The sales events are finally over, and I can hear both the sighs of relief at no longer being bombarded with deals (until January, ofc.) and the sighs of regret at having missed out on some great deals. If the latter's you, though, and if you were looking for a new gaming PC, fear not because two of the best discounts we saw on gaming PCs over Black Friday and Cyber Monday (Week) are somehow still live.
Also perhaps more strangely is that these deals are on Alienware rigs, which usually aren't the cheapest gaming PCs. Somehow, though, these two rigs pipped pretty much every other gaming PC I spotted over this year's winter sales events—and I've been checking through the offers every single day.
Quick links
- Alienware Aurora | RTX 5070 Ti | $1,630 @ Dell
- Alienware Aurora | RTX 5080 | $1,900 @ Dell
If you can't stretch to $2,000 for the RTX 5080 rig below, this is the gaming PC I'd be going for, without a doubt. Pretty much every other RTX 5070 Ti build is going for far north of $1,800 right now, and most of them are far worse than this one when it comes to the rest of the specs. For one as good as this, you're looking at above $2,000 in most cases at the moment.
Which isn't to say that this is an absolutely stellar gaming PC in all respects, of course. Its Core Ultra 7 CPU lacks integrated graphics, and it isn't the best current-gen processor you can get. For gaming, an AMD 3D V-Cache chip would be nice, but you can't have it all, and the 265F is fine for gaming. It's the best one to get for your money out of the Core Ultra 200 series, anyway.
In addition to the midrange-and-practically-high-end RTX 5070 Ti, You're also getting 2 TB of storage and 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, here, neither of which is to be sniffed at. Especially the latter, given we're in a memory shortage that's making RAM prices skyrocket. The only real downside to this rig is that it'll come with all of Alienware's usual proprietary gubbins, which means it will be more difficult to upgrade certain elements down the line, such as the CPU cooler for example.
Just remember to configure the PC to the specs outlined above.
This is, I'm pretty sure, the first RTX 5080 gaming PC I saw this year going for under $2,000. And with the market being as it is, I'm starting to think it might be the last one we see for a while.
The RTX 5080, of course, is one of the best graphics cards on the market today. Apart from the prohibitively expensive RTX 5090, the RTX 5080 is as good as you'll get for a card that includes all the absolute latest consumer graphics technologies such as Multi Frame Gen.
Excluding the GPU and PSU, the rest of the build is the same as the one above, which means it shares all its pros and cons: a healthy dollop of memory and storage, a middle-of-the-road Core Ultra 7 CPU, and the potential drawback of bespoke Alienware parts. I say 'potential' drawback because some folks like all that Alienware branding, and I can't deny that the chassis, representing Alienware's new and more understated design ethos, looks rather nice.
As with the above rig, just make sure you configure all the specs to how I've listed them above.
👉 Check out all of Dell's gaming PC deals 👈
1. Best overall:
HP Omen 35L
2. Best budget:
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
3. Best high-end:
Corsair Vengeance A7500
4. Best compact:
Velocity Micro Raptor ES40
5. Alienware:
Alienware Area-51
6. Best mini PC:
Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT
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