Dell Announces Alienware Aurora R9: An Ultimate mATX Gaming PC
by Anton Shilov on August 22, 2019 1:00 PM EST
Living up to its status as a high-end, botique system builder, back in early 2019 Alienware rolled out its "Legend" industrial design. Intended to set the brand apart from competitors, the futuristic design ended up being rather different from other gaming PCs available today. Initially Dell used the new industrial design for laptops and monitors, and this week the company rolled out its first Legend-designed mATX desktop in the Alienware Aurora R9.
The Aurora R9 comes in a Lunar Light or Dark Side of the Moon chassis that isn't quite like anything that we have seen before. In fact, it looks more like an item from Portal rather than a desktop computer. It still has AlienFX RGB lighting (two or three zones) for additional personalization, but even out-of-box the system looks unique.
Inside the new Aurora is a Micro-ATX motherboard based on Intel’s Z370 chipset and is compatible with Intel’s 9th Gen Core i3/i5/i7/i9 processors, with the unlocked K-series parts coming factory overclocked to 4.4 GHz - 4.7 GHz depending on the model. Cooling these chips is in turn is a custom Alienware-badged closed-loop liquid cooling system. Meanwhile, as is traditional for Alienware, the chassis features well-thought airflows, allowing the system to keep up with the cooling requirements of the overclocked processors.
Rounding out the package, the CPU can be paired with up to 64 GB of Kingston HyperX DDR4-3200 memory, either an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD with capacities up to 2TB or Intel’s Optane Memory caching SSD, and a 2 GB 7200 RPM HDD.
Being aimed at demanding gamers, the Alienware Aurora R9 can be equipped with a wide range of current-generation AMD Radeon RX and NVIDIA GeForce GTX/RTX video cards. The top-of-the-range models will come with either one GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or two GeForce RTX 2080 cards.
When it comes to connectivity, the Alienware Aurora R9 features a GbE port (enabled by the Killer E2500 controller), a Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 adapter (Qualcomm’s DW1810/DW1820 or Rivet’s Killer AX1650), USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A and Type-C connectors, and 7.1-channel audio.
As usual for Alienware, the Aurora R9 can be easily upgraded by the end user, with the case feature toolless access. It is worth noting, however, that Alienware only equips the lower-end models with a 460 W PSU, so upgrade options are a little more limited on those models without a PSU upgrade as well.
The Alienware Aurora R9 is available now, with basic configurations starting at $969.99.
Related Reading:
- Alienware Installs NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX Cards In Aurora and Area-51 Desktops
- Alienware Area-51 Threadripper Edition Announced at E3, Available for Order July 27
- Alienware Refreshes Lineup With Laptop Updates, And Liquid Cooled X51 Desktop
- Dell Unveils G5 Gaming Desktop: Starting at $629
Source: Dell
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Gunbuster - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
All those nice CG exploded view images and not a fan in sight. Really Alienware?ajp_anton - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
I understand that Intel is still makes the "ultimate" gaming CPUs, but since it lets you choose not only 9900k, but 9700k and all the way down to 9100, why not any Ryzens as well?AshlayW - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
Maybe because Intel is paying them to not use AMD processors... Déjà vuKorguz - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
or the kick backs/discounts are why there are no ryzens offered.... but to be fair... Dell has always been 99% intel from day one, havent they ??shompa - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
Well. The real answer is that customers pay more for Intel than AMD since the retail price is higher. Intel can therefore give huge discounts for their high end CPUs. You ever wondered why AMD isn't killing Intel on X86 servers? Intels list prices are over 10K per high end CPU while AMD cost 1/4 and have more cores. Intel gives huge customers that threaten to go to AMD up to 90% discount on CPUs. It's legal. Not bribes. And for gaming. Intel is actually better IRW (and Gaming is less than 10% of the X86 market. Remember that the ASP of a PC is under 400 dollars. No Ryzen because no iGPU. There is a valid reason why AMD have 15% of the X86 market and less than 4% on X86 servers)Qasar - Friday, August 23, 2019 - link
" You ever wondered why AMD isn't killing Intel on X86 servers? " no need to wonder.. performance and features werent there pre Zen based cpus, but Rome, looks to have changed that." Intel gives huge customers that threaten to go to AMD up to 90% discount on CPUs " there is NO way intel would give that high if a discount, if they did, they wouldnt be making the billions a year they do, and their investers and share holders, would be wanting heads to roll...
are you sure that reason is more based on price vs performance ?? with Epyc Rome, that could change drastically, even with the discounts you are assuming. do you really think intel would sell a customer their the Xeon Platinum 8280 that costs $13000, for half of that, or more when the same customer could get a Epyc Rome 7742 for $7000 ??? not even intel would willingly loose that much for a cpu just to keep a customer
" Intel gives huge customers that threaten to go to AMD up to 90% discount on CPUs " there is no way intel would give that kind of a discount on its cpus. if they did, they wouldn't be making the billions a year they do, and their investors and shareholders, would be quite upset if they did
FreckledTrout - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
That is just weird. Dell kind of missed the point putting the PSu on top of the mATX sized case. It's like the worst of both worlds. Its mATX but ATX sized but without the ATX expandability. This seems like a silly compromise.drexnx - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
that's the radiator, the psu is where the 5.25 bays used to bedrexnx - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
or maybe it's over the CPU from the back render...the renders are really unclear and somewhat contradictory actually...
AshlayW - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
Tacky.