

Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition Review


Following a complete refresh of its laptop line this year, Alienware has revamped its Aurora gaming desktop in the same style. The Aurora R10 (starts at $799.99; $3,629.99 as tested), which comes in a Ryzen Edition variant, is a performance beast as configured, thanks largely to its Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card and the brand-new AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor. The latter is virtually unmatched in CPU-heavy tasks like content creation but, while effective, offers diminishing returns on gaming. We would recommend a less expensive chip for those who will be mostly gaming on this desktop, and Alienware's wide array of configuration options has you covered. With its striking and efficient case design and powerful performance, we can happily recommend the Aurora R10. If you're not set on the look, though, competitors like the Maingear Vybe and the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 offer similar advantages.

Bold Sci-Fi Styling

When I previewed the Aurora R10 earlier this year, I was taken by its sci-fi-inspired design. I think it's fair to say not everyone may want this desktop sitting in their living room or office. But despite its bold look and possibly divisive nature, I do find myself liking the vibe it gives off. Taste is, of course, subjective, but Alienware did a nice job nailing a futuristic, spaceship-like style that wouldn't be out of place in the world of Mass Effect.

Meet the Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition

Our test model is the Lunar Light color, which is the only color scheme that Alienware offers with the vertical LED-lit Alienware text on the side. It also comes in a Dark Side of the Moon color which, fittingly, is a darker grey palette. The front LED ring is customizable with 16.8 million colors on both models, while the backlit text on the Lunar Light model is also customizable.

Lunar Light Lighting

So many desktops look the same, or try for an overly aggressive design, that it's nice to see a gaming desktop nail a unique and specific aesthetic vision. It's clear that some real thought went into it, in terms of both engineering and visual design, which I wouldn't say of every gaming or power desktop I see these days. It matches the style of Alienware's redesigned laptop line, creating a unified modern look across the company's PCs. (You'll see it, and you'll know it's Alienware.) Again, even if it's not someone's particular style (and it is certainly bold), I admire the effort and vision. If you'd like to see how the style has evolved, check out our review of the quite different 2016 Alienware Aurora.

Visions of the Future

A Surprisingly Small Interior

The Aurora R10 chassis is moderately sized, and it could justify being bigger considering the power inside. It measures 18.9 by 8.8 by 17 inches (HWD), so it's not too tall or deep, and it is thinner in the front and widens out toward the back. You'll see smaller desktops in this price and power tier: I would describe the HP Omen Obelisk as compact at 17.1 by 6.5 by 14.1 inches, and the Corsair One Pro is downright small in footprint at 15 by 6.9 by 7.9 inches. There are also larger desktops with more traditional shapes, like the Maingear Vybe and the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 mentioned earlier.

Moderately Sized Case

The left-side panel pulls away easily by lifting a rear lever, so no tools are required to get inside the shell. With space semi-limited, Alienware got a little creative with the internals. We've seen this design before, but the power supply is mounted on a swinging arm that locks into place. When locked in, it covers up access to the motherboard and other components, but unlocking two small rear switches allows you to swing the arm out and away from the motherboard.

Alienware Aurora R9-01

With that done, you get full access to the other components. The interior is simultaneously impressive in content and underwhelming to view. The layout with the arm is clever, and there's a lot of power packed inside. It's not much to look at though, even with the metal power-supply arm out of the way. A dated-looking yellow-and-blue MicroATX motherboard is home to some function-first heat spreaders and basically no bells and whistles. (It is clearly new, though, based on the X570 chipset to support the platform's cutting-edge components and features like PCI Express 4.0.) An Alienware-branded liquid cooler is installed over the CPU, with its small 120mm radiator connected on the top panel. That's a surprisingly small radiator for this CPU, but it clearly works.

Alienware Aurora R9-03

In fact, "surprisingly small" is how I would describe the whole interior. As I said, the case isn't especially big, but the internal compartment makes up surprisingly little of the whole case size. There are several inches of "empty" space on the top and bottom of the chassis that make it look like the components don't have to be packed so tightly. The top and side panels are used for ventilation, and the system does run pretty quietly, so perhaps this free space is necessary.

Ports, Extras & Configurations

Rounding out the physical build are the ports, of which there are plenty. Several are aligned vertically on the front panel, including three USB 3.1 ports, a USB Type-C port, and headphone jacks. Peripherals hanging out the front of this front panel do look a little silly and mar the style, so I'd recommend plugging any peripherals that may hang around for a while into the rear ports. There, you'll find six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.1 ports, and a USB Type-C port, as well as an Ethernet jack and an array of audio ins and outs.

Alienware Aurora R9-08

On the software side, a quick note on the aforementioned Alienware Command Center, which was rebuilt a few years ago to be the standard control panel for all Alienware PC products. It wraps all of the usual gaming software—game-specific profiles, lighting options, audio settings, component tuning, system monitoring, and even a game library and launcher—into one program. Most usefully for gaming, you can flip the PC's thermal profile among several presets (five choices, ranging from quiet to full speed) and set overclock profiles to boost your graphics card. Command Center is one of the better, if not the best, of these built-in manufacturer software packages.

Alienware Aurora R9-06

Our unit is configured very highly, though that doesn't have to be the case for your version. Alienware offers a wide swath of options that I'll get to in a moment, but our configuration is a $3,629.99 one, featuring the brand-new AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor that's the star of the show (more on that later). Joining it are an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. The entry-point price for a SKU using this new 16-core CPU is $2,349.99.

Alienware Aurora R9-05

Lesser AMD processor options start at $1,199.99, from the Ryzen 5 3500 through other Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 9 options up to the CPU in our unit. Alienware also offers Intel models, starting as low as $799.99, which is a different grade of desktop altogether compared to our high-price SKU. There are, of course, more powerful Intel chips than the starting Core i5 option, topping out at the Core i9-9900K.

The graphics options are mostly Nvidia, ranging from the entry-level GeForce GTX 1650 to dual GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards and everything in between. For AMD graphics, you can choose among a Radeon RX 5700, a Radeon 5700 XT, or the seldom-seen Radeon VII. The memory and storage options are standard for high-end desktops, with memory ranging from 8GB to 64GB and myriad storage combinations of SSD and hard drive capacities up to 4TB. In short, there are configurations for every need and budget, all set in the same tower.

Now it's time to circle back to that CPU. The 16-core, 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 3950X has just been announced at the time of this review, and as my colleague Chris Stobing explains in its standalone review, it's an absolute powerhouse. Even though it's expensive at $749, it's a good value compared to the competition. As you'll see below, the Aurora R10 utilized it to tear through our benchmark tests across the board.

Alienware Aurora R9-02

If you plan on just playing video games with this system, though, the Ryzen 9 3950X is in fact overkill, in most cases. As Alienware claims, this is the only OEM gaming desktop with the third-generation 16-core Ryzen processors. That is impressive, but part of that may be that this is more of a workstation chip and not the best fit for a gaming-first desktop. Plenty of the less expensive options (particularly the Ryzen 7 3700X) will be more than enough for gaming, and you get diminishing (if any) returns on choosing this chip just for gaming. Alienware packed this review unit to impress, and it does, but if you aren't going to also use your gaming rig for gameplay streaming, media creation, animation work, or other demanding professional tasks, I'd recommend a less expensive CPU. Check out our full review of the Ryzen 9 3950X for many more details and how it stacks up against the other CPU options you can pick for the Aurora R10.

Testing Time: A Ryzen-Powered Performance Beast

There are plenty of potential competitor systems to choose for head-to-head performance testing results, but I had to settle on a batch. I selected a group that represents a variety of physical shapes, components, and prices. The table below shows their names and components…

Alienware Aurora R10

The Maingear Vybe and Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 are two similar options, though the latter is configured higher. These represent very traditionally shaped, high-end PCs that can do both gaming and media tasks well thanks to their Core i9-9900K processor. The HP Omen Obelisk also falls into this category, but it's more compact and more expensive as configured than both of those. Finally, the Corsair One Pro i180 comes in as the most expensive option of the group, and is easily the smallest. Its sky-high $4,999 price owes a lot to its impressively small footprint, but it's included here as a rare system bearing the Intel Core i9-9920X CPU, an even better competitor for the Aurora R10's chip than the Core i9-9900K.

Productivity & Storage Tests


Alienware Aurora R10

The Aurora R10 and its Ryzen 9 3950X immediately started flexing their muscles on this test. PCMark 10 does tend to top out on super-powerful processors since it doesn't push them to the fullest, but the 3950X is clearly in the top bracket of performance here. As you may have guessed, everyday home and office tasks are a breeze for a desktop of this caliber. PCMark 8 also shows very fast storage, leading to better load and boot times for you.

Media Processing & Creation Tests


Alienware Aurora R10


Alienware Aurora R10


Alienware Aurora R10

I mentioned that high-end processors tend to hit a ceiling on PCMark 10, but the same isn't true on these tests. This is where you'll really see a processor's full potential come through, using all of its cores and threads to churn through the workload as efficiently as possible. On Cinebench, the 3950X shatters the ceiling and cruises past the competition. This is quite simply the highest result we've ever recorded on this test, showing the raw power of this chip. The other benchmarks don't show as much dominance, but it's still mighty impressive. It posted the fastest Handbrake time in the group, showing its aptitude for video encoding, and a quick (though not best) result on Photoshop.

These results should be music to the ears of content creators, engineers, animators, and other professionals with CPU-heavy workloads, but they also demonstrate why I was cautioning choosing this chip for a gaming-only PC. These results are amazing, yes, but if you're not going to be doing any of these tasks on your desktop, it's money you don't need to spend. Even the Core i9-9900K, frankly, is overkill for gaming, and you see how superior the Ryzen 9 3950X is to it. As you'll see on the next tests, the CPU only impacts 3D-based work and gaming to a certain extent—they're much more reliant on your GPU.

Synthetic Graphics Tests


Alienware Aurora R10


Alienware Aurora R10

The Aurora R10's dominance on the CPU tests starts to disappear here, though the results are still very good. As I said, your graphics card is much more important for 3D tasks, and with multiple systems here running a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, the results are pretty close together. That said, the Ryzen 9 3950X's speed doesn't disappear, and the Aurora R10 is still at or near the top of the charts. These results held to a close pattern to the CPU tests, but the gaming tests, surprisingly, show something a bit different...

Real-World Gaming Tests



Alienware Aurora R10

Alienware Aurora R10

Simply put, the Aurora R10 is not the machine to beat on these tests. The Omen Obelisk and the Raptor Z55 outperformed it on Far Cry 5, and the latter topped the chart on Rise of the Tomb Raider. Given the GPU common to them, it comes down to either thermals or how the processor handles gaming. It could be related to how the Aurora chassis handles airflow as it heats up while gaming, and the motherboard could be holding it back. The frame rates recorded for the standalone Ryzen 9 3950X review (tested in a DIY testbed build) were higher than the ones here, and the superior motherboard in the testbed may be contributing to that. The small single-fan radiator is perhaps not keeping the CPU from throttling quite as much as a larger model (again, like the one in our testbed) might, too. The 3950X is a better chip overall than these, but its advantages do not translate directly into higher frame rates in all cases. Intel may have the leg up here in gaming as it has for a while, but it could just be how these borderline workstation chips interact with different games.

Separately from how this chip stacks up against these specific competitors, the performance is still very strong. The 1080p and 1440p frame rates are well beyond 60fps, and good enough for leveraging the abilities of a high-refresh-rate monitor. These are AAA, mostly single-player games as well, so less visually demanding competitive multiplayer titles such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, Dota 2, League of Legends, or Rainbow Six: Siege will see vastly higher frame rates. This powerful PC is even capable of 60fps 4K gaming, though there isn't a big cushion. The fact that even a PC this powerful and expensive doesn't average much more than 60fps shows how demanding 4K gaming is, and I'd really recommend most gamers stay away from a 4K monitor if you care about performance unless you have a rig of this caliber.

In general, though, I probably wouldn't pay the price premium on this desktop I were mostly going to use it for gaming. It's expensive, in part, because of the cost of the Ryzen 9 3950X and the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and in terms of frame rates, the competitors come close or do better for less money. At a certain point, more money stops meaning more frames once you top out with the best GPU available, and the competition with the same GPU and less expensive chips are matching the Aurora R10's gaming performance. If you are going to consistently stream gameplay, or are a media-creation professional or serious hobbyist, it's a different story—the 3950X is incredible for these use cases. If you're mostly going to play games, save a few hundred dollars and pick a less expensive CPU.

Bold in Every Sense

There's no two ways about it: Our Alienware Aurora R10 configuration is an absolute performance beast. The top-end GPU and the latest AMD silicon together make for a blistering gaming desktop. The Ryzen 9 3950X isn't really an ideal-value gaming chip, though for the purposes of this configuration it shows what both the CPU and desktop can do, and certainly gets the point across. I'd suggest most users go with the Ryzen 7 3700X for gaming, but the unit we have is no doubt impressive.

Alienware Aurora R10

As for the rest of the desktop, I admire Alienware's design chops—and that it was deliberately designed at all. There isn't much to fault, from a huge range of component options to its moderate size, customizable lighting, relatively quiet fans, and efficient interior configuration. It's somewhat difficult to compare our super-high-end model to the configurations most shoppers will end up with—it's no surprise that ours is this fast at this price—but I like the desktop itself. If you want to make a bit of a statement, the Aurora R10 gives you that conversation piece and premium feel, even if you order it with more modest components. It doesn't quite snag an Editors' Choice, as there are some great boutique desktops that are beautiful to look at and can match the Aurora R10's performance, but it does come with our recommendation if you're drawn to the look.

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