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Aurora R8, Experience of Buying
My Alienware Aurora R8 experience
It has been 95 days since I hit the "order" button and at this point, I am glad to say that I am happy with my purchase of the R8. My decision to buy an Alienware desktop started a month before that when I bought another Dell system, an Optiplex 27" AIO with i7 8700 and GTX 1050. At that time, my plan was to use the PC mainly as a surfing/ email machine with some additional juice to run games like Forza Horizon 4. Long story short, that plan fell apart and I decided I needed something that I can have a little bit more control over. Enter the desktop PC.
I've been over to several BYO websites like wepc and pcgamer to look at building my own rig but like many of us here observed, Dell's solution are usually cheaper... provided you're willing to live with what it means to deal with the many colorful issues we see in this forum.
Configured my system as below (trimmed to show the main parts):
1 210-ARGS Alienware Aurora R8
1 801-1540 Onsite/In-Home Service After Remote Diagnosis, 1 Year
1 490-BEUO AMD Radeon RX 560X with 4GB GDDR5
1 321-BDXH 850W EPA Bronze PSU Liquid Cooled Chassis
1 801-1493 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Initial Year
1 570-AACN Alienware Mouse Is Not Included
1 580-ABUI Keyboard Not Included
1 555-BDBY 802.11ac 1x1 WiFi and Bluetooth
1 400-AMXY 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s (64MB Cache)
1 370-ADUC 8GB, DDR4 2666MHz
1 619-AHCQ Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
1 338-BSDW 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9400 (6-Core/6-Thread 9M Cache,4.1GHz Processor with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology)
The order was placed about a week before a US holiday so I was wary of a price drop. However, there was a good 15% discount and that takes a big chunk out of the 850W PSU + liquid cooling upgrade. Total damage is $875 + $76 in tax. I also have DFS account with 12 month interest-free payment and 6% reward.
Like many of you AW owners, waiting for the PC to arrive was a practice of patience. Initially the system showed that it will take ~10 days for it to arrive. I reached out to order support via chat and the rep was very helpful in explaining that other than ready-to-ship AW (like the tons of outlet R7s), most AW systems are built after order received. He did mention he will put a note that we chatted about my wait time concern. I didn't expect that to change anything until 2 days later, I was notified the system was shipped! And 2 days after that, a huge brown box with an alien head sat on my front porch. Without any signature required. Thanks UPS!
Unboxing the system brought me back to my first Dell which was a 17" laptop bought as a college graduation gift in 2003. As I plugged the cables and powered on the system, everything was flawless. Including Cortana's 90dB "HELLO". Ran Heaven benchmark just to get some numbers on the RX560 before shutting down the system and adding/ replacing the following:
WD Blue 1 TB HDD --> Crucial P1 500GB SSD [$61]
RX560X --> MSI RX580 Armor OC 8GB [$160 after $20 rebate]
Reinstalled Win10 with the image from Dell's recovery tool on the SSD. Everything worked great after that until the day I decided to upgrade my RAM...
GTS81
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May 23rd, 2020 21:00
Pass through top
Anonymous
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May 23rd, 2020 22:00
@GTS81
What are those 3 Thermaltake controller looking boxes, middle one circled in green? The three buttons are labeled 'speed', 'play/pause' & 'mode'.
Notice in the lower right corner this guy has an acrylic rectangle to cover his PSU cabling from the back. He has tubes running on the outside of that cover. I'm pretty sure I can do two layer tubing and have tubes cross over each other. Unfortunately, if I drill a hole for a pass-through fitting and it doesn't work, I am starting fresh with a new back panel.
GTS81
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May 24th, 2020 09:00
@Anonymous :
Will wait for the pic to post.
Unfortunately, if I drill a hole for a pass-through fitting and it doesn't work, I am starting fresh with a new back panel.
Return to your original idea of the cardboard panel and drill there to plug in the pass-through fitting?
I'm abandoning the idea of a motherboard armor for the IPCFL-SC/R R3FWM. The connectors are scattered and their placement makes it impossible to make continuous piece of material to cover the electronics. I think the color is half decent so will just go ahead with transplant as-is.
Anonymous
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May 24th, 2020 10:00
@GTS81 Return to your original idea of the cardboard panel and drill there to plug in the pass-through fitting?
Actually, I remembered I have a bunch of extra acrylic, including a whole other back panel to use for testing. Last night I ordered a bunch of 10mm, 15mm & 20mm Bitspower extension fittings to see if it will work. With 'zero' experience doing this kind of build, everything turns out to be 'trial and error', with hopefully less of the latter. The next build will be a lot easier
One thing I am considering is bringing some of the tubing runs from behind the panel into the front, without making it too 'busy'.
GTS81
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May 24th, 2020 12:00
@Anonymous
RGB controllers : https://www.ttpremium.com/product/lumi-color-256c/
I see that you're gonna try something that Mark of Declassified Systems has done. His work is world renowned. From this page: https://builds.gg/builds/custom-pc-build-49-origin-cooler-master-cosmos-c700p-bound-to-new-york-u-s-a-5826 it seems like both side panels do close after the mod. This is despite the 16/12mm tubes. In fact, you can see the lower left where the tube starts from the fitting being half outside of the chassis frame and then becomes totally outside of the frame at the lower horizontal edge towards that plastic PSU cover. That means you'll probably have that much of space to play with for your tube runs.
Two words for that: Distro Plate.
Anonymous
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May 24th, 2020 21:00
@GTS81 RGB controllers
So do I need that? I am pretty sure the Cosmos already has RGB control in the I/o panel for the OEM lighting. Do I plug the EKWB lights into the same controller, or do I need to get something else I don't have room for anywhere
GTS81
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May 24th, 2020 22:00
@Anonymous :
I read the user manual for the Cosmos: https://coolermaster.egnyte.com/dl/F817I2GRXM/
And your motherboard: https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7B96v1.1.pdf
So assuming the only EKWB lighting you have are from the
towersreservoirs. Those are Quantum line hence 5V ARGB.You rmotherboard has the follow RGB headers:
JRGB1 - 12V DRGB (usually older legacy RGB. Slowly getting phased out)
JRAINBOW1 and JRAINBOW2 - 5V Addressable RGB
JCORSAIR - Forget this unless if you have Corsair RGB fans
The tricky part here is your Cosmos also has an RGB controller, very similar to that TT one. CM appears to be generous by giving you 4 channels of ARGB but then robs you of 3 for the casing RGB. There is 1 more channel you can use but you must remember to use the cable provided with the Cosmos which is a splitter combining RGB headers with SATA power. If you plug in a regular RGB splitter (Akasa and EKWB are usual brands. I have 2 Akasas), and hook up too many LEDs to it, you can blow up the controller. So remember to use that splitter cable which is shown in page 2 of the Cosmos manual.
On pages 23 and 24 are details on ARGB connection and the controller. What you'll want to do is to connect one cable from a JRAINBOW header on your mobo to the "MB A-RGB Sync Connector (D)". Once you do that, use MSI Dragon to control everything, there is a setting you can use to sync and override everything so you don't have to download CM RGB software. Now for all your RGB wires in the rig, if they are 5V, you may connect them to either the free JRAINBOW header or to the Cosmos controller, but just remember to use the provided splitter. Just don't use the CM's splitter if you're using JRAINBOW header else your PSU is gonna zap your mobo.
I've recently read about some builds that stumbled at the end just because of RGB like dead LEDs etc. So maybe good to find a way to test them.
Anonymous
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May 25th, 2020 09:00
@GTS81
Much appreciated information. Thank you very much!
r72019
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May 25th, 2020 22:00
@GTS81 I forgot where you posted it now, but I got around to moving my 3.5" HDD down to the bottom, and adding my spare Noctua to the top front so that I have 2 fans up front now. I also tossed the 2.5" caddies in the spare parts box to open up more room. It was a pretty easy plug and play swap with the caddies, like you mentioned. I just needed to reroute the LED cable in the back, because the 3.5" HDD is longer and will not fit with the cables behind the caddy. Now the added db from having another Noctua IPPC in there is killing me...
GTS81
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May 26th, 2020 00:00
LNA? Or is that only for PWM fan?
r72019
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May 26th, 2020 11:00
Lna is not compatible with the ippc lineup. There's a caution in the instructions not to use it with ippc. I just lowered the fan curve, problem solved.
GTS81
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May 26th, 2020 12:00
Those who hasn't done it probably thinks its nuts but you do feel that additional airflow from the top 1/2" of you front grill when you place your palm there, don't you? At least that's what I noticed when I threw an unused AIO 120mm fan there.
GTS81
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May 26th, 2020 15:00
@Anonymous :
Ok cool. I'll wait while I enjoy warm orange juice here because when ambient temps are triple digits, forget all that fancy liquid cooling stuff.
Anonymous
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May 26th, 2020 15:00
Community member and fellow modder @Sharath575 has an Aurora R9 with i9-9900KS CPU and RTX 2080 Super graphics card; AIO liquid cooling . . . that is just too hot. They have decided to do the 'Phase I' open loop water cooling mod from the pseudo Alien where the PSU swingout contraption remains in-place . . . with the Eiswand 360 external radiator tower. I have been trying to push them into this thread . . . but now I am pulling them in
Hopefully they will show up and share some information and photos of their modification progress, and seek some advise from some of the experts that visit this thread.
Anonymous
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May 26th, 2020 15:00
@GTS81 when ambient temps are triple digits, forget all that fancy liquid cooling stuff.
I know exactly what you mean. This past weekend I moved the pseudo Alien from my upstairs office, which is HOT, to my wife's downstairs office, which is . . . less hot.