Aurora R11, liquid cooling: OEM vs. Third Party

Are there reasons for not going with the OEM cooler since one benefit is that it should avoid any BIOS issues? 

I have the OEM () liquid cooler on my R11. Under full load, the fan is as loud as the doom siren played by some Chaos Space Marine. I have ordered a(nother) Corsair ML120 Pro case fan (along with thermal paste), arriving next week, to replace the OEM liquid cooler fan.

Like Dell630i said, Corsair H60 AIO CPU liquid cooler is great. It uses the same CPU bracket, so you don't even have to take out the mobo for installation.

I plan on adding a 3.5” HDD, a 2.5” HDD and a 2.5” SSD (scratch disk) in addition to the stock M.2 (OS and apps) so also wondering if I’ll run short of cabled SATA connectors.

You won't run out of ports. There are 4x SATA3 ports on the mobo. The top blue port is an underclocked one (I verified it using UBM). I tried to connect my 2.5" SATA SSD to it, and it boots in ~30 seconds. The next 3x black ports are full-speed ports. I connected my 2.5" SATA SSD to the second-top, and it booted in just 13 seconds.

The top blue port underclocks so heavily that even my 7,200 RPM HDD shows significantly reduced performance when connected to it.

I have 2x 2.5" SSDs and 1x 3.5" HDD in my Aurora R11, although I used straight SATA3 cables. The contortion is a little too much for my liking. I'm going to re-install them using 90°-right SATA3 cables.

@AuroraHasManyFans and @Anonymous thanks for the guidance.  Interesting and valuable insight on the SATA performance.  The 4 SATA ports should be just enough, 3 for the HDDs/SSD and one for Corsair H60.

You are very welcome! I too use my Alienware for everything work and play.

Dell has an online service manual for Aurora R11, which includes detailed guidance on removing and installing the CPU liquid cooler assembly. I've seen Aurora R10/R11 owners most frequently use Corsair's H60 AIO + ML120 PRO for CPU liquid cooling.

I've just replace the top case fan in my R11 (factory liquid cooled CPU) too. Much quieter! Album: Case fan surgery 

@AuroraHasManyFans and @Anonymous thanks for the guidance.  Interesting and valuable insight on the SATA performance.  The 4 SATA ports should be just enough, 3 for the HDDs/SSD and one for Corsair H60.

I'll be using the R11 for video editing and rendering rather than gaming; quiet operation similar to my current XPS 8900 would be great!  The latest XPS 8940 looks too much like the XPS P166S from 20 years ago so I felt ready for a change 

Thanks a lot my friend! I used a push only configuration. The drilling is to allow myself to use a thick screwdriver, to prevent damaging any factory fan screws.

(In my previous post, I posted more details about temperature and drilling, but the forum's auto-moderator bot marked my post as scam and deleted it.)