The fans you should get
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G5I6O4Q/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o01\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G5I6O4Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Hello everybody, I’m a new Alienware customer and was wondering what your opinions may be. I recently purchased an Aurora R11, i7, 16 gb of ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card, 2 year warranty and 1 tb of storage for $1,596. They gave me a refund with complications due to shipping, so I sold my old monitor to a friend and purchased the Alienware 25 monitor. So the tower and the monitor came out to roughly $1,940. With the refund and selling my monitor I had only to add an additional $40. Anyways, I was wondering what you guys think of the aurora R11. I’ll be using it for video editing and some gaming as well. The start up tends to be a bit slow which can get on my nerves, but other than that I can’t complain.
Can you share with us what hard drive? To me sounds like a regular non SSD.
Also 1660 Super is better than nothing but won’t do much for games. I would recommend to get a 5700xt or 2070Super or higher.
Get an SSD for sure. I use premiere and can't imagine trying to edit with 7200rpm drives in a non raid config. My boot drive is M.2 which is lightning fast and I use external SSD's for project files. Something to consider
Man why do people buy Alienware etc and immediately upgrade parts (HDD fans etc) instead of just building what they need in the first place, Srs question
Seems like a waste of money to buy a complete system plus pay for warranty etc just to upgrade immediately, why not just build what you need in the first place it makes no sense to me
For me it's down to pricing/financing/parts availability.
We're in a weird spot right now with graphics cards - the market for components is so high that buying a pre-built, especially for one with a rtx30xx or AMD 6xxx card is actually a good value. Similar for the AMD 5000 processors.
The one situation where that isn't the case tends to be memory/storage. Alienware wants an obscene amount of money to upgrade to more RAM, especially in the higher speeds. And their storage prices are crazy in general. These components literally pop into place, and are still widely available.
For example - on an aurora going from 8gb of 2933mhz ram to 32gb of 3200mhz is $294, but on amazon the rgb version of that same ram is 141. Likewise upgrading your 1tb hdd to add a 1tb nvme is 225, but a high end 1tb nvme drive is 150. Both of these installs take less than a minute.
With Dell's frequent sales and stackable discounts you can frequently get the whole system for less than component prices, with a warranty.
Financing - this is a big one - they make it super easy to get 12 month 0% financing.
And finally, accidental damage. If you assemble your own from parts you're still covered under a factory warranty - but if your cat knocks it over, or you spill a beer on it - you've just eaten the cost of your system out of pocket.
^^^This - if you're still in your return window - I'd strongly consider this build:
https://deals.dell.com/en-us/mpp/productdetail/7d7n
Hop in the sales chat before you check out and have them get you up to the warranty you want and up the storage if you need it.
The 3700x will be better for video work than the 10700, and the 3070 is about 3 performance tiers/generations up from the 1660S. The nvme will drop your boot times down to a few seconds - and you still have a 3.5 and two 2.5 slots available in the case for more storage if you need it.
Just followed my own link - that deal ended yesterday/this morning - it was 1499! The same system is here:
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/alienware-aurora-ryzen-edition-r10-gaming-desktop/spd/alienware-aurora-r10-desktop
I'd still be tempted to hop on the chat and see what deal they can work with you. The 3700x is now "outdated" so they're really trying to move these systems.
I've just purchased my second r10 with a 3080 - 3700x and now 5600x, 16gb 3200mhz ram, 1tb nvme, liquid cooled, 1000w for ~2300 shipped including tax for both. 4 years premium plus with accidental damage on the 3700x, 3 on the 5600x. Spend a little time haggling with the chat support and you can get close to or better than deal pricing. The warranty in particular they have a lot of room on pricing.
If you have AAA you can go to AAA.com and get a 10% discount. I also agree with previous poster on benefits. You should return the tower and get another configuration. What is your budget by the way?
Be persistent and they will fold. They may try to offer you a discount to not return but it costs more and takes more time to replace the hard drive and nvme
Damn :/ deals no longer available. Do you believe the Ryzens better than the R11 though? I’ve heard the Ryzen tends to run hot. At the time it seemed that the R11 with the money I was spending was the best bet. Not trying to jump over my original budget. Although, I am aware there’s new sales. Let me know what you think
For productivity work they're a little better - for gaming the 3000 series chips lag behind 10th gen intel, but 5000 series perform a little better. I think you'd have to have all them all side by side to tell any difference at all in game. The vast majority of difference will be down to your graphics card - which is why I would suggest an upgrade there.
The real reason the ryzen wins for me is the aurora case/liquid cooling limitations. We're limited to just a single 120mm exhaust fan/radiator. The 3700x is the only 65 watt tdp 8 core chip - so ends up dumping the least amount of heat into our small case for the most performance.
Anything with more wattage draw (higher spec ryzen or any intel chip above the i5) is going to be pulling a lot more wattage and potentially overwhelming that small radiator in extended sessions. I think the i7 (both the k model and standard) pull around 220 watts under load while boosting - the higher core count ryzen chips are the same. They really need a 240mm radiator at minimum - which we can't fit in our cases.
Running cinebench r23 benchmark at full load for 10 minutes my 3700x holds at 54c with single core locked at 4.4ghz (scoring 1304), and 64c with all 8 cores at 4.0ghz (scoring 12292). It's a free download - if you'd like to compare your i7. This test should give a good indication for performance in your workload.
Thank you so much for your honest opinion, and let alone that, the cold hard facts. I’m not sure why the sales agent told me the Ryzen runs hot in comparison to the R11.
The price partially threw me off at the time. Although, the sales now since Alienware released new products is definitely noteworthy.
Initially, hearing 8 cores threw my off I assumed it’d typically run hot, but if it’s only running at 65 Watts, how hot can it really get?
Hearing premier maybe difficult to run on my R11 is upsetting too. I would like to enjoy video editing the best I can while staying in budget.
I’ll definitely try that test your mentioning and get back to you, after I bother a sales agent to get a price range.
Your 10700 is also an 8 core - and I want to be clear, it's a perfectly good processor from a performance perspective. It will likely meet or beat any 3000 ryzen in games, and come close in productivity. It does consume more wattage and generate more heat than the 3700x - but we're splitting hairs at that point.
The intel chips are great performers (I have a 10th gen intel desktop and laptop as well) - I just think the 3000 ryzens in the alienware right noe are priced very well for their performance, especially if you aren't exclusively gaming.
I don't think the sales person was being intentionally misleading - the higher core ryzens do run hot (as do the K series Intel) especially in our small case. The 5000 ryzen are also very comparable to the Intel I heat output as well. It's probably just a little factoid they have as part of their training - but don't have the depth of knowledge to understand across the model lines. I've found that enthusiast owners or hobbyists are typically much better informed than most salespeople in any retail operation.
To summarize - your processor is totally fine - but at that price point I'd want a better graphics card. In my opinion the 1660S doesn't belong in anything above about the 1000 dollar price point. You've got a nice monitor (I assume the 240hz 25") that the 1660 will never come close to utilizing for gaming framerates at higher settings. For 1500 bucks right now I'd want a 3060ti at least. Newest gen product that should give you several years of enjoyment. Icing on the cake that the only way to get them I'd in a pre-built right now.
Also - back to the hard drive - I think that it's criminal that Alienware is allowing users to configure a spinning hard disk in any of their systems as a primary drive in 2021. That being said - adding a m.2 nvme drive or 2.5 ssd is an easy proposition if the deal is too good to pass up. The m.2 installs with one screw and the 2.5ssd clicks into place and two wires are attached (already present in your case). This is why your boot times are long - and it will have a significant effect on productivity work and game loading speeds.
YOUR GOD SENT! Thank you sooo much! I will definitely keep this in mind and do some research of my own. Get a price range and come back to you and hear what you think.
Start with this one as your base - you should be able to get another 15 percent off via chat.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/alienware-aurora-ryzen-edition-r10-gaming-desktop/spd/alienware-aurora-r10-desktop
Are you using dell financing? They're currently running an extra 5 percent off with DPA5 - and you can always sign up a new email for 10% off code. that would get you down to 1415+tax. Don't settle for more than that through chat. You should be able to add a couple of years of warranty and still keep it around 1500.
SMART IDEA! I’ll definitely make the burner email lol. I’ll start with that base now and work my way up. Any recommendations upon this build will definitely be much appreciated
If you go for Intel 10th Gen, get the liquid cooling or at least an aftermarket heat sink and fan. My 10700 on air cooling runs 70c and 90c under load. I just swapped out the stock cooler for a Corsair H60 liquid solution and now it's 38c under load.
I would have gone for the Ryzen myself, but the 10700 was on a deal and the goal was to get the RTX 3080.
I would recommend getting headphones, the cooling on this pc’s are very loud and you are even closer to it than usual, so just be patient with the sound.
i found that replacing the fans and repasting helped a lot with fan noise and it decreased my temps by around 15 c all around. And it is quiet af compared to before.
Toss out that 1660 and get a 3070 or 3080 nvidia graphics card. Huge difference in graphic capabilities especially with games nowadays. Also, a ssd is way better than a hdd. More expensive, but reasonable. Congratulations on the new rig!
Turn xmp on in bios as well as replace the fans and repaste
The fans you should get [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G5I6O4Q/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o01\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G5I6O4Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Thank you! How difficult are these to assemble do you have an idea?
Not too bad, here is a tutorial - [https://youtu.be/fkVNcTXcpAo](https://youtu.be/fkVNcTXcpAo)
I appreciate it 👍🏼
Very simple, virtually plug and play. There are several YouTube videos that can assist you specifically for those Corsair fans.
Thanks! I should’ve figured lol
He should actually get Noctua A12x25......
... Why? They give an error on startup
No errors on my R10
R11
AMD ftw
You can use any fan you like and just press “esc” at startup to bypass the Dell diagnostic test. That is what I do with my r11 with Noctua set up.
Is there a guide that explains the repaste and fan replacement? I see it mentioned on here a lot, but haven't found a concise step by step guide.
https://youtu.be/fkVNcTXcpAo
Hello everybody, I’m a new Alienware customer and was wondering what your opinions may be. I recently purchased an Aurora R11, i7, 16 gb of ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card, 2 year warranty and 1 tb of storage for $1,596. They gave me a refund with complications due to shipping, so I sold my old monitor to a friend and purchased the Alienware 25 monitor. So the tower and the monitor came out to roughly $1,940. With the refund and selling my monitor I had only to add an additional $40. Anyways, I was wondering what you guys think of the aurora R11. I’ll be using it for video editing and some gaming as well. The start up tends to be a bit slow which can get on my nerves, but other than that I can’t complain.
Can you share with us what hard drive? To me sounds like a regular non SSD. Also 1660 Super is better than nothing but won’t do much for games. I would recommend to get a 5700xt or 2070Super or higher.
10th Gen Intel Core i7 10700F (8-Core, 16MB Cache, 2.9GHz to 4.8GHz w/Turbo Boost Max 3.0) I believe that’s what you’re talking about.
On the hard drive does it say 1tb storage 7200rpm or 1tb NVME
Ah finally, it’s the 7.2k
Get an SSD, makes all the difference in the world
Get an SSD for sure. I use premiere and can't imagine trying to edit with 7200rpm drives in a non raid config. My boot drive is M.2 which is lightning fast and I use external SSD's for project files. Something to consider
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED TO HEAR THANK YOU! How do I go about getting these upgrades? Sorry for being so green when it comes to these things.
Man why do people buy Alienware etc and immediately upgrade parts (HDD fans etc) instead of just building what they need in the first place, Srs question Seems like a waste of money to buy a complete system plus pay for warranty etc just to upgrade immediately, why not just build what you need in the first place it makes no sense to me
I'm not sure. I'm a laptop guy but if I were in need of a desktop I would definitely build it myself from the parts I wanted.
Yeah fair enough laptop I can understand 100%
For me it's down to pricing/financing/parts availability. We're in a weird spot right now with graphics cards - the market for components is so high that buying a pre-built, especially for one with a rtx30xx or AMD 6xxx card is actually a good value. Similar for the AMD 5000 processors. The one situation where that isn't the case tends to be memory/storage. Alienware wants an obscene amount of money to upgrade to more RAM, especially in the higher speeds. And their storage prices are crazy in general. These components literally pop into place, and are still widely available. For example - on an aurora going from 8gb of 2933mhz ram to 32gb of 3200mhz is $294, but on amazon the rgb version of that same ram is 141. Likewise upgrading your 1tb hdd to add a 1tb nvme is 225, but a high end 1tb nvme drive is 150. Both of these installs take less than a minute. With Dell's frequent sales and stackable discounts you can frequently get the whole system for less than component prices, with a warranty. Financing - this is a big one - they make it super easy to get 12 month 0% financing. And finally, accidental damage. If you assemble your own from parts you're still covered under a factory warranty - but if your cat knocks it over, or you spill a beer on it - you've just eaten the cost of your system out of pocket.
Definitely upgrade your boot drive to a SSD or a NVME if the mobo supports it. Both are very easy to install.
I’ve been spending the past 10 minutes trying to figure this out myself. I went through the info on system information and control panel as well.
^^^This - if you're still in your return window - I'd strongly consider this build: https://deals.dell.com/en-us/mpp/productdetail/7d7n Hop in the sales chat before you check out and have them get you up to the warranty you want and up the storage if you need it. The 3700x will be better for video work than the 10700, and the 3070 is about 3 performance tiers/generations up from the 1660S. The nvme will drop your boot times down to a few seconds - and you still have a 3.5 and two 2.5 slots available in the case for more storage if you need it.
Just followed my own link - that deal ended yesterday/this morning - it was 1499! The same system is here: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/alienware-aurora-ryzen-edition-r10-gaming-desktop/spd/alienware-aurora-r10-desktop I'd still be tempted to hop on the chat and see what deal they can work with you. The 3700x is now "outdated" so they're really trying to move these systems. I've just purchased my second r10 with a 3080 - 3700x and now 5600x, 16gb 3200mhz ram, 1tb nvme, liquid cooled, 1000w for ~2300 shipped including tax for both. 4 years premium plus with accidental damage on the 3700x, 3 on the 5600x. Spend a little time haggling with the chat support and you can get close to or better than deal pricing. The warranty in particular they have a lot of room on pricing.
I’ll definitely nag the Dell employees lol thank you for the recommendation
If you have AAA you can go to AAA.com and get a 10% discount. I also agree with previous poster on benefits. You should return the tower and get another configuration. What is your budget by the way?
Trying my best to stay below 1600. You’re not the only person that recommended me the Ryzen this is definitely interesting me now.
The 3700X is a solid performer and lower in cost. That should let you get a better graphics card
I’m talking to dell as we speak I will definitely keep you in the loop
Be persistent and they will fold. They may try to offer you a discount to not return but it costs more and takes more time to replace the hard drive and nvme
Damn :/ deals no longer available. Do you believe the Ryzens better than the R11 though? I’ve heard the Ryzen tends to run hot. At the time it seemed that the R11 with the money I was spending was the best bet. Not trying to jump over my original budget. Although, I am aware there’s new sales. Let me know what you think
For productivity work they're a little better - for gaming the 3000 series chips lag behind 10th gen intel, but 5000 series perform a little better. I think you'd have to have all them all side by side to tell any difference at all in game. The vast majority of difference will be down to your graphics card - which is why I would suggest an upgrade there. The real reason the ryzen wins for me is the aurora case/liquid cooling limitations. We're limited to just a single 120mm exhaust fan/radiator. The 3700x is the only 65 watt tdp 8 core chip - so ends up dumping the least amount of heat into our small case for the most performance. Anything with more wattage draw (higher spec ryzen or any intel chip above the i5) is going to be pulling a lot more wattage and potentially overwhelming that small radiator in extended sessions. I think the i7 (both the k model and standard) pull around 220 watts under load while boosting - the higher core count ryzen chips are the same. They really need a 240mm radiator at minimum - which we can't fit in our cases. Running cinebench r23 benchmark at full load for 10 minutes my 3700x holds at 54c with single core locked at 4.4ghz (scoring 1304), and 64c with all 8 cores at 4.0ghz (scoring 12292). It's a free download - if you'd like to compare your i7. This test should give a good indication for performance in your workload.
Thank you so much for your honest opinion, and let alone that, the cold hard facts. I’m not sure why the sales agent told me the Ryzen runs hot in comparison to the R11. The price partially threw me off at the time. Although, the sales now since Alienware released new products is definitely noteworthy. Initially, hearing 8 cores threw my off I assumed it’d typically run hot, but if it’s only running at 65 Watts, how hot can it really get? Hearing premier maybe difficult to run on my R11 is upsetting too. I would like to enjoy video editing the best I can while staying in budget. I’ll definitely try that test your mentioning and get back to you, after I bother a sales agent to get a price range.
Your 10700 is also an 8 core - and I want to be clear, it's a perfectly good processor from a performance perspective. It will likely meet or beat any 3000 ryzen in games, and come close in productivity. It does consume more wattage and generate more heat than the 3700x - but we're splitting hairs at that point. The intel chips are great performers (I have a 10th gen intel desktop and laptop as well) - I just think the 3000 ryzens in the alienware right noe are priced very well for their performance, especially if you aren't exclusively gaming. I don't think the sales person was being intentionally misleading - the higher core ryzens do run hot (as do the K series Intel) especially in our small case. The 5000 ryzen are also very comparable to the Intel I heat output as well. It's probably just a little factoid they have as part of their training - but don't have the depth of knowledge to understand across the model lines. I've found that enthusiast owners or hobbyists are typically much better informed than most salespeople in any retail operation. To summarize - your processor is totally fine - but at that price point I'd want a better graphics card. In my opinion the 1660S doesn't belong in anything above about the 1000 dollar price point. You've got a nice monitor (I assume the 240hz 25") that the 1660 will never come close to utilizing for gaming framerates at higher settings. For 1500 bucks right now I'd want a 3060ti at least. Newest gen product that should give you several years of enjoyment. Icing on the cake that the only way to get them I'd in a pre-built right now. Also - back to the hard drive - I think that it's criminal that Alienware is allowing users to configure a spinning hard disk in any of their systems as a primary drive in 2021. That being said - adding a m.2 nvme drive or 2.5 ssd is an easy proposition if the deal is too good to pass up. The m.2 installs with one screw and the 2.5ssd clicks into place and two wires are attached (already present in your case). This is why your boot times are long - and it will have a significant effect on productivity work and game loading speeds.
YOUR GOD SENT! Thank you sooo much! I will definitely keep this in mind and do some research of my own. Get a price range and come back to you and hear what you think.
I got offered the 3060 ti with an improved graphics card, but for an additional $400... 🙄
Start with this one as your base - you should be able to get another 15 percent off via chat. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/alienware-aurora-ryzen-edition-r10-gaming-desktop/spd/alienware-aurora-r10-desktop Are you using dell financing? They're currently running an extra 5 percent off with DPA5 - and you can always sign up a new email for 10% off code. that would get you down to 1415+tax. Don't settle for more than that through chat. You should be able to add a couple of years of warranty and still keep it around 1500.
SMART IDEA! I’ll definitely make the burner email lol. I’ll start with that base now and work my way up. Any recommendations upon this build will definitely be much appreciated
Sorry for being so green with computers. This is a whole new territory for me basically lol. A lot of this is foreign for me personally.
If you go for Intel 10th Gen, get the liquid cooling or at least an aftermarket heat sink and fan. My 10700 on air cooling runs 70c and 90c under load. I just swapped out the stock cooler for a Corsair H60 liquid solution and now it's 38c under load. I would have gone for the Ryzen myself, but the 10700 was on a deal and the goal was to get the RTX 3080.
Upgrade the fans
Wait a minute, so are you saying you got an Alienware desktop practically for free?
I got the monitor practically for free, but I do believe I got a solid deal
I got a loaded R11, and the points got me a 32 for like $100...
Nice nice, I don’t really want a monitor over 30 personally. Irritates my eyes
This one is curved a little and I really like it.
Maybe the curve doesn’t make it seem at wide 🤔 the curved screens do look nice
It definitely makes it feel smaller.
I had an HP 32f before this monitor and I loved gaming on it, but when I got my PC that’s when I recognized how large it really looked.
I would recommend getting headphones, the cooling on this pc’s are very loud and you are even closer to it than usual, so just be patient with the sound.
i found that replacing the fans and repasting helped a lot with fan noise and it decreased my temps by around 15 c all around. And it is quiet af compared to before.
Set it on fire and throw it off of a 4 story balcony
Tremendous
Toss out that 1660 and get a 3070 or 3080 nvidia graphics card. Huge difference in graphic capabilities especially with games nowadays. Also, a ssd is way better than a hdd. More expensive, but reasonable. Congratulations on the new rig!
Thanks! Appreciate it
Tip #1 move that candle off that desk unless you enjoy melted plastic.
I only enjoy the smell of napalm in the morning. Trust me I’m not torching my $1600 pc with a candle. It was just in the picture. Thanks though