Aurora R7, upgrade to i9-9900K?

Chatted today with tech support and got confirmation that OC should be enabled by just swapping out the i5 9400 with an unlocked CPU. I won’t know until I actually go get a boxed unit to try this so this is all accepting the answer in good faith.

For the people who are comfortable taking off the VRM heatsink, the AIO block, and then inserting a new $500 CPU, do you really think they are going to run out and buy a new R8 just because it supports the i9-9900k? No, most would probably try flashing the R8 BIOs, and that fails, just throw out the motherboard and swear under their breath "never again" and tell their friends and family to buy anything other than an Alienware. All this "Alienation" (pun intended) of your installed enthusiast base just so that you can sell more R8s to a different set of people who wouldn't know a motherboard from their mother? This latter group wouldn't have bought channel R7s with i5 non-K CPUs so that they can swap in an I9 later anyways. They would have either bought the R8 from the site, kept the machine for 5 years, and called it good, or if they wanted to save the money, bought the remaining R7s from your channel partners because it doesn't matter to them that the CPUs are not upgradeable. You do all this machination to stop the few enthusiasts from buying the channel R7s to upgrade to 9th-gen CPUs? After they read this thread, they wouldn't touch the R8s either because they know Alienware will try to pull the same stunt on the R8 in a couple of years.

@PCWCFA This was perfect... just perfectly stated and couldn't have been summarized better!

slow clap for PCWCFA 

Well said! 

I'll never buy Dell again if they dont allow r7 to upgrade to 9th gen

I myself want to keep a close eye on this. My Aurora R7 is a year and half old and it would be great to upgrade this year or next.

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@Davemacx wrote:

I'll never buy Dell again if they dont allow r7 to upgrade to 9th gen

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I don't think it's ever going to happen.

I started this thread but I've already resigned myself to the likelihood that we'll never see Intel 9th gen CPU support on this platform.  But you know what, I've learned a valuable lesson - and that's to never waste my money on a pre-built computer again, much less one from Dell.

Anyway, the new 3000 series Ryzen's are looking much more appealing.  I'll probably be going back to the AMD camp once time for a new PC.  And I'll be sure to build the thing myself this time around. 

Found your thread by search if I can upgrade my 8086K to 9900K in my R7. No good!

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@amstel78 wrote:

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@Davemacx wrote:

I'll never buy Dell again if they dont allow r7 to upgrade to 9th gen

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I don't think it's ever going to happen.

I started this thread but I've already resigned myself to the likelihood that we'll never see Intel 9th gen CPU support on this platform.  But you know what, I've learned a valuable lesson - and that's to never waste my money on a pre-built computer again, much less one from Dell.

Anyway, the new 3000 series Ryzen's are looking much more appealing.  I'll probably be going back to the AMD camp once time for a new PC.  And I'll be sure to build the thing myself this time around. 

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The sad thing is that if we had of bought ANY other prebuilt system with a z370 motherboard we would be able to upgrade to 9th gen and it would have most likely been cheaper.

Came home to find the R7 sitting on a BIOS recovery screen.  Had to restore the BIOS.  Then, the PC decides to reboot itself about 5 times so I figured an update must have happened while I was at work.  Sure enough, the BIOS is now 1.0.19. Of course, it's just security patches because Intel can't get their **bleep** together. Such a disappointment.

Well said PCW...
I was in favor of buying a Dell and would recommend to friends and family given the right price, but this action from Dell and the silence from Dell employee watching this thread make me decided to never ever recommend a Dell again. Literally iBuypower, PowerPC or even walmart pcs are more up-gradable, have just as good return policy and customer support. AND I'm even more **bleep** off since there were times in the past few months where the i9-9900K became very cheap and I missed out on all those deals, because that chip would be useless on my R7.

Alienware employee should make note of the 2nd point: people who can install and upgrade GPU won't ditch their R7 for an R8 just for a CPU anyway, so your action of blocking their upgrade is not only useless but it will backfire. No doubt there will be people who had enough and sell their R7, build a new system and tell their friends never to buy a Dell again.

I wonder if there is actually any difference between the R8 motherboard, and the R7 motherboard, that would justify Dell not updating the R7 bios to accept the 9th generation CPU IDs?  We already know that 9th generation is compatible with Z370 boards.  Case in point:  the R8 uses a Z370 board.  So aside from the Dell part number "IPCFL-SC" vs. "IPCFL-SC/R," is there any difference at all between these two Z370 motherboards?    

@r72019 Nope! Only difference is the part number according to the Alienware tech support guy I spent about 2 hours talking with.  The guy was great, but basically he agreed with me and confirmed that it is the same motherboard simply with an updated part number.