Alienware Aurora R14 Liquid Cooled Gaming Desktop - AMD Ryzen 9 5900, 32GB 3466MHz RAM, 1TB SDD + 2TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB GDDR6X Graphics, VR Ready, USB-C, Windows 11 Home – Black

Ive had several gaming laptops from Lenova and Acer and was excited to see the power of a Alienware desktop. Too bad Alienware is partnered with Dell. Beautiful design and the hardware and specs seems high end but a hour after getting set up with steam and game pass, Dell sent a software update. The audio for the games wasnt working so the update was mandatory. Almost immediately after the update, the computer went into a perpetual loop between a blue screen of death restarting itself and the Alienware logo. It was impossible to boot even into safe recovery mode no matter what. I spent a whole day working with Dell techs, who didnt know much more than me, I created several live flashdrive with windows updates and recovery systems on it to no avail. Ive worked around computers for over 15 years and have never seen anything of the sort. Dell literally bricked my desktop with their update.

I have had this PC for four days now and it sits here with the “Blue screen of death” on the screen. A very long sad story, but I will greatly condense. Day one - I followed on screen prompts including doing a system restore where I had to reload all programs. Day two - After about an hour on phone with Amazon tech support, which elevated all the way up to “Check to be sure the USB cables are plugged in”, I was actually connected to a Dell Alienware Aurora Tech who stated that they were well aware of my problem and he knew how to fix it. After several hours of remote access and upgrades, he went away and the Blue Screen came back. Day three - Dell service tech would not respond to my email asking for help. I called the extended warranty group, and after reading him the actual details of the warranty, he connected me to another tech. After several hours of remote access, he went away and the Blue Screen came back. Day four - I email both techs and get no response. I called warranty company and this time the contact person did not want to help me beyond telling me to send it back. After I read the warranty to him two or three times, he transferred me to a medical facility. I called Amazon and asked that a replacement be sent and I would verify it worked before returning the first PC. Delivery is one week. Nothing takes Amazon a week. Tonight I finally get a reply from Dell tech wanting to know what day and time would be good to work on the PC. I replied that I had asked Amazon for a replacement. The extended warranty may be a good thing, but all the help it says they will extend during installation is mostly words on a piece of paper. I will update this review when something happens. I have purchased several Dell computers, never having this much trouble. UPDATE: I received the replacement R14 per Amazon’s promise date. I loaded the same programs I had loaded on the faulty R14 and it has been running over the weekend as a new Dell should.

One star currently for having a hardware issue one day after using it for about 2 hours. It was awesome when it worked. Waiting to see if dell will send the replacement parts. EDIT: After attempting to work with Dell over a repair, I ended up just buying a new SSD and installing it myself. Runs fantastic now but no excuse for lazy QC to let that slide from the factory.

Easy to setup and use. Only thing from DELL that actually works as promised. (They acquired alienware and didnt design it inhouse).