Alienware Aurora R14 Liquid Cooled Gaming Desktop - AMD Ryzen 9 5900, 32GB 3466MHz RAM, 1TB SDD + 2TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB GDDR6X Graphics, VR Ready, USB-C, Windows 11 Home – Black

I spent the money to get what I thought was one of the best gaming PCs out there, configuring it for the best graphics, most RAM, best hard drive config, etc. Beautiful packaging, but once it was set up it was almost immediately flaky. I figured that all PCs have their idiosyncracies, but it kept getting worse, a little at a time. Today, it decided to quit altogether. Vendor support is non-existent, warranty support is no better than the PC, and I will certainly not buy this brand again!

Changed my mind this computer is complete trash. It’s the worst investment I made. I’m going to have to upgrade and buy all the parts myself and will end up costing me double. It runs just like a cheap $200 computer you can get at Walmart and I think that’s an insult to Walmart computers compared to how bad this runs

I bought this R14 box NOT because I wanted it for gaming, although it does that VERY well, but primarily because I needed it for post processing of large photo images. A system I built for myself sometime ago died an ugly death and I decided to buy a system rather than build one, especially since parts arent easy to get. Ive used Linux (OpenSuse) rather than MickySoft for years, and tried to install that replacing the Bloze 11 that was on the R14. OpenSuse didnt like the Ethernet card that is in the R14 so I installed Ubuntu with a bunch of add-ons. Ubuntu doesnt like to play with the Ethernet well either however, I was able to add my wireless modem. The R14 is not only very fast on the Net, but EXTREMELY quick in handling large photos, which I keep in the tiff format using The Gimp. My only complaint is that theres no way to control (read that change) the LEDS on/in the R14 as Dell didnt put that in firmware but software and there isnt a Linux app. to do that.

I bought this during Prime Day 2022 (July) and the price/value is based on that. Pros: Good packaging, fast delivery, arrived on time and undamaged. The SSD isnt as big as Id like for my active steam library but the extra storage and even playing turn-based games off the spinning rust platters seems to work fine. Plays everything Ive thrown at it just fine, no heat or performance issues even on the most demanding games. Cons: The hard drive can be louder than Im used to with annoying noises during the write functions. Due to my desk setup the one side with the window into the box as shown in the picture ends up facing the window so a bit of a lost feature. Overall, I think its solid for a prebuilt, but if you do some research, you will note that this isnt the full X version of the MB/Processor that AMD sells if you were to build it yourself. However, I havent seen any performance issues. Side note - The amazon splitting of payments on items like this is rather nice. Unlike doing it through Dell/Alienware there is no credit check/hit on that and you can pay off early at any time with no interest or penalties.