How noisy is your Aurora R4

I know this is a late response to your question but maybe your problem stems from the same source as mine. I've had an Aurora R4 for over a year and finally isolated the worst noise down to the fan between the disk drives. If I'm lucky I can open the case, swing out the "door" that covers my Nvidia 560Ti card, pull out the fan about an inch, tap it or rattle it and the noise reduces considerably. Unfortunately as of late this has not worked. Pushing 65 I've got hearing problems as well but this is really loud and from time to time even my wife "rattles my cage" about it.

Good luck.

Thanks for that suggestion. I shut the computer down and do a cleanout every couple months so will check that next time. What is weird about the noise is sometimes it's gone for a day or two then pops back up.

Thanks again.

I listened to that fan when I first heard the noise, but couldn't hear what I was trying to find. A Alienware tech. said it could also be the hard drive itself. I ruled that out when I installed a SSD drive and disconnected both the power and SATA cable to the hard drive.The noise still comes and goes.

For the record the noise from the hard disk fan on my system is also intermittent. Occasionally I'll fire up the computer and the fan noise is "normal" so I don't need to "tweak" the fan as I described in my previous post.

I guess I'll count my lucky stars that I found the fan making the noise. It took quite awhile to isolate it from the several other fans throughout the box. I'm accustomed myself to the occasional tweak of the fan and learned to live with it. Nevertheless if you have an extremely low tolerance for such noises I could see where it would become intolerable. Hang in there, you may find that noisy critter yet!

See my posts in this thread:

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/p/19364551/19820248.aspx#19820248

Be sure the fans are not off-balance due to dusts/dirt. If the fans are worn-out, most are easy the replace. The first step is to first find out what exactly is vibrating. My system is almost 3 years old. The only noise mine makes is the fans moving air.

Excellent point Tesla1856. I live in a rural environment and dust is a major problem here. One day I slid out that noisy HDD fan housing as far as it would go and accidentally touched the spinning fan, a load of dust spewed out and the noise stopped when the fan spun back up to speed. As Wayne3842 does I periodically do a maintenance cleaning of the interior of the box using a small vacuum made for this purpose. I even have a very thin electrostatic filter in front of the liquid cooling radiator so as to avoid any accumulation of dust between it's colling fins. I do all this on a quarterly basis which seems to have served me well thus far.

I even have a very thin electrostatic filter in front of the liquid cooling radiator so as to avoid any accumulation of dust between it's colling fins. I do all this on a quarterly basis which seems to have served me well thus far.

I was thinking about using my throttled down air compressor to blow out the dust but was concerned about simply spreading it around rather than removing it. Removing and blasting the video card definitely would be better than trying to vacuum it out. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of the air compressor for an annual/semi-annual "blow-out". Thanks for reminding me of the option.

Also, your point on the use of filters in general is spot on. Ignored they can produce a shot-in-the-foot experience as mine clog up very quickly.

My Aurora is just a couple of weeks old and it has made so much noise from Day One that I wanna put a spike into my eardrums. I'm asking on another thread about DVI and USB extenders so I can put the rattling box on the far end of the room so I can be at least 10 feet away from that noisemaker. I'm 55 years old and have normal hearing for my age, so I'll bet that a young person would literally be deafened by this. IMHO, COMPLETELY unacceptable.

What about replacing ALL the fans with silent aftermarket parts?

Wow! My Aurora is not that noisy, just irritating. Beings it's only a couple weeks old, Call Alienware support @ 1-866-287-6727 (these techs are not in India by the way and know what they are doing)  have them get a tech to your house with all the replacement fans and see which one is causing the noise. As for replacing the fans with after market, that may cause a problem with the warranty. A friend of mine had a GTX660 graphics card and complained about the noise, so that may be a place to start looking. I am 75 years old, my doctor suggested hearing aids about 5 years ago so mine could be louder than I think it is.

Actually I called Alienware Support yesterday at about 4 pm Pacific time and I got this message:

We're closed now. We're open 8 am to midnight.

I don't know if that's in India time or what. Should I just wait to call them on Monday?

I'll open up the case later and stick my ear around the innards to see if it's that Nvidia making the noise or where it's coming from. It SEEMS from where I'm sitting to be coming mostly from the rear fan grille but who the heck knows!

If the noise is that bad having a tech come out while it's still under warranty is likely your best bet. I used to program mini-computers and some desktops during my career as a programmer/analyst so I've become numb to a lot of these anomalies and figure it comes with the territory of using the bloody computers. However, as mentioned above by Tesla1856, make sure you've eliminated dust on all of the fans as causing the problem before going through the hassle of calling in support people. Some of the fans may be of the discount variety and not able to handle dust accumulation of any significance.

The system was unpacked from the box just weeks ago, but I'll check everything on the weekend and report back. Thanks!

Hi chouichanga,

I'm not sure why you got that message when you tried to call because we are open from 6am til 11pm PST, I apologize for the inconvenience, I'll be happy to assist you, if you decide to contact Tech support, you can send me a private message and I'll handle your request, you only need to send me a private message with your service tag and contact information, including the link to this thread.