AFAIK ... pulling air away from the heatsink (and cpu).

Because that is where the heat is generated, and you are trying to get rid of it.

Additionally, when you install a nice Intel i7 in an Aurora, it really should have a Liquid-Cooler instead.

It was supposed to come with liquid cooling on the cpu as thats what I looked for when I purchased it from a UK retailer they changed the advert after I purchased it.

I'm currently in discussions with them to sort the liquid cooling out.

< Maybe one of the Dell staff can confirm..

Yeah maybe so.

The Aurora R1 - R8 have all been designed to bring cool-air in the bottom front, and exhaust hot-air out the top. Thermals on most desktops are designed similar to this because hot-air rises. 

I have a fight ongoing with the retailer I purchased the R8 from I was defiantly a victim of false advertising as it stated liquid cooling, picture on the advert still shows the liquid CPU cooler but they have removed the wording. I did price up Dell fitting the Liquid CPU cooler and they came back with a price of £198.14, my problem is I can do this install myself no problem but I see so many people have boot up problems/warnings after installing which is something I don't want if I install a Corsair for example.

All the fans I've seen for air cooled CPUs in different computers - about 10 so not exhaustive by any means - and fans on graphics cards have all been blowing air onto the heatsink.  Generally fans blowing is better they can force air at higher pressures compared to fans sucking that can never go below 1 atm.

re: water cooled - check out my write up on here on installing a Corsair water cooler in R7; costs about £40-50 off ebay or just under twice that if new - there really is no point paying £ 200 for the alienware cooler.  I experienced no boot up problems but seem to recall there was something a bit non-intuitive for plugging in the supply for the pump which results in a message about fan not found - pretty sure it is mentioned in the write up.  The hardest part is taking the side and top panels off without snpping the tags; oh and use the Dell fan instead of the Corsair as it pushes more air through the radiator.

When I contacted Dell back in June about getting the AIO (fan/radiator) and all the parts necessary to install it in an R7, they priced me at $109 USD, plus tax.  The startup errors and issues that you read about are related to installing aftermarket AIOs.  If you use the Dell AIO, you will not have any of those problems.  

As an aside, I can confirm that in my R7, which shipped with an air cooler/heatsink combo, it was set by Dell to push air into the heatsink.  If you look at the service manual, or do an ebay/google search for the Dell part number (3VRGY), it appears all of the fans are pointed in the same direction (airflow usually goes in the direction of the sticker, and the fan sticker is not visible).  Note, too, that there will be an arrow on the side of the fan to show airflow direction, but usually it's in the direction of the side of the fan that has a sticker in the circle. 

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