Alienware Aurora

 

It's been 2.5 years since we last reviewed an Alienware desktop. Despite a complete chassis redesign, the $2,569 Alienware Aurora gaming PC feels familiar. This system trades heavily on its stylized appearance, and although it has some interesting features built into its case, we still wish Alienware would push as hard as its competitors to maximize performance. Some gamers might prioritize dramatic case visuals when considering a high-end gaming PC, and for them the Aurora will have some appeal. If instead you would rather trade case lighting for a few more frames per second, we can think of desktops from several other vendors that deliver better performance for the dollar.


Design
You may know Alienware best from its old bulbous alien-head case designs, but the new look takes a more angular approach. Alienware has also abandoned the old bug-eyed effect for a more armored appearance, but overall the new case has a similar silhouette to the original Alienware design.
Around the case you'll find a few unique design touches. Push the Alienware logo on the top of the case and the main drive-bay door slides down mechanically to reveal the Blu-ray drive and media card reader. There was no front-accessible hard-drive bay in our review unit, though, nor does Alienware offer one as an option for this system.
On the top of the case, you can push down a panel on the leading edge to reveal the USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and audio inputs. The ports all face the rear of the case, which means you can't see them from the front of the system when you want to connect something. To remove the case's side panel, you lift up a tab on top of the case on the rear-facing edge.
Case lighting has long been a differentiator for Alienware. With the AlienFX software included with all of its desktops you can customize the color and behavior of the four external lighting zones around the case. You can choose from a variety of colors for the LEDs, as well as make them blink or fade between two different colors. You can also assign the color to change when you receive a new e-mail, although that's the only available application tie-in. Along with the AlienFX software, you get Alienware-made apps for power management and thermal controls.

Features
No other vendor we're aware of offers similar control over case lighting. Between that feature and the stylized case, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more unique-looking gaming desktop than the Alienware Aurora. But if you prioritize performance for the dollar over appearance, you might wish Alienware had spent less time on this system's looks.

	Alienware Aurora	Maingear Vybe SuperStock
Price	$2,596	$2,849
Motherboard chipset	Intel P67	Intel P67
CPU	3.9GHz Intel Core i7-2600K (overclocked)	4.8GHz Intel Core i7-2600K (overclocked)
Memory	4GB 1,866MHz DDR3 SDRAM	8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics	(2) 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6950	(2) 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6950
Hard drives	2TB SATA 600 7,200 rpm, 1TB SATA 300 7,200rpm	250GB Intel SSD, 1TB 7,200rpm Samsung
Optical drive	Blu-ray/DVD burner combo	dual-layer DVD burner
Operating system	Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)	Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

We'll compare the Alienware Aurora with Maingear's Vybe Super Stock, a recent Editors' Choice Award winner with a similar price. The Vybe might look more conservative on the outside, but its more aggressive internal components give it a demonstrable performance edge.
The biggest difference between the two is the CPU overclocking. The Intel Core i7-2600K chip comes with a feature called Intel Turbo Boost Technology, which dynamically adjusts the clock speed among its various cores depending on the workload. The baseline speed of the chip is 3.4GHz, but the upper limit by default is 3.8GHz. Alienware tweaked the upper limit of its 2600K to 3.9GHz, and it offers a boost to 4.1GHz for an extra $75.
From Maingear, you can get the same CPU overclocked to a top speed of 4.8GHz. That difference reflects one of the issues that has plagued Alienware since it was acquired by Dell in 2006. With Dell's marketing muscle behind it, Alienware can expect to sell more PCs than it did as a boutique vendor. In order to manage the costs of supporting those systems, Alienware needs to achieve as much standardization and predictability in its configurations as it can. With built-in thermal detection and other safety features, overclocking is a far less risky operation than it used to be. But that's apparently not enough to allay Dell and Alienware's concerns, which unfortunately means the Aurora doesn't ship with its overclocking potential fully realized.


We also take issue with the Alienware's solid-state drive offerings. The Aurora shipped with two mechanical hard drives: a 1TB SATA300 drive and a faster 2TB SATA 600 drive. That's a lot of storage, and in comparison Maingear's 1.25TB total storage space seems small. That said, Maingear included a 250GB solid-state boot drive and a 1TB mechanical drive for storage. If you drop the Maingear's SSD down to a 128GB model, the price of the system falls to $2,500, and you retain the same fast drive access with only a minor loss in storage space. Alienware, though, only sells a 512GB SSD, which, while roomy, would add another $900 to the price of this system. If you're more interested in faster drive access than storage space, as any gamer might be, Alienware has no more cost-effective option.

The Alienware Aurora's remaining features compare well enough. The 4GB of RAM is a small allotment for this price range, but it's also 1,866MHz memory, which is faster than the 1,333MHz and 1,600MHz RAM we normally see. The pair of 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards is appropriate for the price, and the Blu-ray/DVD-burner combo drive is a welcome feature as well.