Aurora R13, my experience so far

Question

I could assure people they are sending these out, and two, discuss some of the things I have seen posted in here prior to receiving my system.My system arrived on March 3rd after originally being slated for March the 7th.  I bought the i9/64GB of Ram/3080 combo with their version of the 2TB NVME drive. I also got the Cryo cooling. The system arrived well packaged and was not dirty in any way.  There are handles on the side of their shipping boxes that once pushed in can allow dust and dirt inside.  It was minimal in my experience.  The first thing I was really impressed with is the wiring and how neat the inside of this PC is.  It really is a well-built PC.  It was easy to open, insert my 980 pro I bought to go in the other slot, and put in a Sata HDD I wanted to move over from my old PC.  Just a very well-organized system.  I fired the PC up and it loaded Windows 11 with zero issues.  Takes some time getting acquainted with the new Windows but I like it so far.  My next concern were the cooling issues I had heard about.  The CPU indeed does run warm, specifically the 0, 1, and 2 cores when running benchmarks and playing demanding games.  This was running on the more intense setting for the thermal that comes with the system.  If it is not a demanding game the temps are not that bad at all.  I do not know exactly what the temps are that are referenced inside the Command Center, but according to HW Monitor and other programs the heat in the system is not as bad as those numbers show.  I downloaded MSI Afterburner to set a fan curve for the 3080.  Playing Elden Ring and Resident Evil Village Maxed barely brings that card out of the high 60s.  Next, I used the Alienware Library to set up a few of my games with fan speed based on the demand of the game.  This instantly fixed all temperature issues within acceptable ranges.  When I am not using the system, I leave it in the high-performance thermal option, and it is fine.  It is true, the fans are loud, so many may want to look at replacements.  It doesn't bother me too much, but I can understand why it might others. The Alienware FX is the nicest I have seen in any of their previous Aurora or Area-51 systems.  It looks great.  I find myself loading games into the library and trying to match the color scheme of the game's artwork.  I have only used the overclocking that Dell has profiles for in this system.  I have not played around with that any.  I am impressed at how well the games I have tried play.  I am getting better FPS than I expected in some games.  A couple of things to keep in mind.  The first is that when I first started my system up there was initially and issue where it looked like every few mins there would be a slight hiccup and while I was moving my mouse it would hang.  Not sure what caused it but I only had it that first night some and then it went away.  So maybe updates cured it.  I am not sure.  The second is that if you are like me, and you use a lot of external media that plugs in to USB slots, you will want to make sure you turn off the sleep mode and make a few option changes within Windows power options.  My external media was continually disconnecting and reconnecting.  Also, be sure to go under my devices and right click each USB drive and turn off the Allow option on the last tab.  This fixed all my issues with that.  Overall, I am happy.  We will see what the future brings with this system but overall I have enjoyed it so far.

JOcean · Answer

A great hands on review and glad to see you are liking the R13 you recently received. I am sure this post will be very helpful to others! And yes the R13 is a pretty sweet system.

F34R · Answer

Which games gave you issues with temps? My CPU 12900KF with cryo cooling rarely ever goes higher than the 50's. GPU wise, I do have to manage that sucker lol. I go into AWCC > Fusion and set fan offset to +50 on mid, top, front fans, when I'm gaming. Otherwise, I keep it cool and quiet with the performance profile.

Dameon2k · Answer

I have played Resident Evil Village and Elden Ring maxed.  The other place I saw high temps were with benchmarks.  Now mind you, this was using the higher end automatic fan settings Dell provided.  I did my own curve and that fixed it (offset 25, temp 45 - in using middle dot of curve for those that are curious).  I have a Fan curve I have used since my GTX 980 and it has worked well with all my cards.  I think 65 if the highest I have seen that get so far.

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