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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...
r72019
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6 Professor
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August 14th, 2019 21:00
One more experiment. HP and Lenovo are the best!! Dell customer service is nuts if they don't think they're going to lose money and customers over their bios block on upgrades to 9th gen cpus. Dells OEM case fans suck.
The censor program doesn't make sense to me that I get bleeped for using a certain word to explain how my case cooling fan is really good at doing it's job, but then I don't get bleeped for saying stuff like this ^^.
r72019
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6 Professor
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5.3K Posts
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August 14th, 2019 21:00
I keep see all these references to like the big online retailer, or the big auction site, and so I just wanted to test a theory. The big online retailer is Amazon. The big auction site is ebay. The site to post free items is craigslist. You can visit the big online retailer by going to www.amazon.com.
GTS81
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August 14th, 2019 22:00
Thank you for your offer but I have to pass because of these:
I finally found the right cable to connect the front radiator fan (Noctua AF12x15) to the graphics card fan header. Now I can control that fan using the GPU fan curve and I love it! Also my first EKWB product! So this means my front fan header on the motherboard is now lonely. And that is a not good thing because Dell says no. That means I need a "victim" PWM fan. Currently that victim fan is my 80mm but I plan to retire that once I get my AF9 PWM tomorrow. So I have this convoluted scheme of the GPU driving the radiator fan while AWCC drives the VRM fan.
I have started thinking of how to fit a 240mm radiator especially like the one from EKWB that has integrated pump from their modular custom loop solution. Ideally the radiator needs to sit on the top of the case just like the CPU radiator now but with a longer hole that means an eventual investment in a dremel if I decide to go down this path.
Was also thinking about how to make more vents in the top bezel when I realized this:
The vents run from back to front and the only thing that covers it is that square plastic beneath it at the front. Maybe it's to focus the airflow but if the 240mm radiator can fit, it means extending the opening below:
GTS81
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August 14th, 2019 22:00
Amazon
HP
Omen
Origin PC
Fan **bleep** or push air
GTS81
2.2K Posts
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August 15th, 2019 20:00
A
M
A
Z
O
N
r72019
6 Professor
6 Professor
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August 15th, 2019 20:00
That metal corner part, sticking straight up like dog ears on either end of the radiator box you have in the third picture, and which I assume to be holding the antenna for the wireless card, is really sharp and I cut myself on it when I removed the top plastic covering you have in the first two photos.
r72019
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6 Professor
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August 15th, 2019 20:00
GTS81
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August 15th, 2019 20:00
Jokes aside:
https://imgur.com/ZDRexoK
https://imgur.com/xU2qV8O
https://imgur.com/byQxy75
GTS81
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August 15th, 2019 22:00
Your
Mine got it through this:
https://imgur.com/gutDwsf
Speaking of removing the top plastic covering, for my R8, I have to give the panel release a slight pull while lifting up the top covering to have it dislodge from the case. Do you have to do the same too? I've already broke off 1 clip near the front IO after 3 times removing the top cover.
r72019
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6 Professor
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August 16th, 2019 08:00
I remove it from the front. You need to pop out the DVD drive first to create slack, then push back the retaining clips on either end. See photos:
GTS81
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August 16th, 2019 08:00
My R8 is sans DVD drive so it's a snug fit at the front over the front bezel. Probably that's why the only way for me to create slack is through the panel release because that plastic piece somewhat comes in contact with the top cover.
r72019
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August 16th, 2019 09:00
I was stuck at the top assembly cover when I first did it, and then I did some research and came across the DVD trick. If not for that, yeah I guess you just need to push/pull.
GTS81
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August 17th, 2019 15:00
I just saw those photos on the 2-step process to remove the top cover. Wish I had known this a week ago because I usually just pull the top open and finally one of the clips broke.
Anyway, it's back to itchy fingers:
https://imgur.com/hn0RDdG
https://imgur.com/Hqj42ti
https://imgur.com/cx7WOij
Basically it's to further reduce the noise from the VRM fan by installing the Noctua AF9 PWM. In the same process I decided to tidy up the cabling on the G12 plate and the chassis overall. Some zip ties deployed. I think I'll start looking at PET sleeving as I really like those orange/ yellow colored sleeved cables I see on custom PCs. It sure beats bundling using zip ties. Maybe look into some rubber-ish mounts too as cable routing guide.
Guess what... probably the cable organization has to be redone after I receive my Seasonic Focus Gold + 850W later today!
Anonymous
5 Practitioner
5 Practitioner
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274.2K Posts
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August 17th, 2019 17:00
Your rig is looking GREAT!
I'm not sure if you mean sleeve your own cables or purchase custom cables.
I am also gearing up for some custom cables, but the two places I have been working with are not taking additional orders right now.
For PET or Paracord, SoloSleeving has some nice options and an easy cable configurator (the best). However, they are so backed up they are currently not taking new orders. Perhaps a week or two, so they say.
For MDPC-X PET cables, Mod-One is the only US based distributor, and they were just recently acquired. They are also not taking any new orders, catching up on back orders , and transitioning the ownership "over the next month".
This Paracord cable is one of the set in my "shopping cart" at SoloSleeving, in case they are taking orders first (recall my new AeroCool fans are LED blue).
Anonymous
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274.2K Posts
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August 17th, 2019 20:00
You should start marketing those custom red Alienware Aurora cover tab push back tools.