by Alienware PCs have always had a certain lure. They were the first individually styled desktops to be devices for themselves, and it was a long, long time ago that if you wanted a “gaming PC”, it really meant you wanted an Alienware -PC. You probably could not afford it.
Everything else was just a beige box there maybe have had a graphics card inside it.
But now gaming PCs come in endless styles and colors, sold by a wide variety of retailers, and Alienware is now just a brand living in serfdom in Dell’s home world. Still, despite the company’s overlords, Alienware machines retain some of their former mystery, and also come with Dell levels of support and even custom hardware. Although the latter is not to everyone’s advantage.
This Alienware Aurora R13 (opens in new tab) is the latest Intel-powered version of the company’s most important desktop gaming system, finally with an updated Aurora chassis. For a company that was groundbreaking for the gaming PC, I think it’s weird that it’s taken so long to jump on board with the idea of continuous side panels, but finally you can also look admiringly inside your xenomorphic rig like everyone else. second.
Aurora R13 specifications
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i9 12900KF
Cooling: Alienware Cryo-Tech Liquid Cooling
Motherboard chipset: Z590
Memory: 64 GB (2x 32 GB) DDR5-4390
Graphics: GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
Storage: 1TB Samsung PM9A1
Power: 750W PSU
Warranty: 1 year
Price: $ 3381 (opens in new tab) | £ 3519 (opens in new tab)
The previous case was also surprisingly large, and it’s a welcome sight to see the new Aurora not dominate your desktop like the previous smooth white thing did. It still retains the comfortable curves, making it difficult to balance everything on top of the rig for better or worse. And there is still a clear Heart of Gold aesthetic to the chassis design, contoured as it is in exciting thick shapes.
However, the cover is not the only one that is not standard with the Alienware Aurora R13; there are many internal components that are outside the norms of the PC Games Convention. First of all, the Z590 chipset oscillating motherboard is unlike anything you find from the likes of Asus, MSI or Gigabyte. It’s a bespoke design that fills the chassis and conforms to no ATX / micro-ATX standard I can see.
It is also quite light on the VRM and the included heatsink in the front. Which would make me worry about how it’s going to handle something as power-intensive as the Intel Core i9 12900KF that Alienware has packed into this $ 3400 computer. And do not get me started on the BIOS that sits on the board; it is as if the last 15 years have never happened.
I mean, it works, and has all the default settings you need if you were to dig around in there, and there are even overclock settings for the chip if you wish (I would not, our CPU choked even with stock settings). But the fact that it refers to Alder Lake Efficient Cores as just regular Atom Cores, has led me to believe that not much has been done to update the firmware since it saw its first engineering test from Intel.
The memory also looks a bit suspicious in there with its bare green PCB, especially when we’ve been used to DDR5 modules with funky heat dissipators and RGB dimensions within an inch of their sparkling life. Looking at you G.Skill. There is no XMP to speak of, but it is 64 GB DDR5 running at 4390 MHz, and it pays off on the bandwidth front.
GeForce RTX 3080 (opens in new tab) looks quite generic too, although at least it has a pretty hefty heatsink and dual fan configuration. And it works, giving a decent thermal performance under full game load.
It’s still strange that you get the same type of old-fashioned Dell / Alienware bare metal chassis, generic motherboard, only RAM and basic GPU that you would get with the closed cover design, but now fully on screen. It’s a little jarring in light of some of the magnificent interiors you will find from several boutique system builders.
Elsewhere, you get a full 1 TB of storage in the form of the Samsung OEM-focused PM9A1 SSD. It’s a proper PCIe 4.0 drive (opens in new tab), however, with ranked sequential read / write performance measured at 7000 MB / s and 5100MB / s, respectively. And that raw speed is confirmed by our game testing, with the Aurora R13 actually delivering the fastest FFXIV level loads we’ve seen in a pre-built system.
And the gaming performance is quite impressive as well. All the fear I felt due to the strange non-standard inside – which somewhere does not fit with what has become the advanced PC gaming standard – has somehow disappeared now that I play on it. The performance across the board is pretty damn impressive, surpassing other, more expensive systems we’ve loved and PCs with GPUs that should fry it.
1440p gaming performance
4K gaming performance
System performance
Honestly, I did not really expect that. We have had some good experiences with Alienware machines, but we have also had times where non-standard technology has seriously held them back and made us question why they did not perform. Seeing the CPU hit a 100 ° C peak and choke in our video coding test made me think that the Aurora R13 could also suffer in the final calculation.
But that is not the case.
Up against the Ryzen 9 5900X-powered Corsair One a200 (opens in new tab)also with an RTX 3080 inside, and against the HP Omen 45L (opens in new tab) with top Alder Lake CPU and an RTX 3090, the Aurora R13 holds its own.
I’m impressed that at 1440p it delivers the same type of gaming performance as the RTX 3090-powered Omen, with just a few fps at most. It is faster than the ultra-compact Corsair One, although it can be expected given the different size of the chassis and the tendency to perform at higher speeds with superior cooling. The strange thing is that the RTX 3080 actually runs hotter in the Aurora than the limited version inside Corsair’s diminutive chassis, but still delivers higher frame rates.
It feels like the Corsair One is holding back the GPU to keep the temperature down, while Alienware is just letting it go. The problem with that is that the cooling inside the Aurora can tend to get wild. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, fans will just spin up to turbine proportions to relax. Other times it can go off under full load and you will hardly notice it.
But I’m very surprised by the 4K gaming performance that the Aurora has in front of the Omen system. This is a system that is comfortably cheaper than any of the other two – something we rarely say about an Alienware rig – and I did not expect it to consistently surpass them right out of the box.
And it plays into the ethos of Alienware systems; they are almost as console-like as gaming PCs. They are for people who want to buy into a PC brand, but who do not necessarily have to deal with the usual PC game setups that can bother a new system. And these people want their rigs to smash it out of the box, which this system certainly does.
Although it also suggests a problem I have with the Aurora R13 – and Alienware systems in general – from the point of view of a long-term PC gaming hardware nerd. And that’s about the basic upgrade capability of these partially bespoke machines.
With the non-standard motherboard, you have the problem that when the platform it is based on is made effectively obsolete by far superior hardware, you have no option to upgrade beyond buying a brand new rig. This is where a standard gaming PC will have your back. Just buy a new motherboard and chip, and you’ll go. Nothing you can do with an Alienware rig.
What I want to say, however, is that the motherboard platform itself is generally the last thing you want to upgrade, so even though it gives a limited life of the Aurora R13 as a whole, it is probably not that big of an issue for most PC gamers. This is partly because the other parts of the system are so accessible. Upgrading your memory or adding a new SSD is difficult because the slightly weird, bespoke motherboard design puts everything at the forefront and makes them easy to access. This is not something you always want to see on more standard ATX mobiles.
The graphics card is also the standard dual-slot price, and it is without a doubt the most important component a PC player will actually want to upgrade. The downside to this, however, is that if the trend for higher-power GPUs continues, your 750W PSU will lag behind at the high end. And it’s also of a bespoke design in Aurora, which will make it difficult to find a replacement either difficult or more expensive than it can be with a standard ATX design.
These are all issues you may have with Corsair One as well, a gaming PC we can not help but love in itself. It is a system that suffocates for a good reason – its small scale – but which is also far too expensive to be a viable recommendation for most people. And try to upgrade it in a couple of years.
Which makes Aurora an interesting system to recommend. Pricing of all PC gaming hardware is constantly changing at the moment, but it’s refreshing to see that Alienware does not go as hard on the wallet as Corsair, or even the Omen machine we have tested it against. And, as I said before, the valuation is not something that always tips in favor of the Aurora rigs.
However, Dell has regular sales, which can put gaming systems in a more sensible position. And for this type of high-specific RTX 3080 system, the sticker price is ~ $ 3400 par for the course. Similar systems from OriginPC and Falcon Northwest will cost far more, and iBuyPower is around the same level.
Which, as someone who would always build their own rigs, is still a bit bad.
Paying over three thousand dollars for a gaming PC feels ridiculous to me, and that makes this specific specification I have tested almost impossible to recommend. And when I talk about Alienware as a pure gaming PC brand, there is zero point in choosing a SKU with 64 GB of DDR5 memory.
Almost every other RTX 3080-based Aurora R13 with a decent CPU will essentially deliver the same performance, and come with a much lower price tag. Dropping down to just 16GB of DDR5 RAM will save you a huge amount of money, and it’s a far more tempting Aurora R13 system for $ 2,369 (opens in new tab) which uses the 12-core Alder Lake instead.
And because of my experience with this version of R13, I would like to recommend the cheaper design, much to the annoyance of other members of the PC Gamer hardware team. Exactly this specification? No.
But it’s also because you can build a system yourself for less. Finally. This is something we have just started to see again in recent sales events (opens in new tab)where prices are actually becoming competitive on all parts of the PC gaming hardware for the first time in several years.
Assembling a machine yourself is super satisfying, and in fact our own PC Gamer test rig surpasses all RTX 3080 pre-built gaming PCs we’ve ever tested, except with the best 4K resolution. I love building systems and would recommend anyone to try it.
Well, all without my phone number, that’s because there are certain people I know who should definitely buy an entire gaming PC instead and never take off the page. After all, I do not want to be their standard 24/7 technical support phone.
This is where a pre-built system comes into its own: after-sales care. Because that’s who an Alienware machine is for. It’s for the type of players whose first instinct is not to tear off the side panel at the slightest hint of a problem, and that’s fine. I love the technical stuff, but I understand it if you just want to play games and not want to spend your precious time plugging a screwdriver into your PC. Again.
So yes, if you are one of the few who would really consider a motherboard and a CPU replacement as a likely upgrade along the line, then you will avoid the Aurora R13 due to its tailored limitations. But if you look at your new gaming PC as more akin to a console purchase – to last the entire life of the base platform alone – then the Alienware Aurora’s ease of use, simple basic upgrades and leading gaming performance make it without a doubt one of the best gaming PCs out there. out. I just can not recommend you to get this version, because the specifications and price are far out.
