Alienware Aurora R8 review Digital Trends

From its spaceship stimulated look to its selection of excessive-stop silicon, there’s no denying that Alienware is catering to the needs of enthusiast game enthusiasts with the Aurora R8. Though this gaming desktop changed into designed for excessive-stop game enthusiasts with capabilities that pinnacle out with Intel’s ninth-Generation Core i9-9900K processor, dual-Nvidia RTX 2080 images aid, and whopping quantities of garage and reminiscence, even casual game enthusiasts who are keen on Alienware’s gamer-first designs can get in on the movement thanks to a extra less expensive $899 entry rate.

Enthusiasts who demand extra overall performance than the bottom configuration – which includes an Intel Core i5-9400 processor, 8GB RAM, and AMD Radeon RX 560X photographs – will be happy to realize that Alienware offers plenty of upgradeable configurations for this computing device. Unlike other boutique gaming PCs, like Digital Storm’s Lynx and Origin PC’s Neuron, Alienware most effective allows users to upgrade pick from internal improvements, leaving the case layout fashionable across all builds of the R8.

More of the same

Aesthetically, the Aurora R8 maintains the equal layout Alienware has been the use of since the Aurora R5. Though this isn’t always awful, given that the tower turned into constructed to permit game enthusiasts clean get admission to for upgrades, the twin-tone gunmetal and black bulbous design is starting to show its age subsequent to sleeker more minimalist desktops, like HP’s Omen Obelisk, Digital Storm’s Lynx, or Origin PC’s Neuron. Alienware’s attempts at a futuristic silhouette with its UFO-like Aurora R8 falls a piece flat — the unit’s sloped pinnacle and angled toes make this tower look rather unfashionable – and possibly dated. Unlike a lot of R8’s present day opponents, this gaming PC is more often than not made from opaque plastic with out any see-through tempered glass window, a characteristic that’s speedy turning into general on many gaming computers.

On the Origin PC Neuron and HP Omen Obelisk, as an example, the glass window now not handiest facilitates to show off the technology inner, like water cooling pipes and LED backlighting, however also allows to feature visual interest. The R8 comes with a removable side metallic-coated plastic panel. Though we didn’t come across any durability issues with the Aurora R8’s desire of substances, we located that a few flexing in the plastic made this computer feel much less durable than competing all-metal instances.

At 18.6 x 14.2 x 8.4 inches, the Aurora R8 is ready the identical size as maximum mid-sized gaming desktops. Given the R8’s capacity to house up to 2 photos cards, it’s closest competitors encompass the 18 x 18 x 8-inch Digital Storm Lynx and the rather customizable and compact 16.5 x 15.3 x 6.8-inch Origin PC Neuron. And even though the R8 weighs 32 kilos, it’s plastic top-convey manage – which feels much less strong than Lenovo’s Legion C730 Cube’s cooler-inspired convey handle – allows in transporting this computer to LAN parties.

The Aurora R8 is designed to house up to two images cards, allowing for massive performance potential.

Overall, in case you’re partial to Alienware’s aesthetics, or in case you’ve invested in an Alienware display – just like the Alienware 34 Curved AW3418dw gaming reveal – the Aurora R8’s design will no longer disappoint. Like the Alienware show, the Aurora R8’s accents are minimum, consisting of easy LED strips on its facet panels, which may be controlled by the Alien FX software. The sloped pinnacle and angled ft make Alienware’s UFO-chasing layout experience a piece unfashionable, in preference to futuristic, on a table. If you select extra understated aesthetics, you can need to appearance some other place.

Built for the future

Like greater effective mid-sized towers available on the market, the Alienware Aurora R8 is designed to house up to two snap shots playing cards, providing gamers – and creatives who are interested in this PC’s layout – with big overall performance ability. With space to deal with ample storage drives, the Aurora R8 is a PC that can grow with you, furnished the gaming-ahead layout doesn’t appearance stale in some years.

For cubicle dwellers trying to use the Aurora R8 as a computing device, a unmarried screw, at the side of a comfortable lock port on a liftable tab on the rear, is designed to cozy the R8’s internals from “RAM jackers” for your workplace. Though it provides a bit of security to the gadget’s internals, the screw is a curious detail for the reason that the R8 is likely to appeal more to gamers than cubicle dwellers. Once the screw is undone  and multiple latches are switched to the unlocked function on the rear of the unit, the complete side panel can be removed.

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Inside, you’ll be greeted by using a big metal bracket containing the 850W power deliver unit. An image indicates that you can carry the bracket out from the rear of the Aurora, permitting it to swing open to show the micro ATX motherboard, images card, memory, and RAM. Our evaluate unit ships with two sticks of 16GB of HyperX DDR4 RAM, and customers can without difficulty improve to 64GB of memory via the four DIMM slots on the motherboard.

Storage area have to now not be a issue for virtual hoarders. Even though our evaluation unit ships with a 512GB NVMe solid-kingdom power and a 2TB hard disk pressure, the R8 ships with five garage bays. Given the open design whilst the PSU bracket is swung open, making DIY enhancements is very easy. Though cables are smartly managed, there’s always a concern that cables may come to be cinched or inadvertently clipped whilst the bracket is closed.

Ports galore

Even if this PC’s styling won't be on your liking, a lack of port should not be a criticism with the Aurora R8. All configurations of this PC ships with the equal abundance of ports, making it smooth to connect mainstay peripherals on the rear and gaining access to flash drives at the front.

The front ports are located at the pinnacle close to the front of the unit just above the Alienware sparkling alien head emblem, which doubles as a depressible strength button. Here, you’ll discover connections for 3 USB-A ports, unmarried USB-C port, microphone input, and headphone jack. Thunderbolt 3, however, is absent on the Aurora R7.

On the rear, you’ll discover an SPDIF connector, Ethernet jack, eight USB-A ports, single USB-C port, single USB 3.1 Type-A port, and audio jacks. There also are three DisplayPort connectors, and HDMI port, and an extra USB-C port on the Nvidia RTX 2080 pix card on our overview unit. Depending on the pictures card you select, those ports may also vary.

Chunky but now not clunky

Our Aurora R8 overview unit ships with an eight-center Intel Core i7-9900K processor from Intel’s 9th-era processor family, and performance is strong. If you’re searching at the Aurora R8 for productiveness obligations, you may upgrade to a configuration with a more effective Intel Core i9-9900K processor. As configured with a Core i7 silicon, we did now not come upon any troubles the usage of the R8 for Adobe Creative Cloud or Microsoft Office 365 packages, and games load fantastically fast.

Though processing performance isn’t as robust as on more moderen systems with Intel Core i9-9900K CPUs, the Aurora R8’s processor overall performance is better than the HP Omen Obelisk, that is to be expected given the latter gadget shipped with an older Intel Core i7-8700 processor. In our Geekbench 4 benchmark, the R8 scored 6,056 and 29,032 points in single- and multi-core assessments respectively. This isn’t as excessive because the Origin Millennium’s rankings of 6,357 and 34,309, respectively, given that machine’s better CPU configuration. Interestingly, the R8 beats the Alienware’s Area-51m in unmarried-core overall performance of five,848 points, but fell short of notebook’s the 32,164 multi-center result.

Most customers probable gained’t observe any marginal profits in performance with upgrading to an Intel Core i9 processor on the Aurora R8. Instead, a better investment might be to go with a Core i7 build and using your budget to improve the RAM and reminiscence.

In our video encoding take a look at, the Aurora R8 took 96 seconds to encode a 4K video the usage of the Handbrake software. This places the performance of the R8 in among Core i9-9900K structures, just like the Origin Millennium, which took 77 seconds to perform the identical undertaking, and older processors, just like the Core i7-8700-equipped HP Omen Obelisk. Given that the Area-51m computer ships with a stronger Intel Core i9-9900K processor, it’s thrilling that the R8’s time wasn’t too a ways off from the 81 seconds posted by its sibling.

Though the SK Hynix SSD at the R8 isn’t the quickest SSD on a system we’ve tested, the read and write scores of one,801 Mbps and 1,365 Mbps, respectively, remains plenty speedy for maximum every day activities.

Double the graphics

Though the Aurora R8 is a pre-built gaming PC, it contains lots of pictures ability that will make you the envy of fanatic gamers. The Aurora R8 has the distinction of being one of the more commercially to be had and compact structures that may aid up to 2 GPUs, topping out with dual-Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards. Our review unit ships with a single GeForce RTX 2080 non-Ti card. This locations it within the agency of the Origin PC Neuron, even though maximum users will possibly no longer even need or method that level of GPU strength except they’re using the gadget for design paintings.

The unmarried GeForce RTX 2080 card on the Aurora R8 offers solid performance for 1080p gaming, and even gamers with 2K ultra-wide 1440p monitors will discover loads to love about this ray tracing-succesful card. When benchmarked towards Underwriter Laboratories’ 3-d Mark Time Spy test, the RTX 2080 card nonetheless trails its extra effective RTX 2080 Ti sibling, but consequences were higher than different RTX 2070 systems we’ve tested. The Aurora R8’s rating of 9,670 factors in this test is about 1,000 factors higher than the RTX 2070 card at the Digital Storm Lynx, but this end result continues to be more than 3,000 factors at the back of the RTX 2080 Ti performance on the Corsair One Pro i180.

In our gaming performance, the RTX 2080 card finished as expected, besting the outcomes of Nvidia’s RTX 2070 while trailing the greater effective RTX 2080 Ti playing cards. With modern-day, less images-heavy titles, consisting of Epic’s Fortnite and 2K Games’ Civilization VI, the Aurora R8’s RTX 2080 snap shots controlled to stay above 60 frames in keeping with 2nd (FPS) throughout all resolutions, even when gaming info were turned up to Epic mode inside the former and Ultra mode within the latter sport. At 4K in Epic mode, the Aurora R8 simplest dropped to 61 FPS at 4K decision in Epic mode. Gamers who opt for either a FHD display or an ultrawide 3,440 x 1,440-pixel 2K display gained’t enjoy any issues, and even at 4K, the RTX 2080 become more than capable at coping with those titles.

Titles with more complex portraits rendering, like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and EA Dice’s Battlefield V, display extra degraded performance in body rates while played at higher resolutions. Although Alienware boasts “whisper quiet” operations at the Aurora R8, fan noise becomes great while the machine is taxed. On idle, the fan the fan emits a low pitch hum, and when the machine is on complete load, the fan sounds slightly louder than on competing systems, like Origin’s Neuron and Digital Storm’s Lynx. Gamers, designers, and those who depend on the gadget for GPU-heavy obligations ought to probable bear in mind the location of the R8 in a workspace to reduce distraction due to the whirling fan.

In Battlefield V, our RTX 2080-powered R8 review showed a major drop in overall performance when the sport is performed in 4K decision in comparison to more powerful RTX 2080 Ti structures, like Corsair’s One Pro i180. In 2K decision, the game played properly above 60 FPS, however there may be some drops on frame prices, making Battlefield V seem a piece uneven all through scenes with heavy rendering at 1440p in Ultra mode no matter a mean frame charge of 94 FPS.

When ray tracing is enabled in Battlefield V, the game showed barely extra info. At 1080p and 1440p resolutions, there wasn’t any perceivable loss in frame charges, however at 4K, the RTX 2080 simply started out to reveal its weak spot. Gamers who play in 4K will want to improve to the RTX 2080 Ti, however if you mainly play at 1080p or 1440p, the RTX 2080 photos in our R8 evaluation unit is greater than adequate.

Similarly, with the photographs-wealthy Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the RTX 2080 was capable of supply above 60 FPS effects at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, even when Ultra mode is enabled. At 1440p Ultra, stuttering became substantive, and body costs dipped underneath 60 FPS at 4K resolution — right down to 39 FPS at 4K in Ultra mode. Gaming overall performance is on par with other RTX 2080 systems. Graphics overall performance typical is slightly weaker than similar structures with higher RTX 2080 Ti graphics, but it’s still better than the RTX 2070-ready Digital Storm Lynx.

Warranty

Although the Alienware Aurora R8 ships with a fashionable one-12 months warranty on components and labor with a generous unfastened on-website repair policy, the machine additionally benefits from Dell’s PC revel in. Drawing from the Dell’s vast organization support applications, Alienware also gives non-compulsory assurance packages that extend the insurance to 5 years with extras like virus removal. Users who pick a general warranty also can add optional unintended damage insurance. These elective coverage plans upload to the cost of the Aurora R8 – Alienware’s 5-yr Premium Support Plus is priced at $749 – but the prolonged warranty can offer peace of mind.

Unlike Origin PC, which additionally offers an non-obligatory improve plan with the intention to provide you with market fee of your PC additives while you ship them lower back to the corporation, Alienware offers no such plan. In this case, enthusiast game enthusiasts who want to upgrade their images card in the destiny, for example, will both ought to promote their existing cards themselves or consume the fee.

Our Take

The Aurora R8 grants the overall performance you want in a completely uniquely Alienware design. With eight unique pre-built configurations to pick out from, the Aurora R8 can either be an economical system for casual gamers or a worthy funding for fanatic gamers.

As reviewed, our Intel Core i7-9700K and RTX 2080-powered configuration prices about $2,500 after discounts, however enhancements that add even greater overall performance to this device – like a higher Core i9-9900K processor, dual-RTX 2080 portraits, and faster RAM – will quickly power up the price to more than $4,500.

Is there a higher alternative?

The closest competitor to the Alienware Aurora R8 is HP’s Omen Obelisk. Since we’d reviewed the2019 Obelisk, HP had made some incredible adjustments to the 2019 version that makes it more aggressive with the Aurora R8. Like the Aurora, this yr’s Omen Obelisk can be configured with the equal selections of ninth-era Intel processors, and the PC may be configured with as much as an RTX 2080 pictures card. Even although HP doesn’t ship the Omen Obelisk with two pix cards, the tower does aid it. An Omen Obelisk that’s further configured to our Aurora R8 review unit might price $3,223, making the Aurora the extra low-cost alternative. Where the Obelisk stands proud is with its greater modern-day design, a see-thru tempered glass facet panel that showcases the unit’s liquid cooling mechanism, and a often steel build.

If you’re after a greater customizable PC wherein you may choose the paint and trim colorations, Origin PC’s Neuron is an top notch alternative. The Neuron feels more modern-day with its all-steel production and glass window layout. The Neuron is as compact as it is powerful, making this gaming rig an wonderful choice for gamers and designers who want to maximize desk space. Like the R8, the Neuron helps up to 2 images cards, but electricity customers can amplify this PC’s performance with an 18-center Intel Core i9-9980XE processor, making it a computer substitute. And at the same time as the Aurora R8 tops out with dual-RTX 2080 portraits, customers have the option of twin-RTX 2080 Ti photos at the Neuron. When in addition configured to our R8 overview unit, the Origin PC fees upwards of $2,700.

How long will it final?

The Aurora R8 offers quite a few cost for its rate. With builds that contain some of the excellent processors and pix playing cards on the market these days, the Aurora R8 will remaining for years of use. The exceedingly upgradeable case layout – although made of opaque plastic – will help hold this gaming PC clean years down the road, permitting you to make DIY upgrades inside the future.

Should you buy it?

Yes, the Alienware Aurora R8 is a solid gaming PC that gives first rate performance for its charge. With lots of room for destiny improvements, it’s a system in an effort to final you for years, making it all of the more curious as to why Alienware went with a design that is already several years old. If you may forgive Alienware’s relentless UFO-chasing design pursuit, the Aurora R8 can provide punchy overall performance at a reasonable rate in a system that gives a lot of room for enhancements down the street.

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2019-04-27 20:00:36Z
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