Aurora R10, horrible design causes overheating

Question

Dell has continued to disappoint. I ordered 2 Aurora R10s in late November and Dell failed to get order by Christmas (as advertised). I finally getting my order 2 Aurora R10s in early January and now find that they have horrible overheating issues. After less than a month, both machines experience video issues and complete restarts under normal operating conditions. One machine will no longer boot. I should of built these machines myself, but I was low on time and some parts were hard to find. Instead, I mistakenly trusted the Alienware brand, a brand that targets gamers. Yet these machines fail under minimal load on games like Hearthstone and Roblox. I should of done more research first on the actual build. There is NO way these machines should have ever been shipped and Dell knows it. At a minimum this build should REQUIRE liquid cooling.

Airflow - The first challenge is that the machine case is just a plastic shell over an cramped metal case that looks like it came from the early 2000s. Air must pass between small plastic slits and then through small perforated holes. The air must then navigate a cramped maze in order to reach the CPU.

Heat - Due to the constricted airflow everything runs hot. To make matters worse, the PSU sits in a swinging arm directly on top of the CPU. With moderate graphics settings these can see nearly 90c, on the high graphics your looking at enough to boil water (95-100c).

Noise - In order to compensate for the airflow and heat issues, the fans must spin at a high rate, which makes this well beyond tolerable. I can hear the fans in my home from a different room on a different level of my house. You would have to wear headphones and even then it is audible.

Fix - Obviously, this isn't' a new issue as noted by the dozens of forum posts in Dell Community and hundreds of post all over the web. The only real fix to make this machine playable would be to add around $200+ in fixes

Add liquid cooling. (Corsair H60 may work)
Use a better thermal paste
Replace fans (Noctua NF-A12x25 or something else quiet)
Add VRM heatsinks (if you can find them)

At this point I'll just be looking to RMA the bad machine, then I'll have to actually do the "Fix" steps to make it usable.

Jaxsonnz · Answer

Yes to all of the above. FYI too:

Add liquid cooling. (Corsair H60 WILL work)
Use a better thermal paste (not necessary, but up to you)
Replace fans (Noctua NF-A12x25 or something else quiet) (Will not reduce temps, but will reduce noise significantly)
Add VRM heatsinks (if you can find them) (contact dell direct. mine arrived quickly and cheaply)

RodsterB · Answer

Pretty much everything you said was covered by Steve from Gamers Nexus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulhFi5N2hc

The new Aurora's R13 and R14 are better wrt cooling, especially the Cryo-Tech cooler on the R13.

Tesla1856 · Answer

@Jonnystar wrote:

At a minimum this build should REQUIRE liquid cooling.

You don't say what main-processor in installed, but if it is Intel i7 or Intel-i9 (or AMD equivalent) I agree.

However, you just add the Liquid-Coolers and 850w Power-Supply to the config before you checkout.

The thermal-paste that Dell uses should be fine. The fans are fine.

In most machines, you only get the motherboard revision with the VRM heatsinks ... if you ordered it with an Intel K-class processor.

You also don't mention what dedicated video-cards you ordered them with.

All that said ... just give Dell a call. That should be able to take care of you and get you back on track.

Jonnystar · Answer

Totally agree with his points in the video.  The airflow in the case is just bad, but even that could be acceptable if it came with liquid cooling.  Mine did not, they were a system that was sold as-is with no modifications allowed.  'If' I knew of the cooling issue and 'could' of modified it I would have, but this was the whole reason I bought instead of built.  I didn't want to spend time dealing with it and trusted that a gaming brand like Alienware would not have cooling issues.

Jonnystar · Answer

@Tesla1856 The processor is Ryzen 7 5800 4.6, 550W PSU, GeForce RTX3060 12GB, 512 PCIe NVMe SSD. I added both these to my cart on a Cyber Monday sale. Your point about configuration isn't accurate. I ordered this on a Cyber Monday sale and it did not allow me to configure it. It only allowed these to be placed in card as-is. Even if I could configure it, I'd expect that a stock build from Alienware wouldn't have these overheating issues (not hard to find many posts about R10 overheating issues online).

The mods I mention is what I think I'll have to do to make these work. The thermal paste will need to be replaced if I switch to liquid cooling, so might as well switch to a good one. I disagree that the fans are fine. I can't say that they are bad at cooling, because I think the overall case design is the issue. However, I can say that they are extremely noisy well beyond any reasonable expectation, but it could be that they are just forced to spin at high RPM to deal with the overheating. The mobo doesn't have any heatsinks over the VRM.

yes, I have contacted support and they've asked me to try and pull some diagnostic. However, one won't actually boot up right now. This is the same one that continually rebooted, so we'll see how it goes. The whole point of purchasing a prebuilt was to not have to deal with these issues.

Jonnystar · Answer

Thanks for the info, much appreciated.  Amazing that there is so much information on how to fix this build out there.  I'd still surprised that Dell shipped it with all these known issues.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Sounds like a mid-level pre-config on sale (for budget-conscious buyers). Right, not all Aurora base-configurations allow customization (and obviously pre-configs allow little to none).

I was trying to say I agree that most better processors should include Liquid-Coolers, however, that would raise the price a bit and many buyers like cheap and barely good enough. I don't mess-with, buy, or really know much about AMD CPUs (but the Alienware Engineers do). However, not being impressed with failure-rates and pricing on the latest high-end Nvidia cards, I might be switching back to AMD video-cards after all these years. I still like my GTX-1070 cards.

Yes, obviously you would have to re-thermal-paste the CPU if the existing cooler is removed or upgraded. Noctua is good.

Good luck with your repairs.

Jaxsonnz · Answer

H60 comes pre pasted and works fine. You can replace if you want, but don't strictly need to.

VRM heatsinks don't ship if you have air cooling, as the air blows over them anyway. You need these if you switch to liquid as you're removing the air movement in that area now.

Basically I wouldn't load this case with a massive GPU etc in an effort to keep the extremely poor air flow design matched to the heat you're producing.

Fans all work from factory, they're just really loud and move a lot of air.
Switching to Noctuas reduce the noise but also reduce a bit of air volume shifted.

Should never be shipped with air cooling only, but like others here when I ordered I was not given an option to up spec to water cooling or up the RAM etc, which all cost me money to address after it arrived.

Jonnystar · Answer

I just read that the heatsinks were necessary.  However your point about he liquid cooling requiring them with the reduced airflow across them makes sense.

Jonnystar · Answer

Thanks for the feedback.  Yeah when I bought these I was looking for a deal, but also just wanted to save some time vs building it myself.  Now I'll be paying more and spending more time, which is a lose/lose.  I think I'll probably have to return one because it wont even send a signal to the monitor anymore (switched cables/ports, but no luck).

RodsterB · Answer

I was fortunate because my R10 was part of a flash deal last year and it came with an 3800X, RTX 2070 which was upgraded for free with a 2070 Super, 1000w PSU, Liquid Cooled, 512GB, Wifi 6, Lunar Light chassis. I got it for $1249 tax included.

Its been okay, I recently lost the PSU which was covered under the warranty but even my rig has thermal issues. I live in Florida so ambient temps will be in the 78 deg range but I cool down the GPU with MSI Afterburner where I can turn up the GPU fam to cool down the card. What really hurts the design which is pretty obvious is the micro chassis which might even be smaller than micro.

Like you said, if you can get these systems on sale, they are borderline acceptable given the GPU shortage. Some have decided here to remove the core parts and use it in a new build. I may consider that once the warranty expires and it I have a mobo failure.

STEVENB125 · Answer

I have the water cool CPU 10900kf with 3080 GPU air cool major over heat issue with this cpu also graphic run uncomfortably hot with overclock off . i added an side fan look funny* for gpu intake. . i put 3.5" on the bottom, zip to fan on top front where the HDD was. i remove radiator add push pull fan that run at 3000rpm NF-F12 there nosy when it hot. now no overclock profile I'm at 25-30C i get 50C-60C max before run at 105 an crash. 5.3hgz overclock alien ware profile i run at 70C-78C then CPU fan sound like turbo an cool down to 50. i would just put the 2000 rpm in push pull they almost no noise but it does alien ware hardware failure since original fan are 3000rpm no way to change diagnostic setting :(. these number are from gaming at ultra high. halo, Overwatch2, ark... stress test not ideal in real world application. Remember only put 3000 rpm fan for CPU not other one 2 noisy enough!

Tesla1856 · Answer

@STEVENB125 wrote: i put 3.5' on the bottom, zip to fan on top front where the HDD was.   On the Aurora-R5 onward ... Just removing the 3.5 inch spinning-platter HDD from up-top there really helps with the air-flow (as it is blocking a lot of it when installed). Plus, they often run hot.

sm56 · Answer

I have a first generation R10 (before all the supply chain debacle and shortcuts) that came with AIO cooling, vrms, etc... I had to replace the DELL video card for a Nvidia Founder's Edition RTX 2080 ti because the stock video had issues but it has been running smoothly for over 2 years (knock on wood)... That said, if I buy another pre-built, I'll be looking at Falcon Northwest or HP Omen.

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Aurora R10, horrible design causes overheating

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