fan at the beginning made me turn it off immediately.
PC Gatekeeping is about as toxic as it comes and has been for years.
Be that as it may, I have that unit (R10 with the Ryzen), so watching it was pretty informative to me about why my PC gets so loud when I play a game, and the air situation in there, since I haven’t opened it up yet. Plus it let me know what to expect to see when I do open it up.
Aceris
9163
Have you considered that this might be because Dell and Alienware computers in the last five years have largely been poorly built and overpriced?
I’ve looked at Dell the last three times I bought a PC and there was absolutely nothing to recommend them, their prices are on the high side and you certainly don’t get it back in support - their online customer service ratings are diabolical. If someone here bought a Dell because they saw a good deal then fair play - but it’s not a good brand any more. They’re basically trading on a brand name and goodwill built up a long time ago.
I think the PC DIY community does, in general, care more about cooling than is necessary. I have a 3900X with a “thin” tower cooler and it is entirely fine. As I said I had a 7700K with a stock cooler and that was also fine, though a little loud under load, especially once the dust got out of control. But that doesn’t mean that the cooling solution doesn’t matter at all.
Note that GN’s bar for the prebuilt reviews is literally “Are there any egregious fuckups”. The ABS challenger has absolutely nothing “ideal” about it, but it got a recommendation all the same.
There has to be room for a radiator up at the top. Even a small one with a pump block to replace the fan would have to be better.
@Giles_Habibula i know Alienware has made good machines. My best friend used to do 3rd pay tech support for Dell. That particular system seems poorly designed, with little to no thought given to performance. I’d thought about buying one of those last year. Glad I built my own instead.
Give the guy a break, he just spent like two thousand dollars.
KevinC
9166
I have a couple friends with Alienware PCs and it had nothing to do with the brand. If anything, the brand was a negative since there was a stereotype of being overpriced for the name. In any case, they looked at a lot of options and the Alienware provided the best deal, so that’s what they went with. One was replaced after five years and the other is about to be replaced after three, but it’s due to them wanting upgrades rather than the hardware going kaput or anything.
Anecdotal, obviously, but Alienware has worked out fine for them.
Aceris
9167
Fair enough, maybe they price more aggressively in the US.
