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.

this has been an amazing PC since i got it, i had a little issue with Windows 11 but was able to fix that by jumping back down to windows 10. Overall, everything i throw at this thing has worked with no issues at all. I mainly play GTA RP, COD, Fortnite and right now i picked up sea of thieves. I play on high settings and get around 90-120 FPS. I do think the ram could be upgraded a little bit and would look into getting 32GBs right away.

I bought this in good faith since Ive had great luck with my Alienware laptop, but this desktop was a hunk of junk. Out of the box with no programs or games installed it was laggy and crashed a couple times giving blue screens. I reinstalled windows and then installed some games, games would go through huge lag spikes and crash, and every now and then It would get another blue screen. My laptop never had any of these troubles. The Desktop even blue screened when emptying the trash bin or when installing updates. I ended up installing windows 10 on it incase 11 was the problem and it still didnt help, I installed the updates directly from Dells site and it didnt help, I was on tech support for days and they didnt help. This was a complete waste of time. Maybe I just got a bad one, but you would think for how expensive these are they would do some kind of testing before selling them.

So backstory I have been looking at upgrading my PC for a while now. I have built a PC before but with the prices of components right now and wait times I decided to go with Alienware. Alienware was not my first choice but I have to say I am so glad I went with them over Cyberpower. The 18-month no interest payments on this machine make it all the more worth it. After ordering it arrived on a Friday. I got home took it out of the box and this thing was VERY well packaged. No damage to anything except the outside of the box having normal wear and tear from shipping. Straight out of the box I plugged it up and downloaded a few select games to test it. First game was Call of Duty Warzone. I have to say I was so impressed on how this PC ran this game. CPU stayed at around 68 C and GPU around 68-70 C on all maxxed out graphics. Everything was super smooth and just everything I wanted. If I had to complain about anything it would more than likely be Windows 11 only because it does have small stutters at time which is common from what I have read. The only issue I have encountered with the PC itself was on my brothers that he ordered (we ordered the exact same pc got it on the same day) and the front panel lights on the tower had went out and would not come back on. I contacted dell support and they did a remote connection. Within 10 minutes Gabriel Hernandez had the front panels back on and going. This ended up being a Bios update issue. The way he handled himself made me have a total different outlook on dell support. I have to say I do not regret my purchase and this experience has really given me a different outlook on Alienware itself. If you are on the fence on whether or not you want to risk buying a prebuilt my opinion is to do it!

Amazing!

This is my second Alienware product; my previous was a gaming laptop back in 2010ish. That laptop performed well but has some glaring flaws, such as the video cutting out from a bad hinge. I was hoping maybe Alienware had gotten better over a decade, but unfortunately its the same story all over again, and I am returning it. In general, this PC is good and runs well. While I really dislike branding, I will say the case design is rad. I love the toolless design, tho you do need a screw driver to open the case so thats a bit of a fib, but the interior is clean and easy to access. I didnt really stress test this much. I did play a heavy Skyrim VR modpack, and it performed like hot garbage, but that modpack is notoriously poorly optimized, so I dont know if I can blame the PC for that. That being said, even while playing relatively simple games like WoW or just watching YouTube, I got multiple BSODs, which is just bizarre. However the real reason Im returning it is because the wired network adapter is faulty. Online gaming while streaming will lead to constant disconnects which can only be fixed by resetting the adapter, and sometimes just gaming or YouTube by itself will crash the adapter. I spent multiple weeks trying to fix it, troubleshooting with my roommate, who is not having this problem, tried to contact Dell who refused to help, etc. I finally hit my breaking point when it happened during a progression night, and I had to miss half the gaming session, which probably set us back a week. This PC is overpriced. I was okay with that because I have little free time or patience, I just wanted something that worked, and was willing to pay for it. But somehow even something as simple as a wired connection was too much to ask of Alienware. Im very frustrated that I wasted weeks on trying to get this overpriced brick to do what my 7 year old Studio XPS did flawlessly. Thats twice Ive been burned, I will never purchase an Alienware again. 1 star overall, 2 star for the neat case design.

Not enough ram. It only has 16 gigs of ram. Not enough storage. It only has 512 Gts SSD. The only 1TB device is a spinner. The networking adaptor is garbage. It slows down, and drops connection, nearly three times a day. Frustrating when youre trying to use Flight Simulator 2020s photogrametry scenery, and next thing you know, it switches you to offline mode, and you lose all your weather data, and the scenery goes to crummy looking auto-gen that looks nothing like what you were flying over. Sick of it. I now have to look for a network adapter. The graphics card, which I got this machine for, is an Nvidia RTX 3070, which is pretty good. Only wish I ACTUALLY had access to all the ram. Dell have slouched, and slipped back to shared ram, which really holds you back. Youre better off building your own machine, IF you can find the parts.

I generally build my own systems except laptops, but this time I wanted an Alienware (like buying a Vette) so did my home work and found the best bang for the buck, the R14 for me. Amazon had a great price on my choice and was delivered within a week. After opening the box and taking stock, I was ready to rock. First thing I noticed was the system was slow and stuttering even with a RTX 3080 installed. Got customer service (CS) online 12/01 and started the process of fixing it. On the first day I lost my sound capability because during the process of CS fixing me, the bios change did not take and by the time I was able to get rebooted CS closed for the day. No biggy, next day I had CS on the phone and my hardware drivers were sorted out, but their was still that pesky hard drive thrashing, 25% Mem tied up at boot and still small stutters. CS passed me onto Software support, were I was told they could not help me since I only had basic warranty that covered just hardware. After call I was pissed, called Amazon explained the issues and was told if I wanted to send it back, I could. Amazon CS did ask if they could take another run at Dell since I told them I really did not want to return it, just wanted it fixed. After they got Dell CS on the phone, tech said that only if I had brought this issue up 90 days ago they could have given me the full service. I scratched my head and said, I just purchased this computer a little over a week ago! Upon which I was corrected and told the computer was over 120 days old! Then it all clicked! The minute that computer arrived at Amazon warehouse the clock was ticking, as far as Dell was concerned! Could you imagine if auto companies sold cars like that and hinged your warranty on when the dealer ship took possession? Amazon Customer support has been really great so far. Dell has me really disappointed in my decision to buy their product! Still not sure what my final choice may be, thought of stripping out the case that is was as good and rebuilding it or just hang onto to it and every time it hiccups call Dell Support. UPDATE: 12/4/22 - Resolved being able to enter BIOS, I found if I disconnected my 2nd Monitor I was able to see the Alienware Logo on startup which meant I could hit F2 to enter BIOS. With both monitor plugged in I would never see the Alienware Logo and the start up would hang. I have been able to run diagnostic and bench marks Overall Score = 97% using Passmark. Memory tested at 73% so not too bad but could be better, may go to a better mem stick later. Bottom Line - Going to keep it, but very disappointed in Dells Warranty Support with software.

Got this machine mostly for gaming, for what it is, Rtx 3080, Ryzen 9 and 32gb of ram….it severely under performs. Again games run ok, nothing amazing. When it comes to other tasks like photo editing (Lightroom, Photoshop) it’s borderline unusable. For the specs this should have no trouble editing 20mp photos. Nowhere near worth the money

I bought a intel i5 12300kf about a year and a half ago and after downloading the games that i wanted and could easily run them with the 3060 that was with it started bottlenecking and couldnt handle anything. it wouldnt even run the browser when i fired it up. This pc starts all my differnt gaming apps immediately all the while being able to start up any app right when it fires up. Ive never felt i needed to overclock it. If feels like night and day. You know you have a powerful computer when you restart it and it starts all your applications right as you get to youre home screen. AND i have a custom backround screen that is using the graphics.