Aurora R10/R12, noise, upgradability of future video cards

I bought the R10 because it was cheap not because it was the best. You get a cut down motherboard BIO's, Poor CPU cooling for anything over 100w, Cheap Fans and alot of new GPU's wont fit. If your looking for the best I would look elsewhere, But if your looking for a Good deal Just wait and get one on sale.

The only reason why I got an Alienware R10 was because I got it at the black Friday sale for 30% off regular price.

I paid $2,600 CAD ($2,100 USD) delivered to my door. That's a 3600X, RTX 3080 and 2 x 8 GB dual channel ram, with liquid cooling and 1000 Watt PSU option, 512 Nvme boot drive.

I would never have paid the regular $3,600 for it.

Even at 30% off it's more than purchasing the components individually. At regular price it is way over priced, especially with the shortcomings, as explained in the post above.

However, if you are not a technical person and don't want to put one together yourself, they are not a bad deal if you can get them at a discount. I would wait for a sale, they have them on from time to time.

At full price it is just to much, and there's other options that in my opinion would be the better purchase at that price range.

I mean, if they can sell a system for 30% of regular price and still make a profit on it, you can do the math to roughly figure out how much they make on a regular sale...

They could make 5% less and provide a much improved customer experience, without all the custom solutions, that would perform much more in line with retail equipment. Better fans, better motherboard, 240 AIO solution, better case layout, better sound solution, less custom solutions.

Great questions and I will give you my experience without the other comments above that are generic and somewhat unhelpful.

1.  Right now one of the only ways to get a 30xx graphics card is to buy a pre-built from Dell.  There are a few other companies where you can build your PC to more exacting specifications but getting a 3080 or 3090 is nearly impossible and the price mark-up is just stupid (one company listed the price for a 3090 at $2500 which is basically the same as eBay for a single card, not buying in bulk like a manufacturer).  So, if you want to get a higher end GPU right then buying a Dell Alienware is a good way to go.  

2.  BUT, know that Dell GPUs are proprietary and while they have the same performance specs as the other GPU manufacturers, they are made for Dell in a slightly smaller size so they fit into the small case of the R10/R11/R12.  They tend to run a bit warmer than other large size cases with other GPUs, but that doesn't mean they are "terrible" or "junk" or the other words people toss around on these forums.  Running a GPU at 70C is just fine when they are built to run up to 85C before any sort of thermal throttling.  My R11 3090 runs at about 70C when maxed out in 4k on microsoft slight simulator and does this for hours with no problems. 

3.  Fans.  Yes, they are louder than aftermarket fans, but there's a reason for that.  Dell uses fans that are also in their servers as they move a lot of air which is needed in the small size case of the R10/R11/R12.  I don't mind the sound but for some it's an annoyance and they change out the fans.  Know that most of the benefit of fan swaps is for noise and the tests I have read about don't really bring the internal temps down that much unless you add another intake fan and another outtake fan (possible but it sounds like it may not be something you are comforable with).  In stock form, my i9 and 3090 R11 would run around 70C max on the GPU and 75-80C max on the CPU with the fans at 50%.  That is manageable, not fantastic, but also not terrible.  The AMD CPUs tend to run hotter than the Intel CPUs. 

4.  For pricing, I have read good stories about folks pricing out an R11/R12/R10 on the website and then clicking on the "chat now" button to get online with a rep....and ask them about any discounts they may be able to give you.  Also, as for sales at places like MicroCenter or Best Buy, I haven't seen any in a long time given the GPU shortage.  I found my i9/3090 at MicroCenter as they had a location close by and you can check their website daily and the reserve one and they will hold for 3 days, but they only get a few at a time.  Or you can order from Dell but it takes about 1 month (almost 2 months right now for the AMD CPU machines). 

5.  You can always get a larger case, better motherboard, non-proprietary PSU, more cooling, etc. if you build aftermarket and I would have done that on one of the larger reputable sites for that (CLX, Nzxt, etc) , but the GPU shortage has hit them hard and they have all started to add mark ups to the pricing or just don't even have some of the GPUs (depending on what you are looking for).   

6.  GPU upgradeability -- don't count on being able to do this with an R10/R11/R12 as the case is small and many after market GPUs won't fit.  Search on here and on Reddit and there are lists out there of specific cards that will fit and where they have been tested to work with the Dell system (a few 3080 and 3090s as of now but not many).   I believe the maximum size of the GPU would have to be less than 280mm and cooling can be an issue depending upon how the fans are designed (2 fan or 3 fan, and if they exhaust heat out of the back of the card/case in addition to inside the case).

All in all, I am very happy with my system as it was less expensive than a few of the other PC-builder sites given the GPU shortage, performs fantastic for what I need and has a warranty.  I upgraded the RAM (cheaper to do it aftermarket), SSD (to add more storage, a 5 minute job) and fans (maybe 1 hour) without any real problems and am glad I went this route, although if GPU prices had been more normal I would have built a system with a larger case, more fans, proprietary motherboard and power supply, etc. just to have a better path to future upgradeability.  But nothing is fool proof and most systems are outdated in a few years anyhow so the idea that you would upgrade in the future sounds great in theory, but you have to ask yourself if you really would do that, or would you sell the PC and buy another one.   

Alienware “GAMING” machines are the best prebuilt machines in my option. I own a R9 and now a R11. The fans can be adjusted in both AWCC and msi afterburner. All gaming machine are little noisy which they are suppose to be.... race cars aren’t quiet either. If you don’t like to tweak things in a gaming rig then a gaming machine is not for you. When I’m just searching the web , work stuff ect. The Alienware machines are quite. But gaming your gonna want to hear the fans going, if your gaming and don’t hear the fans your in big trouble. 
Depending on what you need a R-series Alienware Gaming machine for is your choice but as a 2 year owner of an Alienware machine I absolutely love them. I know very little on building a pc and for the price of these rigs are in my opinion is fair because of the support and warranty that comes with them. 
But yeah the noise is not problem for me as I custom my case fans to only kick in while extreme gaming. If Dell would have a Case fan upgrade section when you are customizing on there site I think that would help a lot of issues concerning people afraid of the stock fans.... but the fans do move a lot of air when needed. No matter what brand of machine you choose your most likely are gonna upgrade the case fans.

These Alienware machine are awesome and the best choice for people that don’t know much about the tech stuff but just want a reliable and great gaming machine.... and I’m one of them. 

Good luck and make sure if you go Alienware to negotiate with the sales rep. They may not come down in price but they will add programs, Ram and other things to your purchase. My sales rep person gave me the best warranty and offered my 128gb of xfury Ram and windows pro and a couple of other things too. So, work with them !

I never factor warranty into my purchases.

Reason being is:

- If I need it than it means the equipment developed issues during the warranty period, early on in it's lifespan. I am not sure I would trust equipment that failed during the warranty period. I would likely purchase something else.

- If I don't need it, than it is wasted on me and if I paid extra for it, a waste of money.

Gotcha, I did not pay for a 4 year premium and 4 year accidental it was added to my purchase along with win10 Pro. So yeah definitely negotiate with them. Also I’m not tech savvy so I need help from time to time. 

If you get it added at no cost to you that's a good deal and for sure take it. And yes, it can important for someone who is not tech savvy to have the option for manufacturer support.

I still remember my experiences with a retail outlet from a big box electronic chain, where they asked me if I wanted to purchase extended warranty on a $400 home theater amplifier. When I told them no, they dropped the warranty cost down in the hope I would buy it anyways.

I told them that if the amp fails outside the default manufacturer warranty, I would rather throw it out than get it repaired under warranty.

I then told them about the curve on new equipment, and I blew them away. Once your manufacturer warranty has expired you should be in the middle section of the curve (useful life), with the lowest chance of failure and if a failure occurs it would be random, not specific.

In case you want to look it up:https://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue21/hottopics21.htm

P.S. I had a better link, but I cannot post it because the word b*thtub is not permitted on this community...???...

I just ordered a custom r12 with the 3090 graphics card with 3t of storage,water cooling.can use an & o moniter or tv,but I have a 4K 120hz and can run fort it’s over 250fps.1000 wats

everythjng together almost 4k.

the only thing I have to wait to June to get my computer since it’s a custom build.

That’s awesome I got my R11 in 1 month so it may come to you alittle earlier just keep checking the progress.

in the time being if you don’t know what Msi Afterburner program is you better start studying because your gonna need that program for your gpu/3090. I have to the 3090 is it’s a super gpu But !

the VRam/ memory can get alittle hot while gaming/stress I think all of the 3000 series cards do so I’m running my gpu fans while gaming @ 60-70% and it seems to keep the gpu temps at around 85-90c and never over 90. Would like to do some thermal upgrade in the future about that issue but I have only had this rig going on 2 months. My second Alienware machine in a years time .... yeah I’m an Alienware fan. 

Hate to break it to you but Alienware are not the best prebuilts. That honor goes to Falcon Northwest PC's. They custom build everything including designing you logo, painting the aluminum case of your choice and every prebuilt they make you get to choose what parts you want right down to the fans and coolers. They are pricy that's for sure. No company comes close to Falcon NW.

Ny next choice is HP Omen, they make great prebuilt's. I bought an HP Omen 30L for $2199 and it came with i9-10850K, AIO Cooler, 750w Corsair Gold PSU, RGB lighting, 32GB of 3200Mhz HYperX Fury, 1TB Western Digital NVME, 2TB 7200rpm HDD, Wifi-6 and a RTX 3080 in an aluminum mid tower case with much better airflow than the Aurora R series. After that my next choice would be the Lenovo Legion series.

I did buy an Aurora R10, it's nice but I got a pretty good deal as it included a Ryzen 7 3800X, AIO Liquid Cooling, Lunar Light 1000W PSU, 8GB HyperX Fury 2933Mhz, 512GB Hynix NVME, Wifi-6, RTX 2070 (which was upgraded to an RTX 2070 Super for free). I got it for $1240.

There was an even better deal for less than $1200 that came with an RTX 3070 but that deal only lasted less than a minute. Am I dissing the Aurora R series? No, but i'm not praising it either. The chassis that Alienware is using in the Aurora is several generations old and they could do a complete redesign of the chassis but choose to milk the current chassis. The parts that are used in the system are OK. I have no clue what mobo they are using based on CPU-Z.

So the bottom line for me is yes I would buy an Alienware but only when it's on sale. Which is what I did. When I compare my Omen 30L to my Aurora, the quality along with the Omen 30L fit and finish is so much better than my R10. And the Omen is "definitely a true upgradable case.

I want to thank everyone for their responses, which have been very helpful to me. I did look at alternative vendors, but most are not even offering the 3090 card, or combining AMD 5900 processors with NIVIDIA graphics cards. One vendor that is super flexible offers cases that only have 4 USB ports, a non starter for me.

So I will at some point in the near future pursue an R10 with a 3090 card. Again I wish the case had been updated to provide better cooling and more room for upgrades, but that's life.

It appears from the above, fan  noise can be managed with settings. Currently my Aurora R4 which still works fine even with the bigger case and more fans, does have noisy fans when playing games, but idles quietly. So R10/R12 are probably in a similar ballpark to what I have with respect to fan noise.

My R12 with RTX 3080 fan noise is incredible loud! Still researching how to fix it....

Other than making the entire room cooler or swapping the case fans theres not much to be done. Alienwares have always had loud fans. High end gfx cards will usually run 70-80c under heavy load, enough to heat a room in winter with air that hot coming out the back. The majority of the fan noise is going to be from the gpu or the cpu cooler, and its better to have a loud fan than a burnt out card. That being said, it should be relatively quiet when not doing something gpu/cpu intensive. If the noise is really an issue you can adjust the fan curves, but be careful to monitor the temps. You could always turn up the volume or use headphones. 

My r12 is supposed to ship next week, finally replacing my aurora alx from '09. Even with a 2070 that 1st gen i7 960 just doesnt cut it anymore. While it can still run modern games at 2k ultra settings and pull 50-60 fps(cyberpunk 2077 does 30 at 2k with rtx on, dlss performance and medium settings), it hits a wall with the lack of avx. 12 years is a testament to how upgradeable AW has been in the past, as well as the power of the Intel i7 line,  but the tiny, cramped cases of these new machines make me think they are trying to force people into buying their proprietary sized cards. Ive had too many third party cards die randomly and prefer to get them directly from nvidia, they usually buff the founders editions. Hopefully they can come up with some better cooling solutions in future cards to bring the size down. You can get away with upgrading your graphics card every three generations, so theres ample time to see what new cards are gonna look like. If all else fails you can case swap to fit bigger cards.

I use MSI Afterburner to control the video card fan speeds. The RTX 3000 cards also allow for separate control of each fan on the video card, and I noticed fan #2 can run at much higher speeds than fan #1 before it starts making audible noise.

You can also create fan curves to give you better control of the fans.

For the case fans you can use AWCC to control fan speeds, or you can use the Alienware version of OpenHardware monitor. You can also make custom fan curves.

MSI Afterburner 

Openhardware Monitor Alienware Edition 

I found with all those you can make a good compromise between cooling and noise that is acceptable.

I got my R12 (11900KF + 3090) about two weeks ago, and out of the box temperature and noise is definitely too hot and loud.

I have replaced the case fans with ML120Pros and also added three more fans (push-pull top fan for the Liquid AIO and two intake fans at the top front and bottom) and quite happy with the result.

Now if only Dell can fix the Gear 2 issue, I will be one happy customer..