After the unveiling of the latest NVIDIA Ampere GPUs, it was a matter of time that PC makers would unleash its latest gaming PCs. Dell has officially announced a refresh of its Aurora gaming PCs that are powered by the latest NVIDIA RTX 30 series cards.
The interesting part here is that the new Aurora does not use the Founders Edition cards. Instead, Dell chose to develop its own custom-designed graphics cards for the new models. The whole purpose of making their own is to fit the new cards on the small chassis of the Aurora R11. The Alienware designed RTX 3000 series cards measure 10.5-inches long and will cover 2.5x slot area of the motherboard. It’s shorter than the Founders Edition RTX 3080 GPU that measures 11.2-inches long. Dell mentions that the new custom-made Ampere GPUs feature quad 10mm copper heat pipes and paired with integrated vapor chambers. The GPUs also come equipped with dual axial fans for the most optimum airflow. The new Aurora R11 model comes with Intel processors and the Aurora R10 with Ryzen processors.
The Aurora R10 base model comes with a modest configuration, that includes the Intel i5 10400F processor, the AMD Radeon RX 5300 GPU, 8GB RAM, and a slow 1TB SATA hard drive with 7200RPM. The higher-end model configurations come in Intel i7 10700F or KF, along with the custom made RTX 3080 GPU, costing about 2429.99 dollars (Approx.9000 AED). The highest model comes powered by the Intel i9 10900F and the custom made GeForce RTX 3090 GPU. The system also packs 32GB RAM, a massive and ultra-fast 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, and a 1TB SATA HDD. This model will cost 3649 dollars (Approx.13,500 AED).
The R10 Ryzen Edition starts above 1000 dollars (Approx. 3700 AED), featuring the AMD Ryzen 5 3500 processor with the AMD Radeon RX 5300 GPU, 8GB DRR4, a modest 128GB M.2 PCIe SSD, and a 1TB SATA HDD. Then there is another configuration that features the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor, 16GB DDR4 RAM, a 512GB m.2 PCIe SSD, and the RTX 3080 GPU, all this for 2179 dollars (Approx. 8100 AED). The fastest configuration comes with the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT processor, the faster and custom-made RTX 3090 GPU, 32GB DDR4, and a 1TB PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD- all this for over 4000 dollars (Approx. 14,800 AED). Since AMD recently announced the Ryzen 5000 series processors, we expect Alienware to announce yet another refresh of the Aurora Ryzen Edition PCs, packing the new impressive processors such as the Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X, and the Ryzen 5 5600X processors.
On a personal note, we wish Alienware would stop using SATA hard drives and simply replace it with SATA solid-state drives. SATA SSDs have become cheaper over the years, especially the ones up to 1TB of storage, and with the amount of money that will be spent on either of the configurations, gamers deserve the option to have a SATA SSD as well on these PCs without the need to upgrade it afterward.
