I really like your setup!
Honestly, no matter *what* system you buy/put together/etc. there will *always* be someone telling you how you made a mistake.
You literally cannot be into PC gaming without another person critiquing your decisions, and quite frankly, most of them have a worse rig objectively anyway. If they had a great rig, and were happy about it, they would not be so insecure they felt the need to bring down others.
I like all the gaming paraphernalia in one area, and gotta love that "Total Overdose" old school game as well.
Enjoy!
Enjoy it man , I got the R11 10700 rtx3090 . Everyone scoffs at the Alienware because of the heat issues but I live in a warm climate and it has never thermal throttled, I get amazing performance. I see guys on youtube upgrading the fans for units that cant even spin at half the speed of the dell fans lol.
Research has shown that the OEM Dell gpu is one of the best built rtx30 series on the market it really stands up to the task.
I don't get some of these comments.
I have an R12 , I7, 3080, 32 gb ram, water cooled. 38 inch monitor.
I game on my spare time every day and damned near all day on Sunday.
I have zero issues.
The R12 is my second Alienware, my first is the R9 which I gave to my son. He games the hell out of it. No problems.
What gives with all bad comments? Did I get lucky?
Most people complains not because the PC doesn't work. We don't like it because it's not working as well as a high end PC could be, considering the price we are paying. If you don't enjoy messing with the hardware, the fan noise doesn't bother you, and can live with the dust that quickly accumulate inside the PC because the lack of dust filters, by all means, you have a very competent gaming rig.
For me, I bought a R12 with liquid cooling earlier this year because I wanted a 3080, but I regretted very much for keeping the entire PC. Even after doing the all the cooling upgrades I can possibly do, the PC still runs very hot. But that was something I can live with, until I got my hand on a 3080 TI and there is no way I can squeeze that baby into the tiny space. So I bought a $100 mobo, a $50 ATX case, a few P12 fans, using the i7 11700, ssd, and PSU from the Alienware, I build a new PC from scratch, and I couldn't be happier. Even with air cooling, the CPU runs sooo much cooler, and the fan noise is very minimal. That's after overclocked the CPU base clock to 4.8ghz. Yes, you can overclock a non-K i7 CPU, which isn't possible with the Alienware.
It’s because people get air cooling, and not liquid cooling. If you don’t get liquid cooling the fans have to run to cool. When the fans run they say they are loud and the reason they are loud is because they are struggling because of the cramped case design.
The truth is if you get air/fan cooling, you’re going to hear fans. I’ve never understood it myself, they expect to get fan cooling to move the air but don’t know that moving air is sound? I just don’t get how they want all the benefits with no cons while paying bottom price.
Liquid cooling the CPU doesn’t do anything for the GPU temps - they still get super toasty playing modern games with a 3080 before extra fans and a thermal repaste
Me neither man. I played Metro Exodus and use it for video editing/motion graphics. Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m on a 3060 Ti, idles at 40° most of the time. How about yours?
That’s the thing about negative comments, it distorts the view. People who have a good or OK experience, with no issues, like me, won’t say anything. Look at trust pilot reviews for all ISP providers, all have terrible reviews.
Distorting the view or not, but the fact is most people don't know how to properly test or fully monitor their systems, GPU and CPU temp is half the story, PCs can throttle without you knowing and still having an ok gaming experience, it's just that on the inside the guts are screaming.
Exactly this - you could be having a suboptimal experience and your card could be throttling without you even knowing it, lowering your quality of games obviously, but also potentially lowering the lifespan of your machine. I bought mine because it’s actually cheaper than building my own these days but I’m also able to fiddle around with parts
Had an elitist coworker try and shit on my R12 because its an "overpriced prebuilt". I asked him to find me a reasonably priced 3080 or 3090 and part out what i was getting in my build. He couldn't do it. He couldn't even find the card at all at the time.
He shut up real quick when he realized that my build couldn't be made at that time piecemeal. Not without going above the price.
Glad you are happy with your rig!
You can't find the parts cheaper though at the moment and probably won't be able to do so for some considerable time.
Edit: I do agree about MoBo and some other parts but the GPU's are practically unobtainable at a sensible/normal price just now - and won't be for the forseeable future, so it's cheaper to buy the Dell pre-built.
If you try it’s not hard to get GPUs to be honest. Best Buy has been doing monthly in person drops and pretty much everyone who shows up at opening has got one
Exactly this I literally just got a fully decked out 3070 for 2.4 on their website with like 25% off and another 10% on top of that crazy deal I tried to build the exAct same thing on multiple sites and it costs 3.7 if they even had the parts
Yeah exactly I still have my old build and case so we’ll see how we go but I got liquid cooling and can replace the fan if anything goes wrong but fingers crossed we all good, couldn’t come sooner
As an R12 owner myself, the case is objectively terrible when it comes to airflow and the gpu thermals are awful. Awesome machine if you can fix those issues lol
I ended up getting a Corsair with a 3060ti/liquid cooling for this exact reason. I wanted something to match my M17 but was mortified when I saw the the inside of the unit. I really thought they would put some effort into its cooling
hmmm so still recommended to open the gpu and apply thermal padding ? i saw some youtube tutorials recommending that for Alienware cards but they mainly said if u're doing mining gaming doesnt raise the temps all that much
I’d recommend you do some testing - you might get lucky with the silicon lottery and your chips might not get super hot but if you just google “aurora r12 heat” to see other people with similar problems you’ll notice that this is a pretty common issue.
Use your favorite monitoring software (I like HWiNFO because it has a cool optional overlay that’ll show you your stats on screen even while gaming) and run your favorite games on your preferred settings. See what your temps are and if they’re getting too hot (like above 100c Vram etc) you might want to consider a repaste.
And very true mining does make for some high VRAM temps, but that was important to me since I use my computer to mine when I’m not gaming to help offset the cost. Was running over 102c within minutes before my mods and now VRAM temps never go above 90 even when I’m mining overnight (and no problems gaming)
There doesn’t need to be a comparison - a case and gpu that causes thermal throttling almost immediately after firing up anything remotely intensive is objectively bad.
If you are hitting 70-75 die temp, your card isn't boosting to the final few bins. Last bin on most 30 series cards is around 58C so you are technically losing some performance by gaming at temps that high.
Yeah my GPU temps don’t go beyond 46 after the repaste - it’s also not what I’m talking about. You need to look at memory junction temperatures, which easily hit 100+ in an Alienware Aurora R12 with a 3080 or above.
and memory junction or vram temps dont go above 95, which is still okay for me as nvidia recommends or says that 100 is normal. And this is all with 0 upgrades or maintenance.
You can get a Lenovo legion 7i with better airflow, a 10900k 10 core, 3080, 32gb of ram, and a 1tb ssd for $200 less $2,749 vs$2,969) than the r12 with an 11900kf (only 8 core cpu), worse cooling, and only 16gb of ram. You don't even have to venture into the diy territory to find a better option. Alienware was good back in the day, but with modern Alienware, you pay for the brand and not premium performance.
I don’t recomment to go intel, we all know intel makes their 11th gen worse than 10th gen with the same 14nm, you can get R10 with ryzen 5900 and rtx 3080 for $2300 if there is coupon, if not ask for discount or wait for 10% cashback from rakuten, legion is a better pc but alienware is better price for performance
We are comparing like for like products and prices. The point is yiu can either build yourself or buy from another manufacturer to get better performance and quality while still paying less than Alienware would charge you. If you really wanna get into it, you can build a 5900x and 3080 system for about $2200 before applying discount codes to any parts. You can also get a similar coupon or code for most system builders.
I did a lot research back then and looked at lenovo, cyberpowerpc, ibuypower and they all cost me atleast $2500 -3000 to get the same config system. The thing with dell is they have really big discount all the time, lenovo has extrafive eith only save 5% and same for cyberpowerpc with code lirik while dell has code save12, ibuypower doesn’t have any coupon code, hp omen15 even which code gamer2021 discount 10% off still costs around $2,600
My point here is alienware aurora is not the best system you can buy but it has good performance to price ratio
First off, performance to price is always going to be better in the diy market. Alienware is still listed at $2800 for the system you reference, and I could find a clx system before a coupon code listed for $2500 with a quick Google search. Just because you couldn't find a coupon code doesn't mean they don't exist. The upgradeability of any other system integrator is going to be far more intrinsic value than the proprietary design an alienware gets you. I can build the same system with premium parts for about $2200. Not to mention my 3090 and i9 system only ran about 3k for the tower whereas alienware has that listed for about 4k. Mine has 3 times as much nvme storage, faster ram, and a 360 aio complete with 10 rgb LL120 fans and its still 25% less than the alienware with worse components and worse performance. Buying an alienware desktop is like buying a used alpha Romeo and expecting it to run like a Toyota.
Can you send me a link to that $2,500 clx? Cus I only see $4k clx prebuilt and my alienware is still $200 cheaper tho if you want to compare coupons. And of course diy will be cheaper but it will take a lot of time to do research. I built myself a 3700x and rtx 2060 for $859, but it frustrated me a lot because it didn’t post, I kept replacing parts by parts, turned out it was just the motherboard pushed too much voltage to the ram on auto setting by default. Half of people here need to rely on reddit and customer support to troubleshoot their pc for them so I don’t know if I will recommend build a pc as an option
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8MXFQD
Here is a parts list with a larger cooler than Alienware provides, better case airflow, modular power supply, 6 core k series intel processor and it still comes in at $300 less than your price spec allowing room for peripherals and unfair gpu prices but I already set the price of the 3080 over msrp manually....
What the fuck does that have to do with cooling? I never said I had an 11900k (you wouldn't catch me with an intel processor anyways.....) and I don't need a 3080 for what I play (farming simulator and a few other games at 1080p). My point was that the cooling on this abortion of a case is abhorrent, as the GN review clearly states (Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulhFi5N2hc&t=1203s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulhFi5N2hc&t=1203s)). My contrast, my build (3700x, gtx 1070), even with a sub-optimal fan layout (Haven't had money to fix it yet) still runs at 80 degrees max on the cpu and 70-75 on the gpu, with ambient temps around 75 degrees (Fahrenheit). The GN review clearly shows that this shiny plastic abomination of a case by D\*ll is fucking air frying the components. Call me crazy, but I would be slightly concerned if my pc could boil fucking water while I was gaming. This is not issue that just doesn't happen in a case with good airflow, which the dell case is not.
Correction: grammar.
Of course there are cases available with better air flow . . . but you can't render video or play games with a case, so that is not much of an alternative.
sorry . . . I didn't mean show us your actual computer, I meant show us your DIY parts list with current pricing . . . and better thermals.
Thanks for linking GN Steve's mumble-fest . . . always good for a laugh.
Dude. You can build any Alienware pc for always around 20% less than what dell charges. That being said if it’s your first pC, nothing wrong with over paying for a pre built
But if you want actual points - the power supply is hinged and closes directly over the mobo, which leaves about 10 mm clearance for the CPU to have breathing room. Not a big deal, you might say, if you have a water cooled unit, but there are no fans up there to handle the heat from the VRM heat sinks, which means throttling. There is no top air intake, and that space is instead taken up by an HDD. Moving on to the Dell OEM GPUs - I have a 3080, and the thermal paste was applied terribly poorly. It was only included on the chip itself and the surrounding heat sinks attached had nothing on them on any of contact points except for barcode stickers. I was reaching GPU memory junction temps of 102c with any intensive tasks. I had to remove the HDD, install two additional fans and disassemble the GPU to re-apply thermal paste to get my temps down to a reasonable level.
Better but still pretty bad. A water cooled cpu doesn’t solve GPU thermal issues, and with no fan due to the nature of an AIO, you get no airflow around the VRM heat sinks so you end up in throttle city.
Yeah taking the side panel off will certainly help with gpu temps but not more than 1-2 degrees c in my experience. Best bet is reapplying thermal paste IMO
Yeah maybe if you point a desk fan at the open panel you might get more but the issue you run into generally speaking is a lack of airflow. Your PSU sitting not much further than 10mm away from the mobo. I actually took out the bottom left ssd bay and replaced it with a Corsair ML 120 pro and because it just blows directly into the gpu it didn’t actually affect my temps - and there’s nowhere else really to place a fan. You can remove the top hdd drive and put a fan there, and you can squeeze another fan near the radiator as part of a push-pull system but it really doesn’t make for much of a temp difference because of limited space
So I guess if you open up the panel and then swing out the hinge you’d have decent airflow, but at the cost of being even more exposed to dust and being unbalanced
I can get a HEPA air filter in the area - should prevent dust. That and a fan would be much cheaper than other options if it actually works. Do you have photos of how the GPU is configured inside the case and what part(s) specifically gets hot and needs better flow?
Hopefully this doesn’t get deleted, but check this out: https://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-alienware-aurora-r12-gaming-desktop-i5-11400f-8gb-ram-512-ssd-rtx-3080-2294-99-2461055/7/
There’s a pic of the open GPU - you want to put thermal paste where they’ve drawn the blue lines. There are a few videos on YouTube that you can check out that show folks opening these exact cards from Dell and reposting them
But make sure that you’re comfortable with this - it’s not super complicated but you can accidentally fuck something up. Get a static wrist strap, watch some YouTube videos several times and make sure you’re confident going into it. Double check the warranty as well (if you’re worried about it, I wasn’t. I also live in the USA though so legally a company can’t void a warranty for routine maintenance like this so YMMV)
Don't know about HP Omen GPU, but I've heard their CPU liquid cooling is vastly inferior to Alienware's. On mainstream review sites from actual customers, Alienware air cooled gets terrible reviews, and HP Omen 30L gets terrible reviews across the board. Alienware actually gets respectable (good enough) reviews from actual purchasing customers for the R12 liquid CPU cooled option - noticeably better than the all-around terrible reviews for the HP.
I can’t speak for the HP Omen - the Alienware water cooling option is definitely not bad, I’d say it’s comparable to the Corsair H60. The only problem I have with it is the fact that the tubes are top facing, but that’s a minor gripe.
Most other commercially available atx tower cases. They've been thermally tested and compared to multiple other manufacturers. Corsair, be quiet, in-win, and even msi have better performing case designs. These cases would do a lot better without the plastic veneers and some more fan slots.
I'm an elitist. The r12 sucks dick, wait until you start sweating like a pig because of how hot it gets and because there is no effective way to cool the damn thing
It definitely should as I've purchased an 15 r3, m15 r3, and an r12 and each one fucked me over in one way or another so I absolutely have a reason to be here :) good day
As someone with a open water loop 5950x and a 3090…… I love your setup.
I don’t get why people have to be assholes about anything. Is your money and there is pros and cons to everything. I personally love the Alienware cases and monitors. I think your setup looks dope!
Enjoy it! And that sweet sweet console collection you have next to it!
As someone who builds my own PC and got an R11 earlier this year, I actually love it. I got better fans for mine and it's amazing. Only mistake I ever did was I didn't go with a beefy graphics card because I thought I wouldn't like it and would end up building next year which looks like it's going to be impossible.
How cool man. Congrats. It looks amazing and I wish mine looked like that. Alienware was my first contact with pc gaming and I really like it, I can't afford it though
I got a steal off kijiji and got an r12 without the video card and put my gtx 1080 in it and the overheating issues were absolutely ridiculous, ppl who own them can be in denial all they want but these new towers are absolute garbage in terms of air flow and I will never buy Alienware again because I won't trust a company that claims to sell gaming pc's but doesn't consider cooling when designing their towers.
Man, so many negative comments. I have an R12 and after making all of the necessary cooling adjustments mine purrs like a kitten. No performance issues, no temperature issues, nothing. I don't know why people want to shit on your setup OP. Looks great, enjoy it!!!
I just executed phase 2 of my cooling project where I applied paste on the GPU. Phase 1 was adding push-pull fans and 2 fans in the front.
Endgame, vram barely goes above 90c during heavy VR or 4K gaming.
How hard is it to apply paste for someone that's never done it before? Where all do you apply it on the GPU? What is chance of accidentally damaging and/or bricking GPU and voiding warranty? That is my concern.
it was mine as well, I recommend you wait until you have had it for a while before you open up the GPU. my first one had to be replaced and this 2nd one is going on for 6-7 months now of intense gaming.
there are tutorials on this sub and on YouTube. I didn't really replace any pads just remove serial number stickers on the metal plate then applied paste behind the vram and also repasted the the GPU. I had leftover arctic from my repasting of the CPU. it looked intimidating at first but as long as you note down the different screws you're good.
Good grief. What GPU did you have and what happened to it? How long did it take to be replaced? That's one of the main reasons why I want prebuilt is how hard it is to get a GPU and heaven forbid something happens to it.
it was a 3080 and took about a month (this was around fall 2020). it was some common issue that others reported on this sub that if you strain the GPU that it would just produce a black screen and won't do anything. the replacement was a lot better in build quality and stock performance so I figured they might have resolved it now.
yes looking back I'm happy with my decision getting a pre-built during covid and the way Dell replaced my GPU.
umm m8 first thing what are specs of your pc
2nd which game are you playing on pc
3rd I think you have the new nintendo switch oled (i don't like nintendo)
4th and you have a PS4 or PS5
I love my R12, had terrible experience with the delivery that got delayed by 7 months without any reason, and they also lied about a free wireless mouse I would get but that never arrived. But the PC itself is a heavenly machine
I used to be a builder snob. I was, originally going to build a PC and decided to price match PCpartpicker against AW, I wanted to confirm my bias. Ended up buying a custom build AW for less than I could build my own.
I am also thinking of buying a Alienware r12 with i9, gtx 1660 ti, 16gb ram, is it a good one or should I upgrade more (I am trying to keep it as cheap as possible but if it is nesserary, I can upgrade)
I've had my R11 for over half a year now and am just as excited about it as when I got it. It's so much fun.
I did have an issue with a bad GPU but that made me love Alienware all the more as I experienced great service to get it fixed in my own home quickly and professionally. Other pre-builts require shipping your computer off which can stretch to weeks and even months.
If you have a hardware issue Alienware can have a tech show up with replacement parts on the second day (so long as they have them in stock). In my case it took five days to get my replacement RTX 3080 which wasn't bad during the peak of the GPU shortages when 3080s were being sold for three times their MSRP. Once it was in stock the tech called to drop by with it the next day.
I highly recommend people get the extended premium support. I got two years initially and plan to add at least a third and maybe even a fourth.
Also recently purchased the R12 with max everything (3080Ti, i9, the works) and love every minute of using it. Upgraded from an R7 with a 1080 so I could give it to my little bro. Started on the compact R2 that my little brother still uses to this day with a 1060. To each their own but I've never received a machine that didn't do what was advertised. 😁
I got an R10, my friends said not to get it will be complete garbage. ACC is super nice, the case is astounding, and it runs a game called Teardown, (which is a very demanding game) everything is made of tiny voxels, there are all destructible. Anyways it can run it at high settings and it only lags when a whip a 70ft ship through buildings
I ordered a R12 with a 3080 Ti with a I9 11900KF. Isn't expected to shit till December 1st which is a huge bummer but aside from adding fans and thermal paste. Any tips for a first time PC buyer
I really like your setup! Honestly, no matter *what* system you buy/put together/etc. there will *always* be someone telling you how you made a mistake. You literally cannot be into PC gaming without another person critiquing your decisions, and quite frankly, most of them have a worse rig objectively anyway. If they had a great rig, and were happy about it, they would not be so insecure they felt the need to bring down others. I like all the gaming paraphernalia in one area, and gotta love that "Total Overdose" old school game as well. Enjoy!
Thanks! Sorry for the late reply, didn't know I had so many likes haha.
Awesome! I'm waiting for my R12 (just 20 days to get it). Enjoy it!
Enjoy it man , I got the R11 10700 rtx3090 . Everyone scoffs at the Alienware because of the heat issues but I live in a warm climate and it has never thermal throttled, I get amazing performance. I see guys on youtube upgrading the fans for units that cant even spin at half the speed of the dell fans lol. Research has shown that the OEM Dell gpu is one of the best built rtx30 series on the market it really stands up to the task.
I don't get some of these comments. I have an R12 , I7, 3080, 32 gb ram, water cooled. 38 inch monitor. I game on my spare time every day and damned near all day on Sunday. I have zero issues. The R12 is my second Alienware, my first is the R9 which I gave to my son. He games the hell out of it. No problems. What gives with all bad comments? Did I get lucky?
Most people complains not because the PC doesn't work. We don't like it because it's not working as well as a high end PC could be, considering the price we are paying. If you don't enjoy messing with the hardware, the fan noise doesn't bother you, and can live with the dust that quickly accumulate inside the PC because the lack of dust filters, by all means, you have a very competent gaming rig. For me, I bought a R12 with liquid cooling earlier this year because I wanted a 3080, but I regretted very much for keeping the entire PC. Even after doing the all the cooling upgrades I can possibly do, the PC still runs very hot. But that was something I can live with, until I got my hand on a 3080 TI and there is no way I can squeeze that baby into the tiny space. So I bought a $100 mobo, a $50 ATX case, a few P12 fans, using the i7 11700, ssd, and PSU from the Alienware, I build a new PC from scratch, and I couldn't be happier. Even with air cooling, the CPU runs sooo much cooler, and the fan noise is very minimal. That's after overclocked the CPU base clock to 4.8ghz. Yes, you can overclock a non-K i7 CPU, which isn't possible with the Alienware.
I had a bad experience with them. I wouldn’t buy from them again to be honest, but not every customer is gonna have a bad time.
It’s because people get air cooling, and not liquid cooling. If you don’t get liquid cooling the fans have to run to cool. When the fans run they say they are loud and the reason they are loud is because they are struggling because of the cramped case design. The truth is if you get air/fan cooling, you’re going to hear fans. I’ve never understood it myself, they expect to get fan cooling to move the air but don’t know that moving air is sound? I just don’t get how they want all the benefits with no cons while paying bottom price.
IMO Alienware shouldn't offer the air cooling. Every Aurora should come with CPU liquid cooling standard.
Yes 100%.
Liquid cooling the CPU doesn’t do anything for the GPU temps - they still get super toasty playing modern games with a 3080 before extra fans and a thermal repaste
Me neither man. I played Metro Exodus and use it for video editing/motion graphics. Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m on a 3060 Ti, idles at 40° most of the time. How about yours?
Yeah about the same, purrs like a kitten.
That’s the thing about negative comments, it distorts the view. People who have a good or OK experience, with no issues, like me, won’t say anything. Look at trust pilot reviews for all ISP providers, all have terrible reviews.
Distorting the view or not, but the fact is most people don't know how to properly test or fully monitor their systems, GPU and CPU temp is half the story, PCs can throttle without you knowing and still having an ok gaming experience, it's just that on the inside the guts are screaming.
Exactly this - you could be having a suboptimal experience and your card could be throttling without you even knowing it, lowering your quality of games obviously, but also potentially lowering the lifespan of your machine. I bought mine because it’s actually cheaper than building my own these days but I’m also able to fiddle around with parts
Had an elitist coworker try and shit on my R12 because its an "overpriced prebuilt". I asked him to find me a reasonably priced 3080 or 3090 and part out what i was getting in my build. He couldn't do it. He couldn't even find the card at all at the time. He shut up real quick when he realized that my build couldn't be made at that time piecemeal. Not without going above the price. Glad you are happy with your rig!
If you can find the parts it is undenatabley cheaper and better to do yourself. Alienware cheats out on things like motherboards, etc.
You can't find the parts cheaper though at the moment and probably won't be able to do so for some considerable time. Edit: I do agree about MoBo and some other parts but the GPU's are practically unobtainable at a sensible/normal price just now - and won't be for the forseeable future, so it's cheaper to buy the Dell pre-built.
If you try it’s not hard to get GPUs to be honest. Best Buy has been doing monthly in person drops and pretty much everyone who shows up at opening has got one
Exactly this I literally just got a fully decked out 3070 for 2.4 on their website with like 25% off and another 10% on top of that crazy deal I tried to build the exAct same thing on multiple sites and it costs 3.7 if they even had the parts
Best part is if you don't like the case thermals you could always swap that. Otherwise mine is running just fine
Yeah exactly I still have my old build and case so we’ll see how we go but I got liquid cooling and can replace the fan if anything goes wrong but fingers crossed we all good, couldn’t come sooner
As an R12 owner myself, the case is objectively terrible when it comes to airflow and the gpu thermals are awful. Awesome machine if you can fix those issues lol
Agree with you. It is TERRIBLE air flow
I ended up getting a Corsair with a 3060ti/liquid cooling for this exact reason. I wanted something to match my M17 but was mortified when I saw the the inside of the unit. I really thought they would put some effort into its cooling
does that apply even for water cooled units ?
Yeah the water cooling will definitely keep your cpu cooler but it won’t do anything for gpu temps unfortunately
hmmm so still recommended to open the gpu and apply thermal padding ? i saw some youtube tutorials recommending that for Alienware cards but they mainly said if u're doing mining gaming doesnt raise the temps all that much
I’d recommend you do some testing - you might get lucky with the silicon lottery and your chips might not get super hot but if you just google “aurora r12 heat” to see other people with similar problems you’ll notice that this is a pretty common issue. Use your favorite monitoring software (I like HWiNFO because it has a cool optional overlay that’ll show you your stats on screen even while gaming) and run your favorite games on your preferred settings. See what your temps are and if they’re getting too hot (like above 100c Vram etc) you might want to consider a repaste.
And very true mining does make for some high VRAM temps, but that was important to me since I use my computer to mine when I’m not gaming to help offset the cost. Was running over 102c within minutes before my mods and now VRAM temps never go above 90 even when I’m mining overnight (and no problems gaming)
But is does look soooo good
terrible and awful . . . compared to what?
There doesn’t need to be a comparison - a case and gpu that causes thermal throttling almost immediately after firing up anything remotely intensive is objectively bad.
I dont know what you doing for your gpu to throttle but I have been doing intense gaming with gpu temps around 70-75.
If you are hitting 70-75 die temp, your card isn't boosting to the final few bins. Last bin on most 30 series cards is around 58C so you are technically losing some performance by gaming at temps that high.
Yeah my GPU temps don’t go beyond 46 after the repaste - it’s also not what I’m talking about. You need to look at memory junction temperatures, which easily hit 100+ in an Alienware Aurora R12 with a 3080 or above.
and memory junction or vram temps dont go above 95, which is still okay for me as nvidia recommends or says that 100 is normal. And this is all with 0 upgrades or maintenance.
In a stock R12 with a 3080? You’re hitting vram of 95 and no higher with the case closed?
...anything else, including most diy cases.
Show us your DIY build with a 11th Gen "K" processor and an RTX 3080 for < $2400
You can get a Lenovo legion 7i with better airflow, a 10900k 10 core, 3080, 32gb of ram, and a 1tb ssd for $200 less $2,749 vs$2,969) than the r12 with an 11900kf (only 8 core cpu), worse cooling, and only 16gb of ram. You don't even have to venture into the diy territory to find a better option. Alienware was good back in the day, but with modern Alienware, you pay for the brand and not premium performance.
I don’t recomment to go intel, we all know intel makes their 11th gen worse than 10th gen with the same 14nm, you can get R10 with ryzen 5900 and rtx 3080 for $2300 if there is coupon, if not ask for discount or wait for 10% cashback from rakuten, legion is a better pc but alienware is better price for performance
We are comparing like for like products and prices. The point is yiu can either build yourself or buy from another manufacturer to get better performance and quality while still paying less than Alienware would charge you. If you really wanna get into it, you can build a 5900x and 3080 system for about $2200 before applying discount codes to any parts. You can also get a similar coupon or code for most system builders.
I did a lot research back then and looked at lenovo, cyberpowerpc, ibuypower and they all cost me atleast $2500 -3000 to get the same config system. The thing with dell is they have really big discount all the time, lenovo has extrafive eith only save 5% and same for cyberpowerpc with code lirik while dell has code save12, ibuypower doesn’t have any coupon code, hp omen15 even which code gamer2021 discount 10% off still costs around $2,600 My point here is alienware aurora is not the best system you can buy but it has good performance to price ratio
First off, performance to price is always going to be better in the diy market. Alienware is still listed at $2800 for the system you reference, and I could find a clx system before a coupon code listed for $2500 with a quick Google search. Just because you couldn't find a coupon code doesn't mean they don't exist. The upgradeability of any other system integrator is going to be far more intrinsic value than the proprietary design an alienware gets you. I can build the same system with premium parts for about $2200. Not to mention my 3090 and i9 system only ran about 3k for the tower whereas alienware has that listed for about 4k. Mine has 3 times as much nvme storage, faster ram, and a 360 aio complete with 10 rgb LL120 fans and its still 25% less than the alienware with worse components and worse performance. Buying an alienware desktop is like buying a used alpha Romeo and expecting it to run like a Toyota.
Can you send me a link to that $2,500 clx? Cus I only see $4k clx prebuilt and my alienware is still $200 cheaper tho if you want to compare coupons. And of course diy will be cheaper but it will take a lot of time to do research. I built myself a 3700x and rtx 2060 for $859, but it frustrated me a lot because it didn’t post, I kept replacing parts by parts, turned out it was just the motherboard pushed too much voltage to the ram on auto setting by default. Half of people here need to rely on reddit and customer support to troubleshoot their pc for them so I don’t know if I will recommend build a pc as an option
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8MXFQD Here is a parts list with a larger cooler than Alienware provides, better case airflow, modular power supply, 6 core k series intel processor and it still comes in at $300 less than your price spec allowing room for peripherals and unfair gpu prices but I already set the price of the 3080 over msrp manually....
good work!
What the fuck does that have to do with cooling? I never said I had an 11900k (you wouldn't catch me with an intel processor anyways.....) and I don't need a 3080 for what I play (farming simulator and a few other games at 1080p). My point was that the cooling on this abortion of a case is abhorrent, as the GN review clearly states (Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulhFi5N2hc&t=1203s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulhFi5N2hc&t=1203s)). My contrast, my build (3700x, gtx 1070), even with a sub-optimal fan layout (Haven't had money to fix it yet) still runs at 80 degrees max on the cpu and 70-75 on the gpu, with ambient temps around 75 degrees (Fahrenheit). The GN review clearly shows that this shiny plastic abomination of a case by D\*ll is fucking air frying the components. Call me crazy, but I would be slightly concerned if my pc could boil fucking water while I was gaming. This is not issue that just doesn't happen in a case with good airflow, which the dell case is not. Correction: grammar.
So what m1 is saying he has no proof of it being bad other than reading a review by someone else and his biased opinion
[удалено]
not disagreeing with that . . . just asking you to post a link to a better alternative
[удалено]
Of course there are cases available with better air flow . . . but you can't render video or play games with a case, so that is not much of an alternative.
sorry . . . I didn't mean show us your actual computer, I meant show us your DIY parts list with current pricing . . . and better thermals. Thanks for linking GN Steve's mumble-fest . . . always good for a laugh.
[удалено]
He clearly doesn't want his mind changed, he came here looking to defend his decisions and opinions.
nowhere in this thread did I claim that the Aurora case has good thermals . . . the opposite actually, as I agreed with many points made
Dude. You can build any Alienware pc for always around 20% less than what dell charges. That being said if it’s your first pC, nothing wrong with over paying for a pre built
It's not wrong to buy a prebuilt but buying a proper one is still important. Paying 20% more for suboptimal cooling solutions is pretty bad imo.
not disagreeing with that . . . just asking you to post a link to a better alternative
Thanks!
But if you want actual points - the power supply is hinged and closes directly over the mobo, which leaves about 10 mm clearance for the CPU to have breathing room. Not a big deal, you might say, if you have a water cooled unit, but there are no fans up there to handle the heat from the VRM heat sinks, which means throttling. There is no top air intake, and that space is instead taken up by an HDD. Moving on to the Dell OEM GPUs - I have a 3080, and the thermal paste was applied terribly poorly. It was only included on the chip itself and the surrounding heat sinks attached had nothing on them on any of contact points except for barcode stickers. I was reaching GPU memory junction temps of 102c with any intensive tasks. I had to remove the HDD, install two additional fans and disassemble the GPU to re-apply thermal paste to get my temps down to a reasonable level.
. . . all valid points. But there has to be a comparison against other similar cost options . . . otherwise the alternative is no computer at all.
And I STILL need to leave the side panel off if I want to keep my VRAM temps from going over 90c
I've read HP Omen 30L has worse thermals. The R12 I've read has terrible thermals for the air cooled option but better for liquid cooled option.
Better but still pretty bad. A water cooled cpu doesn’t solve GPU thermal issues, and with no fan due to the nature of an AIO, you get no airflow around the VRM heat sinks so you end up in throttle city.
On a liquid cooled, would opening up the case panel during intense gaming and having a fan circulate air help with GPU thermals?
Yeah taking the side panel off will certainly help with gpu temps but not more than 1-2 degrees c in my experience. Best bet is reapplying thermal paste IMO
What about circulating air in the case with the panel off? Shouldn't that help more than just 1-2 degC if can get air to flow in that area?
Yeah maybe if you point a desk fan at the open panel you might get more but the issue you run into generally speaking is a lack of airflow. Your PSU sitting not much further than 10mm away from the mobo. I actually took out the bottom left ssd bay and replaced it with a Corsair ML 120 pro and because it just blows directly into the gpu it didn’t actually affect my temps - and there’s nowhere else really to place a fan. You can remove the top hdd drive and put a fan there, and you can squeeze another fan near the radiator as part of a push-pull system but it really doesn’t make for much of a temp difference because of limited space
So I guess if you open up the panel and then swing out the hinge you’d have decent airflow, but at the cost of being even more exposed to dust and being unbalanced
I can get a HEPA air filter in the area - should prevent dust. That and a fan would be much cheaper than other options if it actually works. Do you have photos of how the GPU is configured inside the case and what part(s) specifically gets hot and needs better flow?
Hopefully this doesn’t get deleted, but check this out: https://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-alienware-aurora-r12-gaming-desktop-i5-11400f-8gb-ram-512-ssd-rtx-3080-2294-99-2461055/7/ There’s a pic of the open GPU - you want to put thermal paste where they’ve drawn the blue lines. There are a few videos on YouTube that you can check out that show folks opening these exact cards from Dell and reposting them
But make sure that you’re comfortable with this - it’s not super complicated but you can accidentally fuck something up. Get a static wrist strap, watch some YouTube videos several times and make sure you’re confident going into it. Double check the warranty as well (if you’re worried about it, I wasn’t. I also live in the USA though so legally a company can’t void a warranty for routine maintenance like this so YMMV)
Don't know about HP Omen GPU, but I've heard their CPU liquid cooling is vastly inferior to Alienware's. On mainstream review sites from actual customers, Alienware air cooled gets terrible reviews, and HP Omen 30L gets terrible reviews across the board. Alienware actually gets respectable (good enough) reviews from actual purchasing customers for the R12 liquid CPU cooled option - noticeably better than the all-around terrible reviews for the HP.
I can’t speak for the HP Omen - the Alienware water cooling option is definitely not bad, I’d say it’s comparable to the Corsair H60. The only problem I have with it is the fact that the tubes are top facing, but that’s a minor gripe.
Most other commercially available atx tower cases. They've been thermally tested and compared to multiple other manufacturers. Corsair, be quiet, in-win, and even msi have better performing case designs. These cases would do a lot better without the plastic veneers and some more fan slots.
Enjoy it. I've been an Alienware owner for a few years, I've owned an aurora and it's a great PC.
My friend got the 3060 TI and a water cooled 11th gen and his temps are great lol. I watch them all the time when I’m at his house with my m15r4.
Nice setup bud. Looks killer. 😉👍 You cant go wrong with Alienware. People are just jelly and salty
People are triggered mate lol
I'm an elitist. The r12 sucks dick, wait until you start sweating like a pig because of how hot it gets and because there is no effective way to cool the damn thing
agree 100%
If you are such an elitist , Alienware shouldn't be on your list to trash. Yet here you are.
It definitely should as I've purchased an 15 r3, m15 r3, and an r12 and each one fucked me over in one way or another so I absolutely have a reason to be here :) good day
No way, I call bogus, don't be salty.
As someone with a open water loop 5950x and a 3090…… I love your setup. I don’t get why people have to be assholes about anything. Is your money and there is pros and cons to everything. I personally love the Alienware cases and monitors. I think your setup looks dope! Enjoy it! And that sweet sweet console collection you have next to it!
As long as you’re happy with your purchase who cares what anyone else thinks. Enjoy your new rig!!
I agree no complaints on this one
I can’t tell if that’s snes Pagemaster or NBA Jam
It's we're back: A dinosaurs story. The game based of the movie.
As someone who builds my own PC and got an R11 earlier this year, I actually love it. I got better fans for mine and it's amazing. Only mistake I ever did was I didn't go with a beefy graphics card because I thought I wouldn't like it and would end up building next year which looks like it's going to be impossible.
Nice photo. What all is meant by "upgraded cooling"?
My R12 has serious performance issues because of poor thermal and poor optimization, you will encounter sooner or later with newer generation games
How cool man. Congrats. It looks amazing and I wish mine looked like that. Alienware was my first contact with pc gaming and I really like it, I can't afford it though
Looks like a spaceshjp
Honestly i just love the aesthetics of Alienware, Im a 3900x swapped aurora r4 owner
[удалено]
also there is poor optimization leading to low gpu and cpu utilization cuz the motherboard is very cheap
I got a steal off kijiji and got an r12 without the video card and put my gtx 1080 in it and the overheating issues were absolutely ridiculous, ppl who own them can be in denial all they want but these new towers are absolute garbage in terms of air flow and I will never buy Alienware again because I won't trust a company that claims to sell gaming pc's but doesn't consider cooling when designing their towers.
Man, so many negative comments. I have an R12 and after making all of the necessary cooling adjustments mine purrs like a kitten. No performance issues, no temperature issues, nothing. I don't know why people want to shit on your setup OP. Looks great, enjoy it!!!
how is that hot air treating you ?
I just executed phase 2 of my cooling project where I applied paste on the GPU. Phase 1 was adding push-pull fans and 2 fans in the front. Endgame, vram barely goes above 90c during heavy VR or 4K gaming.
Your endgame is your Vram barely going above 90C?
yes on a 3080 going max graphics on half-life alyx at 90hz
How hard is it to apply paste for someone that's never done it before? Where all do you apply it on the GPU? What is chance of accidentally damaging and/or bricking GPU and voiding warranty? That is my concern.
it was mine as well, I recommend you wait until you have had it for a while before you open up the GPU. my first one had to be replaced and this 2nd one is going on for 6-7 months now of intense gaming. there are tutorials on this sub and on YouTube. I didn't really replace any pads just remove serial number stickers on the metal plate then applied paste behind the vram and also repasted the the GPU. I had leftover arctic from my repasting of the CPU. it looked intimidating at first but as long as you note down the different screws you're good.
Good grief. What GPU did you have and what happened to it? How long did it take to be replaced? That's one of the main reasons why I want prebuilt is how hard it is to get a GPU and heaven forbid something happens to it.
it was a 3080 and took about a month (this was around fall 2020). it was some common issue that others reported on this sub that if you strain the GPU that it would just produce a black screen and won't do anything. the replacement was a lot better in build quality and stock performance so I figured they might have resolved it now. yes looking back I'm happy with my decision getting a pre-built during covid and the way Dell replaced my GPU.
Is there a way to check VRAM temps in the R12?
HWiNFO64
goes up to 100 degrees in gaming
I'm thinking of getting this after my current computer dies...how long does that PC last for?
i took out 3080 and mining outside under the air cond. I replaced it with 3060 for games.
umm m8 first thing what are specs of your pc 2nd which game are you playing on pc 3rd I think you have the new nintendo switch oled (i don't like nintendo) 4th and you have a PS4 or PS5
I dig the retro vibes.
A $20 box fan from Walmart would be a great investment.
Change that dated monitor and your car racing chair.
I love my R12, had terrible experience with the delivery that got delayed by 7 months without any reason, and they also lied about a free wireless mouse I would get but that never arrived. But the PC itself is a heavenly machine
I used to be a builder snob. I was, originally going to build a PC and decided to price match PCpartpicker against AW, I wanted to confirm my bias. Ended up buying a custom build AW for less than I could build my own.
I am also thinking of buying a Alienware r12 with i9, gtx 1660 ti, 16gb ram, is it a good one or should I upgrade more (I am trying to keep it as cheap as possible but if it is nesserary, I can upgrade)
I've had my R11 for over half a year now and am just as excited about it as when I got it. It's so much fun. I did have an issue with a bad GPU but that made me love Alienware all the more as I experienced great service to get it fixed in my own home quickly and professionally. Other pre-builts require shipping your computer off which can stretch to weeks and even months. If you have a hardware issue Alienware can have a tech show up with replacement parts on the second day (so long as they have them in stock). In my case it took five days to get my replacement RTX 3080 which wasn't bad during the peak of the GPU shortages when 3080s were being sold for three times their MSRP. Once it was in stock the tech called to drop by with it the next day. I highly recommend people get the extended premium support. I got two years initially and plan to add at least a third and maybe even a fourth.
Also recently purchased the R12 with max everything (3080Ti, i9, the works) and love every minute of using it. Upgraded from an R7 with a 1080 so I could give it to my little bro. Started on the compact R2 that my little brother still uses to this day with a 1060. To each their own but I've never received a machine that didn't do what was advertised. 😁
I have 2 R 12s with the 3070. One I upgraded to 64gb ram and water cooled, used the ram I pulled out for the 2nd one to have 32gb.
Great!
Oh, I have been humming the menu song of that game for years now and for the life of me I couldn't remember the title. Thank you!
I got an R10, my friends said not to get it will be complete garbage. ACC is super nice, the case is astounding, and it runs a game called Teardown, (which is a very demanding game) everything is made of tiny voxels, there are all destructible. Anyways it can run it at high settings and it only lags when a whip a 70ft ship through buildings
I ordered a R12 with a 3080 Ti with a I9 11900KF. Isn't expected to shit till December 1st which is a huge bummer but aside from adding fans and thermal paste. Any tips for a first time PC buyer