Aurora R15 , thoughts

Question

First off, this is long winded, so I apologize in advance. I am like most people in that I am more inclined to post a problem or a negative finding, but thought I would share on what has largely been very positive.

I am a fan of Alienware and have had a number of Alienware systems over the years, starting with the old company and the classic Predator with an AMD FX-51 Sledgehammer. Then a couple of my own full build updates in that case before an R4 and then the R13. The R13 was "quirky" and upon delivery could at times sound like a leaf blower when under stress. I spent some time changing fans, adding fans, repasting, adding a 4080 and then finally reading that the R15 was enough of an improvement to upgrade.

I went with the 13900KF/4090 build and with the sale Dell had coupled with some incentives from Chase, it really was hard to beat from a pricing perspective. Delivery was fast and safe and out of the box everything was good. Waiting may of given me the advantage of some of the early issues being sorted, but I experienced nothing unusual.

The good: I was honestly shocked and how quiet this machine is. I had bought fans in expectation that they would need replacing, but found that was a non issue. I put it through a bunch of games, some benchmarks and it rarely was even audible, even next to me. All the panels fit tightly and it didn't have a mark on it, all that plastic film did the job. For a prebuilt I was happy as it had no issue with anything I tried at 4K and scored a respectable 35K+ in Cinebench R23. AWCC worked as it should and hasn't flaked out or lost any settings.

The questionable / bad: I honestly hesitate to say there is anything I have found that is "bad", but there were a few things that stuck out. First, I am sure that there is a design decision on the routing of the power cable for the GPU and it was securely routed, but it is not pretty. Also, the NVME and the WiFi/Bluetooth card look a bit bare next to the rest of the heatsinks. Maybe a RGB offering for the RAM since Dell uses Kingston for their XMP sets anyway. These are small things, but do have a noticeable return visually.

Changes: I did redo the power cable as it bothered me every time I walked by it. I'm sure it is frowned upon, but OCD wins there over warranty. I upgraded the RAM to DDR5 7200 (runs at 7000 with XMP timings) and changed the front fan to an OEM Alienware RGB fan to match the rear, taking advantage of the extra unused RGB ports up front. I added a second NVME and then heatsinks for the others.

TLDR: This is the best Alienware / Dell machine I have had and with a few small changes is just about perfect for me. I get the whole build your own and the potential throttling etc. that can be part of a prebuilt, but I feel like I got what I paid for and hope the next version will be just as good or better!

JohnnyRamone · Answer

I agree totaly with your experience. Especially the low noise level is impressive! I think all in all DELL made a good job on the R15! And yes the wiring of  the GPU is not 'pretty', i decided to just put on a black cable hose and stay with the OEM-routing for now.

Svluck · Answer

I ordered an R15 with only 32Gb 4800 ram with the intend to upgrade it… now I’m reading everywhere that people are having trouble upgrading the stock ram with aftermarket.

looks like you are one of the few who made an upgrade work. Can you share what ram you used and if it was plug and play or if any other tweaking was needed? Looks like Tforce Delta?

thanks

VengerA51 · Answer

@JohnnyRamone I agree 100%, just putting some braided cover on definitely looks better than the exposed wires! That should of been a minimum done out the door.

@Svluck you are correct, it is Teamgroup T-Force Delta DDR-7200. The only thing that was weird about it, was on Bios 1.06. With that bios, it clocked down to non XMP speeds and timings and I could not get it to change in bios or AWCC. To overcome that, I put the OEM RAM (mine was 32GB of DDR5200) back in, powered the machine back up, went in AWCC and set the XMP to Profile 1. Then I shut it down, reinstalled the T-Force RAM and it came up correctly. No idea why that had to happen, but it has been working at 7000mhz ever since.

I don't have the Advanced Tab for RAM in AWCC, but it shows right at 7000 and both CPU-Z and HWInfo show it the same and with the CL34/42/42/82 XMP timings. Have had zero crashes with anything.

Svluck · Answer

I might just give it a shot.

im looking at going 64GB -which I know is overkill at the moment, but if I upgrade anyway I don’t see why I shouldn’t spend the extra $100 to go all in.

what are your thoughts on the Tforce Delta 64GB(2x32GB) , DDR5 6000MHZ 38-38-38-78? From

what you’ve seen/ experienced upgrading yours?

VengerA51 · Answer

Ha, I looked at that as well! I sat on the fence for a while on this..

Between OEM and the T-Force 7200, I used the 64GB Kingston Beast Fury DDR-5600 RGB RAM. Oddly, though it would show the speed, the timings never matched up and were not that great anyway.

I really wanted 64GB, but to get a little better speed and timings I ended up going with a 32GB kit. I know that there are test that show it is not a lot of return between the increments in DDR5, but I guess I was drawn to the higher stats vs the higher capacity.

As soon as there is a compatible 64GB kit that has the speeds and timings, I will give it a try. All this is to say that you just have to weigh out what is important to you or if you do anything that taps over the 32GB mark. If you don't then there is probably a benefit (small) to the faster sets with decent timings.

As far as the T-Force RAM, I have used it twice and it has worked perfectly. I had a G.Skill set on another machine and it had great specs but really needed an aftermarket board to dial it in and I knew the R15 wasn't going to have those options. I have seen Corsair used, but was unclear on if the timings were actually XMP which made me try this.

Buy it somewhere you can return it if you have issues and give it a go!

Svluck · Answer

@VengerA51 Yes I agree and it’s tempting to just go with the Ram you put in yours since it seems to work very well…

I’m new to Alienware, but with my machine coming with a 32GB non XMP Ram will I be able to change the XMP setting in the AWCC like you did following these exact instructions or will that option possibly not be available since my stock RAM doesn’t even support XMP?

VengerA51 · Answer

@Svluck that is a good point and I am honestly not sure. Before I upgraded to Bios 1.06, I had literally just taken out the OEM RAM, put in the Kingston, then the T-Force. Each time they had just worked "plug and play".

When I updated to Bios 1.06 is when it defaulted the T-Force down to a much slower speed (5200 or 5600, can't remember). That is when I put the OEM RAM back and picked the profile, then replaced with the T-Force. Maybe that did it, or maybe it just coincidence and it just needed a couple power cycles. I didn't reset CMOS but I did pull power and that didn't seem to help. 1.06 did take away the Advanced tab for RAM in AWCC, but since the timings showed as XMP, I wasn't too bothered by that.

Unfortunately with something that isn't on the approved list from Dell, it is kind of a roll of the dice with some variables. As I mentioned before, I definitely would buy from somewhere that is return friendly just in case.

Malevohlence · Answer

I just tried what you were asking. I put the original 4800 mhz, non XMP, RAM back in the mobo, and there was not an option for XMP in bios, or an advanced tab in AWCC.

I put the Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR 6000 32GB (2x16) back in the mobo, and in the bios the XMP option is there, but grayed out. In the AWCC tab, there still isn't an advanced tab option.

I'm not sure what to do to get XMP or over 4800 speed from this setup. CPU-Z shows that the RAM has XMP and 3k per lane, but I don't know how to get that.

VengerA51 · Answer

Hmm, yeah I can't say much here since there are so many differences. My OEM RAM was the Fury XMP 5200 and I used 7200 T-Force as a speed upgrade over the 64GB RGB Fury kit I tried first. The OEM being XMP let me use it to enable the XMP Profile, but I can't swear that is what made the T-Force read correctly. Definitely started working right after doing the switch FWIW.

However, I just updated to bios 1.1.0 with no other changes and the T-Force held the 7000 speed and timings. (but still no Advanced tab in AWCC.)

I guess the big thing is I'm not sure how or if the AW motherboard will switch to XMP timings/ speeds when it says it is an unsupported configuration and you aren't ever given an option to toggle it on.

Malevohlence · Answer

'I guess the big thing is I'm not sure how or if the AW motherboard will switch to XMP timings/ speeds when it says it is an unsupported configuration and you aren't ever given an option to toggle it on.' Yeah, that's what I was hoping the BIOS update included with 1.1.0 but can confirm that it did not.  Still no option to toggle enabling XMP in BIOS, and no tab either in AWCC.

ProfessorW00d · Answer

Try clearing CMOS with the CR2032 coin cell battery and power button between RAM configuration changes. That BIOS information is stored on the motherboard CMOS chip.

VengerA51 · Answer

I was hoping it was enabled as well, but wasn't surprised to not see it since Dell seems pretty set on their specific requirements for XMP. I ordered my R15 with the XMP option only because I was worried that no aftermarket RAM would work after the whole R13 experience with no XMP. Seems like without that set to use to enable it, I wouldn't of had a way to get the T-Force to work at XMP timings. Hopefully ProfessorW00d's suggestion to clear the CMOS will allow it to be recognized.

On a separate / general note, I got rid of one of the things that annoyed me from the beginning and that was the platter drive. I could hear it occasionally making it's whirs and clicks and it was too small to be useful anyway. I added a pair of 4TB MX500's for storage and now it is all quiet. My last storage update is to change the primary NVME to a Samsung 990 when it arrives and clone the OS drive to it. I may get a 3.5 to dual 2.5 SSD enclosure to clean it up since there were no OEM 2.5 drive mounting options, but this is working well for now.

ProfessorW00d · Answer

Your rig looks great! I was wondering why nobody was bringing that graphics card power cable up from underneath. That really cleans up the cable mess.

JohnnyRamone · Answer

Yes it looks good. Im considering to change the wiring too but space is very limited because all the wires are in front of the psu-fans and underneath the GPU anyway, i think this is why DELL chooses this way of wiring, at least for the 4080/4090 cards. I guess you need an adapter-cable to do the turn around at the connector. Which one did you use?

aryuss · Answer

You can get the 2.5 hdd bracket from Dell. It fits 2 SSDs. Though you won't see them with the side panel on, it's still best to get them organized..

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Aurora R15 , thoughts

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