Aurora R13, Gamer's Nexus negative reviews

I paid $4600 for my R11 last year and made my last payment this month. I’m total happy with this machine and performance it gives me for what I use it for which is a simulator. My R9 I bought before the R11 performs just as well. It’s gonna be hard to stay loyal after watching what they did to the 12900 to accommodate the lack of cooling it needs. I would of been one of those people that would choose it and I would of been very upset about it. I hope it will get better in a few years because I like Alienware and Dell Care, but I don’t like the hidden walkarounds without price adjustments. 

I too am happy with my R10. I also had very good experiences with Dell Cares and Dell Support. They did me right so no complaints from me. The bottom line is that most gamers won’t notice that the system has been purposely gimped due to throttling issues when the R13/14 can bang out 60-120 fps in most games.

My R10 is not the best thermal wise but it can consistently hit 60-120 fps in 1080P. Again no complaints from me. That doesn’t mean the Aurora series is without faults because there are quite a few. For the many who criticize Alienware there are equal amounts of gamers who praise Alienware and feel it’s the best gaming system they have ever owned and would happily buy another from Dell. 

Like I mentioned, most gamers won’t notice that their system has been purposely gimped due to throttling issues when the system can bang out a smooth 60-120 fps in most games.

My R10 is not the greatest thermal wise but in 1080P I can consistently hit 60-120 FPS with a Ryzen 3800X and RTX 2070 Super. I can even compensate for the poor thermals. However when someone is dropping 5 grand on a system there are better options such as the HP Omens, such as the 45L which has solid thermals and I think maybe the next 5K system Steve mentioned he is reviewing.

@25m30s of review: 'you are paying close to $600 for a CPU which u really aren't able to use' ...

Base Aurora = 12400F ~$167 MSRP. ADD +$539 900KF ... now a $700 CPU u really aren't able to use ...

As an owner of one, i'm not happy with this at all !!

Are you having problems with your R13 or is it more of, I did not know they did that?

"I don't know anyone who would praise Alienware/Dell for charging x amount of money and then reducing the performance of the machine to something cheaper."

But it boils down too, how many people outside of this forum or who watched GN videos really care about what Gamers Nexus has to say? I contend most people who spend money on a rig to play games care about one thing really, and that is if they can have a good experience playing their favorite games.

Look, we all know the warts and issues with the Aurora series and yet knowing what I do know, I am content with my R10. It allows me to play my favorite games at Very HIGH - Ultra settings in 1080P at 60 to 120 FPS. That's really the bottom line for most gamers.

I know of individuals who spent more money on an item and when the item went on sale a week or two later they didn't want to be bothered getting back the difference. Many approach a computer purchase the same way.

It's primarily the DIY crowd that is laser focused on value and or getting the best possible components for their system. I believe the pre-built consumer probably makes up a larger audience than the DIY crowd. Some will buy a computer based on looks regardless of its issues and I personally like the look of the R13/14. I think they look pretty slick. So someone can look at what you might perceive as an overpriced gaming rig vs an HP Omen which has more positives than the Aurora series and might still pick an R13/14 because of its looks.

Peoples decisions and purchases are never linear. Most just want results and the R10/11/12/13/14 will provide that.

I would be upset too. It’s like buying a Ferrari and they didn’t have the right Radiator so they just disabled 3 cylinders and hope for the best. As long as it still goes 125 mph it will alright they’re not mechanics/techs so…

Mostly everyone in the sim world with beefy rigs and with a VR platform also a cpu hungry game/sim are overclocking the cpu to least 5.0ghz just to have stable frametimes around 11-15ms I wonder if this is going to be an issues for the R13 /12900 I already know that the 3090 can handle it because I’m running an R11 w/ a 3090 with space for airflow. Would like to know if anyone is using the R13/12900/3090 for any sims like DCS and msfs.

I'm using 12900kf/3080ti for msfs.  I'll do a comparison between my 5800x/3080ti/64GB 3600 DDR4 and the 12900KF/3080ti/64GB 4400 DR5.

The pc in its current form cannot use the core i9, the cooling is not sufficient, this is what I paid for and promised in the advertising. I have used the intel tuning app, to watch this for myself, after less than 2 mins, the chip is power throttled, the package tdp is reduced and the max frequency, rendering it pointless in paying for the chip. I have been mis sold here. I'm so annoyed. 

Here's Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 with 4k, maxed visuals running on the R13.  More info in the description.  You can see the clock speeds and temps, framerate, and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RCIMeNuhtQ

If you were wanting to try and replicate the CPU throttling as GamerNexus did in Blender, you would want to test at the lowest resolution possible so the GPU is not the bottleneck. Your test in 4K is never going to stress the CPU, in fact I doubt you will find a game that will make the R13 throttle the CPU as something like Blender did. 

I didn't do it regarding replicating per se.  Just wanted to push the system as far as I could within a game to see how much we lose in performance.