Alienware Aurora R7 (i7-8700 & GTX 1080) System Review

1. Introduction2. Design3. Specification4. Testing Methodology5. Cinebench R156. CrystalDiskMark7. 3DMark and Gaming8. Thermals and Acoustics9. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

The Alienware Aurora R7 is the company’s latest small form factor gaming PC. Inside its impressively compact, and typically Alienware-styled, case it packs in a choice of top-of-the-line components and can offer reasonable value as well, depending which configuration you go for.

Opt for the most powerful £3,000 model and you’ll get an Intel Core i7-8700K and dual GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. Considering one of those graphics cards costs £800-£900 at the moment, that’s not a bad price at all.

Meanwhile, the version we’re reviewing here sports an Intel Core i7-8700 and GTX 1080, along with an M.2 SSD, hard drive and 16GB of RAM. Costing £1,729, it seems a touch pricey for that configuration but there's plenty of scope here for Alienware to add value to its system elsewhere. Let's see if it manages to do just that.

Specifications:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 (3.7Ghz – 4.7GHz)
• CPU cooling: Alienware all-in-one liquid cooler with 120mm rad/fan
• Memory Supplied: 1 x 16GB
• Memory Type: DDR4
• Memory Speed: 2,666
• Max Memory Support: 64GB
• Graphics Chipset: nVidia GeForce GTX 1080
• Graphics Memory: 8GB GDDR5
• Graphics cooling: Standard blower fan
• Storage: 240GB M.2 SSD, 1TB hard drive, 8x DVD+/-RW drive
• Front ports: 3 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB-C, headphone, microphone
• Rear ports: 6 x USB 2.0, 4 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB-C, 4 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI, optical and coaxial digiatl audio, 6 x analogue audio
• Networking: Gigabit Ethernet, Killer N1350 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1
• Power supply: Alienware custom
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Warranty: 1yr RTB

Total cost: £1,729

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