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Chris-WH

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7 years ago

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Chris-WH

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July 27th, 2019 22:00

Aurora R8, should I go for it?

Hello all,

(i posted this in the laptop section by mistake so forgive me for reposting)

I know this is always a very difficult question to ask and receive an answer back too but i have been wondering over the past week if i should take the plunge once again and buy another Alienware??

Theres a current offer at the moment that gives 15% off selected Aurora R8 Desktop PCs but my only hesitation is wether i will have issues with it again as my last Alienware PC suffered from 

It was a X51 R2 model and pretty much within 6 months of owning it the problems began. Today its barely operable. Random freezes/crashing always from initial boot ups with sometimes can take up to 1 hour+ (6-10 restarts) until it settles down and doesnt require constant hard rebooting to fix its freezing issues.

How do these days Aurora models stack up? Id honestly love to hear some feedback from other owners please.

  • Chris-WH

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    Posted July 27th, 2019 22:00

    Thank you kindly for the reply and im very happy to hear your experiences have been well! 

     

    The model that im looking at with the 15% off is just before the top spec model. 

    I was thinking of optioning the GPU to the 2080 Ti which i believe bumps it up to 11GB?, Win 10 Pro, 512GB SSD and with the Blu ray burner.

    I noticed the CPU cant be optioned on this model to the overclocked version but should i be concerned with that or not really? 

  • Notchiro

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    Posted July 27th, 2019 22:00

    I love alienware and I have all their accessories and I've never had a problem with them. I also have an Aurora R7 for a little over a year and I've had no problems with it (knock on wood) so I would say to do it. It's so easy to upgrade the auroras I've already upgraded the power supply with no problem and the case seems very well made so I would say to go for it. 

  • Chris-WH

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    Posted July 27th, 2019 23:00

    Cheers thanks for that.

  • Notchiro

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    Posted July 27th, 2019 23:00

    I wouldnt really worry too much I'm upgrading my gtx 1080 to the rtx 2080ti and my cpu isnt the overclocked version but it will still run everything fine. I wouldnt worry too much about that 

  • Chris-WH

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    Posted July 28th, 2019 00:00

    This is the only CPU option:
    9th Gen Intel® Core™ i9 9900 (8-Core, 16MB Cache, up to 5GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology)
    Included in price
     
    Not sure if this means the CPU is liquid cooled or the PSU??:
    Alienware™ 850 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply with High Performance Liquid Cooling
    Included in price
     
     
  • Chris-WH

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    Posted July 28th, 2019 14:00

    Great to hear the CPU is cooled. Thanks for the confirmation. Yeah the one that has the 15% off is the 3rd out of 4 Aurora's to pick from with the 4th being the only one offering the 9900k CPU. Theres no % off that one so that price works out maybe around $700 more (when im matching the GPU & SSD drive to it) but does jump to 32GB of ram vs 16 GB. I have heard a few reports like that about the noisy fans and i will admit that has had me a little worried to go forward with the purchase Is it specific to certain models/build or just purely random that some are noisy and some are not? Cheers thanks for the link also i will have a look at it.
  • Chris-WH

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    Posted July 28th, 2019 16:00

    Once again thank you so much for the detailed and very informative reply!

     

    Yeah if i am to be honest overclocking for the CPU is not a major concern for me. I normally dont like to be messing around with settings in my PC's. Im happy to spend a little $$ at the start and get a rig that i wont have to stress about for the next few years at least.

    My primary game that i need to be logging in at least once a day is Star Trek Online...it was the main reason i purchased my X51 at the time to retire my old Sony VAIO laptop that i found difficult to game on....at the moment ive had to go back to the VAIO in order to be able to successfully access Star Trek online without the fear of the X51 continuously crashing/freezing.

    The only other game at the moment that i still have not even be able to test properly is Star Citizen hence why im trying to go with the higher tier model GPU as i know that game is going to be heavily taxing on the entire system.

     

    Im hoping for the noise fans that perhaps not going with the overclocked CPU perhaps it will help with the noise levels being a little lower? I mean if when gaming the fans get a little high that i can tolerate but what would be annoying is when at idle and say using Microsoft Excel for work and the fans are going nuts then that would be upsetting

    I know the solution as you have mentioned to upgrade the fans is an option (if the noise issue occurs) but i really dont like messing around and pulling things out of a new PC. Im just always stressing im going to screw something up my self and makes things worse LOL.

     

    Ive got another dilemma now also....im really keen into the 34 inch curved Alienware monitor to match for the Aurora but i know if i go down that path set up ill loose the option if keeping my PS4 Pro at my office desk as well.

    No speakers plus no support i think for 21:9 screen from the PS4 Pro.

    Ahhh too many choices to make hahaha.

  • Chris-WH

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    Posted July 28th, 2019 20:00

    WOW very cool set up!

    I wish i had the room to be able to run a setup like that.

  • GTS81

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    Posted July 29th, 2019 14:00

    @Chris-WH:

    Im hoping for the noise fans that perhaps not going with the overclocked CPU perhaps it will help with the noise levels being a little lower?

    It depends. CPU SKUs are partly driven by silicon manufacturing health. Even on the same wafer, different dies will perform differently. When the differentiation in performance and power is negligible, it becomes a silicon lottery where the parts are sold as a single SKU to end users, and then we try to bump up some voltage/ frequency to different end results. Some people get better boost than others.

    When the difference is significant and reproducible (i.e, for every X wafers, Y really good dies get produced), those stellar dies become your higher binned part. When the silicon manufacturer is very sure you can safely overclock a part, it then slaps on an "unlocked" label and sells it for an even higher price than a "locked" part. For most instances, we can safely assume there is no way to magically make a locked part unlocked.

    So why this long lecture? It's because an unlocked part is more likely "healthier" than a locked part. That means an i9-9900K would be of a healthier process than i9-9900. This would in turn translate to hitting iso-frequency at lower VCC which means lower power, hence less heat. This doesn't mean that the K processor will always run cooler than a non-K but if you were to ask me to bet on either one, my money goes to K processor being better at hitting frequencies with lower voltages or ramping voltage and frequency to finish bursty workloads and going back to low power idle.

    If you haven't fallen asleep by now, I want to remind you that Dell will keep singing you the you-never-bought-a-factory-overclocked-system-from-us song whenever you contact tech support about your non-K system. I just experienced that last week when I reached out on not being able to overclock my gaming DRAM on a system that just has an i5-9400. Just something to keep in mind.

    And yes, please get 850W + liquid cool. The PSU is modular so remember to plug out the unused cables. I wonder why Dell shipped them all plugged in and choking the airflow.