Alienware today announced its Aurora R16. With this new gaming tower, the Dell subsidiary completely changes its design to return to a more sober aesthetic and a more compact case, focusing on airflow.
In addition to its many gaming laptops, including the very good M16 that we tested a few weeks ago, Alienware offers powerful gaming towers… but so far with an atypical design, not necessarily to everyone’s taste. This year, the manufacturer is therefore launching its brand new Aurora R16 tower, which contrasts radically with its predecessors to return to something more consensual, with a much more classic, compact and discreet case.
A leaner, better ventilated and more powerful gaming tower
Above all, this new design allows Alienware to start from a blank page to largely review the thermal design of its product. Result: a 20% quieter machine, but also less prone to overheating. The manufacturer indeed announces temperatures up to 10% lower on the CPU and up to 6% lower on the GPU.
This optimization is all the more interesting as it is done through a much slimmer case. Alienware indeed speaks of a total volume 40% less than for the Aurora R15, while maintaining 25.2 liters of internal volume. In terms of dimensions, the brand also announces 458.4 x 418 x 197 mm for 15.37 kilos on the scale.
To achieve its goals in terms of cooling, Alienware equips its new tower with a watercooling device, at least on the most demanding configurations. There are thus two 120 mm fans on the top (with a 240 mm radiator) dedicated to cooling the CPU, a 120 mm fan on the front and a last 120 mm fan on the back to reject hot air to the outside of the case.
And for style, the Aurora R16 finally relies on an illuminated arch using configurable RGB LEDs, nicknamed “Stadium Loop” by Alienware. This loop (close to the one installed on the back of Alienware laptops) is also lined with a transparent side panel, unfortunately only offered as an option.
Lower starting price than you might think
When it comes to configurations, Alienware will let users choose between several options. To begin with, we note that the Aurora R16 can be armed with a 500 or 1000 W power supply depending on the configuration chosen, but certified 80 Plus Platinum in both cases. You can also install up to 64 GB of RAM (DDR5) on two DIMM slots, and add a maximum of 8 TB of SSD storage. A 3.5-inch HDD slot is also relevant for those who would like to take advantage of an additional hard drive. All configurations of the Aurora R16 are finally equipped with a Wi-Fi 6E modem.
On the CPU level, however, you will have to settle for only Intel processors and a motherboard with Z690 chipset. As a choice, Alienware will thus offer a Core i9-12900F, a Core i7-13700F or an i9-13900F, coupled with 16, 32 or 64 GB of DDR5.
On the GPU side, finally, the Aurora R16 will be able to integrate an RTX 3050 8 GB, an RTX 4070 12 GB, an RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB or an RTX 4080 16 GB.
The Alienware Aurora R16 will arrive on the French market from August 8, from 1,548 euros.
Source: Alienware Press Release / Dell Briefing
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