Alienware Aurora R11 Gaming Desktop, 10th Gen Intel

I’ve been using Alienware Desktops (R10, R11 and R12) for years now and they seem to have a high failure rate.
This one did too.

Luckily, so far, Dell has been good with fixing or replacing parts. I did have some trouble with their home visit once; it took 2x failed visits and having to send it back to get it working again. I think the Motherboard was bad that time.

Overall, decent gaming PC but I would not really recommend Alienware as gaming PCs. They have an unusually high failure rate and the warranty won’t last long.

I had three Alienware PCs right now, and so far, I’ve had two bad video cards (the fan fails and it causes the video cards to crash) and two mother board failures.

The only good thing about these Alienware PCs is that the video cards are a good value.

Review for model Alienware Aurora R11 Gaming Desktop 10th Gen Intel Core i7, 16GB Dual Channel HyperX Fury DDR4 XMP, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, 1TB HDD + 512GB SSD, Killer Wi-Fi 6.

We are gamers in our house, but we’ve never really had the means to be like, “ultra settings” gamers. We’ve done a lot of settling over the years… playing MMOs on minimum-to-medium graphics, turning all the cool stuff down to improve framerates… (especially in raids or PVP…) This is not a computer you’ll need to do that with. Pretty much ever.

I’m not going to do benchmarks here, because anybody who is looking at a computer like this can go and look those up. But I’ll talk a little about our setup and real world play tests on a few games.

First, the download experience. Honestly, when I saw “Killer Wi-Fi” in the product description, I thought “how different can wi-fi be? Wi-Fi is wi-fi.” I was so wrong. Hubby and I both downloaded games at different times from our Steam accounts and independently happened to mention to each other… “Hey, was it just me, or did your download of (insert game) go like, really fast?” Your mileage will vary, of course, depending on your home internet speeds, but we throw down for some pretty good internet (work from home, right?) and we were both just shocked by how much faster this tower downloaded large files compared to either of our older (but still decent) machines.

World of Warcraft (Shadowlands – retail): Ultra settings, slider to 10. Consistent 60fps. No lag, even in Org, Stormwind, Dal, etc. I’ve been playing this game since Vanilla, and saw stuff for the first time playing on this computer. Full spell effects, spectacular draw distance… what game was I playing before? The only lag spikes I had were connection/server related.

Total War: Warhammer II (Steam): I watched my husband play a Greenskins v. Brettonia max size match just to see how much action he could get on the screen. There were easily 800 units on the screen duking it out at max graphics. No problem.

Outriders (Demo – Steam): This is a brand new game that we also played on PS4, so it was fun to compare the console vs. PC graphics. The game defaulted to ultra graphics and handled it without breaking a sweat. Visuals were slightly better on the PC than on PS4, but the PC had noticeably fewer lag spikes, screen tearing issues, etc–very smooth. Spell/combat effects, terrain and backgrounds look great.

Other things to know:

– This Alienware tower does also have some Alienware software designed specifically for gaming. It has an “app” that lets you fiddle with things like the color and pulse of the LEDs on the case. You can also create overclocking profiles for various games without having to mess with BIOS.
– This tower is quite loud. Fan intake is on the side, air outflow is through the top. The fans run most of the time. Headphones recommended.
– So many ports. Seriously. All the ports. If you run out of USB ports, you’ve got even more peripherals than I do. Congrats.
– Comes with stock (Dell) wired mouse and keyboard.
– Automatic windows update on some hardware components is a little sluggish. I manually updated the vid card driver day one, as Windows didn’t flag it for update right away.

Was easy to set up and get playing

Weird headline but I’ll explain (first the needed (out of 10) – SPECS 09 (no real complaints, runs everything silky smooth but there are more powered ones within same pricing ranges like the Aurora with 3090 or HP Omen also on Amazon), BUILD 10 (most impressively durable and air venty, no heating issues), VALUE 10/10 (could have been way more expensive if had bought from some crummy/greedy local retailer since Alienware is rare in Fiji). Mine has the 3080, 16GB RAM, 512SSD and 1TB HDD, i7 and it is a reliable friend. To explain, when gaming, we build many connections and friends because experiences are real when shared and at times we have a buddy with us (like a spotter to a sniper). The Aurora 11 is my spotter and firend. It is precise, helpful and reliable (so far, even people change). In gaming (coupled with a gsync enabled monitor, logitech g512 clicky keyboard, and logitech mouse I actually feel like the Doom Slayer, Prophet, Master Chief etc when playing related titles because there are no glitches and everything is smooth where all you do is move forward (ie. progress). While this machine won’t change your life, it will be a good friend and you will be able to rely on its performance. If you are looking for a legendary machine which is relatively reasonably priced, the Aurora 11 can be your friend too (hope doesn’t sound creepy). Thanks.