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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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February 2nd, 2020 19:00
There's three vertical dots in the browser after the paragraph indents, which will drop down a second row of format options, including " for quotes. You can't use it via a mobile device. Here, let me try that too, does it tell you who just gave you five stars?
r72019
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February 2nd, 2020 19:00
Ah, cool, thanks! I thought it was weird because they deleted kudos from the notification feed.
Anonymous
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February 2nd, 2020 19:00
Thanks! Not sure why they would hide it there. Also, you cannot go back to historical posts and give them any stars
EDIT: yes, there is a "Who Rated This Post" pop off.
r72019
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February 2nd, 2020 20:00
Ah, I'm a little slow but I just figured out what you were talking about.
r72019
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February 2nd, 2020 20:00
I liked getting a notification under the Bell icon because it helped me see what type of responses people found helpful.
Anonymous
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February 2nd, 2020 20:00
GTS81
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February 3rd, 2020 00:00
So the last 5 or so posts here was about the popularity contest buttons?
So if anyone has watched the video of this person called Han Peder Sahl who basically invented this super tedious but detailed way of sleeving through fixed combs mounted on the PC, you would see that the step to connect to the PSU calls for full time tethering to the rig as every single wire is measured exactly to the point it touches the PSU, cut, stripped, crimped, sleeved, and connected. I just cannot see myself doing that so I just swizzled the wires to the correct pins using a closed comb, and then measured where to cut off at the PSU:
You all can see my lazy sense wire work too.
Now there's only the 8+8 EPS and the 8+6 PCIe.
GTS81
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February 4th, 2020 14:00
@r72019 :
Here's to spending too much money on fans:
3x Corsair ML120 Pro LED White - $27 per
3x Lian Li Bora Digital RGB - $60
And I'm contemplating the Corsair HD120 RGB too
Only 1 of the above will remain with me.
I have a be Quiet! case, but Corsair fans.
@Anonymous has Cooler Master case, but be Quiet! fans.
Someone needs to get a Corsair case, and Cooler Master fans.
Anonymous
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February 4th, 2020 17:00
@GTS81 Now there's only the 8+8 EPS and the 8+6 PCIe.
Custom cables looking real good!
Here's to spending too much money on fans:
That's because you keep buying those fancy lightin' up kinda fans.
r72019
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February 4th, 2020 21:00
Nice. Amazon has a good return policy for try before you buy purchases like this. It must be great not worrying if your next fan purchase will throw a startup error.
GTS81
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February 4th, 2020 22:00
@r72019 :
EXACTLY!
Anonymous
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February 5th, 2020 19:00
@GTS81
This is the Cosmos case 'damage' I mentioned.
click pic to embiggen
GTS81
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February 6th, 2020 00:00
@Anonymous :
Embiggened the pics I did. The question is: Are the same damages on the re-sent panels/ parts? My replacement front panel came with a less apparent blemish at the exact spot as the first so I just gave up and took it as a manufacturing limitation.
Here's how the fans look like in the case:
I just didn't have the heart to open the ML120 Pro White LED after that as I'd just be wasting a perfectly new product by opening the seal and then putting it back into the box to have big online retailer sell it through their warehouse like-new. Wondering if I should order the black version of the Lian Li fans to see if it fits the color scheme better.
Make no mistake, there's no replacing the performance of the ML120 Pros/ Noctuas/ be Quiets of the world. I'm going for looks here for the upper rad fans. The front rad will be driven by my existing ML120 Pros.
EDIT: Just went to Lian Li's website to get the specs:
Fan SpeedMax. Air PressureMax. Air FlowAcoustical Noise (Min-Max.)
The ML120 Pro maxes out at > 4mm-H2O @ 2400RPM. I may need to reconsider opening the Corsairs tomorrow. I can give up some performance but not this much.
GTS81
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February 6th, 2020 14:00
@Anonymous :
They came with the fans and are removable. Presumably for modders to self anodize or paint. There's probably a sharp edge on one of them because I had this inch-long microcut on my finger that irritated me all evening.
Yeah those rad fans. My radiator is 22 FPI, a little denser than the new-age 16 FPI rads. Case is covered in noise absorbing material (hey, it's called Silent Base) so I'm sure the ML120 Pros will do fine.
If the performance falls off the cliff, I'd have a hard time looking at my R8 and justifying the move to full custom.
Share some pics of them Primochill rads later today please!
Anonymous
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February 6th, 2020 14:00
@GTS81 Here's how the fans look like in the case
Looks awesome! Did the chrome trim covers come with the fans, or did you get those extra?
I can give up some performance but not this much
Are you referring to those beautiful rad fans? How much beef do you think it takes to blow air across rad fins that are designed to have air blowed across them? The ML120 PROs are nice, but @ 370 dBA, how many of those could you stand blowin'. (I may have left out a decimal point)
The Lian Li's are beautiful . . . and you said you were going for looks.