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ToolsBold Sci-Fi Styling
When I previewed the Aurora R10 earlier this year, I was taken by its sci-fi-inspired design. I think it ‘s carnival to say not everyone may want this background sitting in their living room or office. But despite its boldface look and possibly dissentious nature, I do find myself liking the vibration it gives off. taste is, of course, subjective, but Alienware did a decent job nailing a futuristic, spaceship-like style that would n’t be out of place in the populace of Mass Effect .
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Our test mannequin is the Lunar Light color, which is the entirely color scheme that Alienware offers with the vertical LED-lit Alienware textbook on the side. It besides comes in a Dark Side of the Moon discolor which, appropriately, is a colored grey palette. The battlefront LED ring is customizable with 16.8 million colors on both models, while the backlit text on the Lunar Light model is besides customizable .
then many desktops look the like, or try for an excessively aggressive design, that it ‘s dainty to see a gaming desktop nail a unique and specific aesthetic vision. It ‘s authorize that some real think went into it, in terms of both engineer and ocular design, which I would n’t say of every bet on or exponent background I see these days. It matches the style of Alienware ‘s redesign laptop line, creating a mix advanced search across the company ‘s PCs. ( You ‘ll see it, and you ‘ll know it ‘s Alienware. ) Again, even if it ‘s not person ‘s especial style ( and it is surely bold ), I admire the feat and vision. If you ‘d like to see how the style has evolved, check out our revue of the quite different 2016 Alienware Aurora .
A Surprisingly Small Interior
The Aurora R10 chassis is moderately sized, and it could justify being bigger considering the baron inside. It measures 18.9 by 8.8 by 17 inches ( HWD ), so it ‘s not besides tall or deep, and it is thinner in the front and widens out toward the back. You ‘ll see smaller desktops in this monetary value and ability tier : I would describe the HP Omen Obelisk as compress at 17.1 by 6.5 by 14.1 inches, and the Corsair One Pro is downright small in footprint at 15 by 6.9 by 7.9 inches. There are besides larger desktops with more traditional shapes, like the Maingear Vybe and the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 mentioned earlier .
The left-side panel pulls away well by lifting a rear pry, so no tools are required to get inside the carapace. With space semi-limited, Alienware got a little creative with the internals. We ‘ve seen this design before, but the might provision is mounted on a swing arm that locks into place. When locked in, it covers up access to the motherboard and early components, but unlocking two little buttocks switches allows you to swing the arm out and away from the motherboard .
With that done, you get full access to the early components. The inside is simultaneously impressive in content and underwhelming to view. The layout with the arm is apt, and there ‘s a lot of power packed inside. It ‘s not much to look at though, evening with the metallic power-supply arm out of the way. A dated-looking yellow-and-blue MicroATX motherboard is home to some function-first heat spreaders and basically no bells and whistles. ( It is clearly new, though, based on the X570 chipset to support the platform ‘s up-to-date components and features like PCI Express 4.0. ) An Alienware-branded fluid cool is installed over the CPU, with its minor 120mm radiator connected on the acme panel. That ‘s a amazingly small radiator for this CPU, but it intelligibly works .
In fact, “ amazingly little ” is how I would describe the whole home. As I said, the shell is n’t particularly big, but the internal compartment makes up surprisingly little of the hale case size. There are several inches of “ empty ” space on the top and bed of the chassis that make it look like the components do n’t have to be packed so tightly. The peak and slope panels are used for ventilation, and the system does run pretty quietly, so possibly this free space is necessary .
Ports, Extras & Configurations
Rounding out the physical build up are the ports, of which there are plenty. several are aligned vertically on the front panel, including three USB 3.1 ports, a USB Type-C port, and earphone jacks. Peripherals hanging out the front of this front dialog box do look a short silly and mar the expressive style, so I ‘d recommend plugging any peripherals that may hang around for a while into the buttocks ports. There, you ‘ll find six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.1 ports, and a USB Type-C port, american samoa well as an Ethernet jack and an align of sound recording ins and outs .
On the software side, a agile bill on the aforesaid Alienware Command Center, which was rebuilt a few years ago to be the standard see gore for all Alienware PC products. It wraps all of the usual bet on software—game-specific profiles, lighting options, audio settings, component tuning, system monitoring, and evening a game library and launcher—into one platform. Most usefully for bet on, you can flip the personal computer ‘s thermal profile among several presets ( five choices, ranging from repose to fully focal ratio ) and set overclock profiles to boost your graphics card. Command Center is one of the better, if not the best, of these built-in manufacturer software packages .
Our unit is configured very highly, though that does n’t have to be the case for your translation. Alienware offers a wide swath of options that I ‘ll get to in a moment, but our configuration is a $ 3,629.99 one, featuring the brand-new AMD Ryzen 9 3950X central processing unit that ‘s the star of the show ( more on that late ). Joining it are an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics wag, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. The entry-point monetary value for a SKU using this fresh 16-core CPU is $ 2,349.99 .
Lesser AMD processor options start at $ 1,199.99, from the Ryzen 5 3500 through other Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 9 options astir to the CPU in our unit. Alienware besides offers Intel models, starting a low as $ 799.99, which is a different rate of background altogether compared to our high-price SKU. There are, of course, more potent Intel chips than the starting Core i5 option, topping out at the Core i9-9900K .
The graphics options are largely Nvidia, ranging from the entry-level GeForce GTX 1650 to dual GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards and everything in between. For AMD graphics, you can choose among a Radeon RX 5700, a Radeon 5700 XT, or the seldom-seen Radeon VII. The memory and storage options are standard for high-end desktops, with memory ranging from 8GB to 64GB and myriad storage combinations of SSD and hard drive capacities up to 4TB. In brusque, there are configurations for every need and budget, all set in the same loom .
now it ‘s time to circle rear to that CPU. The 16-core, 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 3950X has merely been announced at the prison term of this review, and as my colleague Chris Stobing explains in its standalone inspection, it ‘s an absolute powerhouse. even though it ‘s expensive at $ 749, it ‘s a good value compared to the competition. As you ‘ll see below, the Aurora R10 utilized it to tear through our benchmark tests across the board .
If you plan on equitable playing video games with this system, though, the Ryzen 9 3950X is in fact overkill, in most cases. As Alienware claims, this is the only OEM gaming background with the third-generation 16-core Ryzen processors. That is impressive, but part of that may be that this is more of a workstation bit and not the best match for a gaming-first background. enough of the less expensive options ( particularly the Ryzen 7 3700X ) will be more than adequate for gambling, and you get diminishing ( if any ) returns on choosing this chip just for gaming. Alienware packed this reappraisal unit to impress, and it does, but if you are n’t going to besides use your gaming rig for gameplay stream, media initiation, animation work, or other demanding professional tasks, I ‘d recommend a less expensive CPU. Check out our full review of the Ryzen 9 3950X for many more details and how it stacks up against the early CPU options you can pick for the Aurora R10 .
Testing Time: A Ryzen-Powered Performance Beast
There are plenty of likely rival systems to choose for neck and neck performance testing results, but I had to settle on a batch. I selected a group that represents a diverseness of forcible shapes, components, and prices. The postpone below shows their names and components…
The Maingear Vybe and Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 are two like options, though the latter is configured higher. These represent very traditionally shaped, high-end PCs that can do both bet on and media tasks well thanks to their Core i9-9900K central processing unit. The HP Omen Obelisk besides falls into this category, but it ‘s more compress and more expensive as configured than both of those. finally, the Corsair One Pro i180 comes in as the most expensive option of the group, and is easily the smallest. Its sky-high $ 4,999 price owes a set to its impressively humble footprint, but it ‘s included here as a rare system bearing the Intel Core i9-9920X CPU, an even better rival for the Aurora R10 ‘s bit than the Core i9-9900K .
Productivity & Storage Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the personal computer benchmark specialists at UL ( once Futuremark ). The PCMark 10 screen we run imitate different real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as give voice process, spreadsheet sour, web browse, and videoconferencing. The examination generates a proprietorship numeric score ; higher numbers are good. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the accelerate of the storehouse subsystem. This grade is besides a proprietorship numeric score ; again, higher numbers are better .
The Aurora R10 and its Ryzen 9 3950X immediately started flexing their muscles on this test. PCMark 10 does tend to top out on super-powerful processors since it does n’t push them to the fullest, but the 3950X is distinctly in the exceed bracket of performance hera. As you may have guessed, casual home and office tasks are a breeze for a background of this quality. PCMark 8 besides shows very fast storage, leading to better load and boot times for you .
Media Processing & Creation Tests
following is Maxon ‘s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is in full threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU preferably than the GPU to render a complex picture. The result is a proprietary score indicating a personal computer ‘s suitability for processor-intensive workloads .
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that ‘s highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute time of 4K video recording ( the open generator Blender demonstration movie Tears of Steel ) to a 1080p MP4 file. It ‘s a timed test, and lower results are better .
We besides run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 let go of of the Creative Cloud translation of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test double. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. Lower times are good here. The Photoshop examination stresses CPU, storehouse subsystem, and RAM, but it can besides take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, thus systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost .
I mentioned that high-end processors tend to hit a ceiling on PCMark 10, but the same is n’t true on these tests. This is where you ‘ll actually see a processor ‘s fully potential arrive through, using all of its cores and threads to churn through the workload a efficiently as possible. On Cinebench, the 3950X shatters the ceiling and cruises past the rival. This is quite merely the highest result we ‘ve always recorded on this test, showing the sensitive power of this bit. The other benchmarks do n’t show ampere much dominance, but it ‘s even mighty impressive. It posted the fastest Handbrake time in the group, showing its aptitude for video encode, and a quick ( though not best ) result on Photoshop.
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These results should be music to the ears of message creators, engineers, animators, and early professionals with CPU-heavy workloads, but they besides demonstrate why I was cautioning choosing this chip for a gaming-only personal computer. These results are amazing, yes, but if you ‘re not going to be doing any of these tasks on your desktop, it ‘s money you do n’t need to spend. even the Core i9-9900K, honestly, is overkill for gambling, and you see how superior the Ryzen 9 3950X is to it. As you ‘ll see on the next tests, the CPU only impacts 3D-based exploit and gaming to a certain extent—they ‘re much more reliant on your GPU .
Synthetic Graphics Tests
UL ‘s 3DMark examination cortege measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demand and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietorship scores .
following up is another synthetic graphics test, this prison term from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detail 3D fit and measures how the system copes. In this case, it ‘s rendered in the ship’s company ‘s eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine ‘s graphic art .
The Aurora R10 ‘s dominance on the CPU tests starts to disappear here, though the results are still very dear. As I said, your graphics card is much more crucial for 3D tasks, and with multiple systems here running a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, the results are pretty close together. That said, the Ryzen 9 3950X ‘s speed does n’t disappear, and the Aurora R10 is hush at or near the top of the charts. These results held to a close traffic pattern to the CPU tests, but the gambling tests, amazingly, show something a piece unlike …
Real-World Gaming Tests
The celluloid tests above are helpful for measuring general 3D aptitude, but it ‘s hard to beat entire retail television games for judging gaming performance. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern, high-fidelity titles with built-in benchmarks that illustrate how a organization handles real-world television games at diverse settings .
These are run on the maximum graphics-quality presets ( Ultra for Far Cry 5, very high for Rise of the Tomb Raider ) at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions to determine the dessert spot of visuals and fluent performance for a given system. The results are besides provided in frames per second gear. Far Cry 5 is DirectX 11-based, while Rise of the Tomb Raider can be flipped to DX12, which we do for the benchmark .
Simply put, the Aurora R10 is not the machine to beat on these tests. The Omen Obelisk and the Raptor Z55 outperformed it on Far Cry 5, and the latter topped the chart on Rise of the Tomb Raider. Given the GPU common to them, it comes down to either thermals or how the central processing unit handles gaming. It could be related to how the Aurora chassis handles airflow as it heats up while bet on, and the motherboard could be holding it back. The frame rates recorded for the standalone Ryzen 9 3950X review ( tested in a DIY testbed build ) were higher than the ones here, and the lake superior motherboard in the testbed may be contributing to that. The small single-fan radiator is possibly not keeping the CPU from throttling quite arsenic much as a larger exemplary ( again, like the one in our testbed ) might, besides. The 3950X is a better chip overall than these, but its advantages do not translate directly into higher frame rates in all cases. Intel may have the leg up here in gaming as it has for a while, but it could precisely be how these borderline workstation chips interact with unlike games .
individually from how this chip stacks up against these specific competitors, the operation is hush very strong. The 1080p and 1440p frame rates are well beyond 60fps, and good enough for leveraging the abilities of a high-refresh-rate monitor. These are AAA, largely single-player games equally well, so less visually demanding competitive multiplayer titles such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, Dota 2, League of Legends, or Rainbow Six : siege will see vastly higher ensnare rates. This brawny personal computer is flush adequate to of 60fps 4K gambling, though there is n’t a big cushion. The fact that even a personal computer this powerful and expensive does n’t average much more than 60fps shows how demanding 4K gambling is, and I ‘d in truth recommend most gamers stay away from a 4K monitor if you care about performance unless you have a rig of this bore .
In general, though, I probably would n’t pay the price premium on this desktop I were largely going to use it for gaming. It ‘s expensive, in character, because of the cost of the Ryzen 9 3950X and the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and in terms of human body rates, the competitors come near or do better for less money. At a certain point, more money stops meaning more frames once you top out with the best GPU available, and the competition with the lapp GPU and less expensive chips are matching the Aurora R10 ‘s bet on performance. If you are going to systematically stream gameplay, or are a media-creation professional or serious hobbyist, it ‘s a different story—the 3950X is incredible for these practice cases. If you ‘re largely going to play games, save a few hundred dollars and pick a less expensive CPU .
Bold in Every Sense
There ‘s no two ways about it : Our Alienware Aurora R10 shape is an absolute performance animal. The top-end GPU and the latest age-related macular degeneration silicon in concert make for a blister gaming background. The Ryzen 9 3950X is n’t truly an ideal-value gambling chip, though for the purposes of this configuration it shows what both the CPU and desktop can do, and surely gets the point across. I ‘d suggest most users go with the Ryzen 7 3700X for gambling, but the unit we have is no doubt impressive .
As for the lie of the desktop, I admire Alienware ‘s design chops—and that it was intentionally designed at all. There is n’t a lot to fault, from a huge range of component options to its mince size, customizable lighting, relatively quiet fans, and efficient interior shape. It ‘s reasonably unmanageable to compare our super-high-end model to the configurations most shoppers will end up with—it ‘s no surprise that ours is this fast at this price—but I like the desktop itself. If you want to make a moment of a statement, the Aurora R10 gives you that conversation objet d’art and premium spirit, flush if you order it with more modest components. It does n’t quite snag an Editors ‘ Choice, as there are some great boutique desktops that are beautiful to look at and can match the Aurora R10 ‘s performance, but it does come with our recommendation if you ‘re drawn to the look .
Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition
4.0
See It
$ 1,239.00
at Dell
MSRP $ 799.99
Pros
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Cons
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The Bottom Line
The visually strike Alienware Aurora R10 can be configured in a variety of ways, but our Ryzen 9 3950X-equipped model is a performance monster. We just suggest ordering a more cost-efficient configuration unless you ‘re a true baron exploiter .
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