When I reviewed Alienware's Aurora (opens in new tab) and considered it for inclusion in our best gaming PC (opens in new tab) roundup, one of my main knocks against it was how much more the prebuilt cost than putting together a machine with similar components yourself. While the model on sale right now on Dell's digital storefront (opens in new tab) is slightly humbler than the R8 I reviewed, knocking $530 off the MSRP actually brings it well below DIY pricing. Putting together as similar a machine as possible (some of the pieces of the Aurora are proprietary) on PCPartPicker (opens in new tab) yielded a final price in excess of $1,500, so snatching up the Aurora for a mere $1,399.99 with free shipping and warranty coverage is pretty damn enticing.
The machine on sale packs an RTX 2070, one of the best graphics cards (opens in new tab), a high performance part with dedicated cores to handle ray tracing and DLSS. It also sports a powerful 9th gen Intel processor, the Core i7-9700K, which has been factory overclocked to a speedy 4.6GHz. This machine is ready for QHD and even 4K gaming (at slightly more modest settings), and will easily crush the vast majority of your productivity needs as well. The one major shortcoming in this package is the limited storage: while it does include a speedy NVMe SSD, it's only the single drive and only 256GB of space. Luckily, storage is pretty cheap these days, even the best SSD for gaming (opens in new tab), so if you do want to upgrade it won't cost you a fortune.
(opens in new tab)One of the most appealing features of the Aurora for enthusiasts is the easy access chassis. No tools required—you can simply pop the side panels off the case and swing the PSU out on it's built-in armature, exposing the DIMMs, GPU and other performance parts so you can tinker to your heart's content. The case's muted aesthetic forgoes flash for elegance, settling on a few slashes of vivid RGB lighting and the iconic Alienware logo in lieu of tempered glass or an overbearing light show. It's a great package, and tough to resist at a sub-DIY price point.
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