Alienware Aurora

The Alienware Aurora ($2,598.99 direct) is definitely for gaming connoisseurs who want a desktop PC that doesn't look like they built it themselves. Only Alienware would have the audacity to build a tower system with four user-controllable lighting zones on the tower, with another two on the keyboard and one on the mouse. The internal components are no slouches either, with a Core i7-2600K processor and twin AMD Radeon HD 6950 video cards for 3D prowess. Other systems with factory-overclocked processors are ultimately faster, but the Aurora has the power to make it on the gaming grid.

Design and Features
The last Alienware Aurora ALX (Core i7) ($4,249 direct, 3.5 stars) had a newly designed chassis with a motorized set of louvers that angled out of the top of the system to aid cooling. They were also an attempt to look cool, literally and figuratively. But Google "Alienware vent problems" and you'll see a slew of user complains on Dell's community boards, with several of the suggested fixes involving replacing the vent assembly. So that's what Alienware has done, by using a simple perforated top cover on this model instead. Otherwise this Aurora's chassis is the same as the previous one, with the same multi-zone lighting effects, easy-to-open side door, and strange extraterrestrial writing in spots around the chassis.

The inside of the chassis is tidy and designed for easy access and upgrades. The case door pops open with a hidden lever, and will look impressive when you show it off to your friends. The two AMD Radeon HD 6950 video cards are held in place by another swing-away panel that also channels hot air around the cards and out the back of the system. These two cards block the rest of the open PCI/PCI Express card slots, so you'll need to use USB if you want Wi-Fi. The rest of the components are easy to upgrade, though you're unlikely to need to anytime soon: There are two free DIMM slots, in case you want to upgrade the included 4GB of memory to 8GB or 12GB; one tool-less optical drive bay; and three prewired hard drive bays with easy-to-remove sleds. The system comes with a combo Blu-ray player/DVD burner, and a large 2TB hard drive.

Outside, the system has a wealth of ports and features. The top of the system has a hidden port cubby with two USB 2.0 ports, audio, and one USB 3.0 port (for data transfers up to ten times as fast as you can get with USB 2.0, if you have a compatible external drive). As on the older Aurora, the alien head logo on the front releases the slide-down front-access door for the Blu-ray drive and the media card readers. This is kind of gimmicky, as many first-time users would mistake it for a non-functional decoration or the power button; the actual power button is on the top of the system, next to the USB ports. The back of the system has the majority of the system's I/O ports, including six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, one FireWire 400 port, two digital audio ports, analog audio ports, and a bunch of video ports on the AMD Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards (a total of two DVI, two HDMI, and four Mini DisplayPort). Just about the only major port missing is eSATA.

The included 2TB drive is free of bloatware, as it should be on a gaming system. Conventional wisdom states that the fewer programs you have running on startup, the better for your gaming experience. That may not necessarily apply these days with quad-core self-overclocking processors, but it's still better to err on the side of caution. The Aurora comes with a few programs preinstalled. Alienware's ReSpawn is a system recovery program, THX TruStudio for audio enhancements, Power DVD 9 for playing Blu-ray movies, Nero 9 for burning CDs and DVDs, and a few Alienware utilities for the Alienware TactX keyboard and mouse.

The Alienware Control Center lets you set each of the system's lighting zones (front panel, left panel, etc.) to a different color and brightness. The back panel has its own light with a manual control, which is very useful when you need to connect a cable in a darkened room. Many other gaming systems have lights, like the V3 Gaming PC Avenger 3DS ($3,499 direct, 3.5 stars), but the Alienware Aurora and its brother the Area 51 are the only ones to give you granular control over every light fixture in a Windows interface. Most gaming boxes control their lights with external switches on the chassis itself.

Performance
The Alienware Aurora is a powerhouse gaming system thanks to its Intel Core i7-2600K processor and particularly its two AMD Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards. The system provided quite playable frame rates at 1,280-by-720 resolution with medium detail settings on both our DirectX 10 (DX10) Crysis test (102 frames per second, or fps) and our DX11 Lost Planet 2 test (168fps); Lost Planet 2 also did well at 1,920 by 1,080 with high detail settings (75fps). The Aurora's Crysis score at very high quality is mostly playable (52fps), if not as rock solid as what we've seen on other systems. The Editors' Choice for midrange gaming desktops is the Maingear F131 Super Stock ($2,300 direct, 4 stars), which is a smidge faster on medium settings (124fps for Crysis, 182fps for Lost Planet 2), and a smidge slower at higher settings (47fps for Crysis, 72fps for Lost Planet 2). (The Maingear uses two Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 cards with an overclocked Core i7-2600K processor.) To get better 3D performance, you'll have to move up to higher-end graphics cards like a pair of Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 cards, like you'll find in the high-end and EC-winning (but much more expensive) Digital Storm Black Ops Enix Edition ($3,637 direct, 4 stars).

In our multimedia tests, the Aurora is a graphics rendering machine, with a 1:26 time at our Handbrake video conversion test, and 2:46 at our Adobe Photoshop CS5 test. That said, overclocked systems with solid-state drives (SSDs) are faster: The Maingear F131 blows through the tests in record time: 1:14 for Handbrake, 2:18 for Photoshop. You probably won't notice the difference unless you're working a graphics project on a deadline, but then again you wouldn't necessarily be using a gaming rig for work projects. Needless to say, the Aurora is plenty fast for personal hobby projects like editing photos and videos.

The Alienware Aurora is certainly a flashy machine, and if the styling of the system appeals to you, then you should be fine spending your $2,600 on it. It's certainly fast enough to keep up on the game grid, and it will be fast on day-to-day tasks. But because it's not quite as fast or as extreme as the Maingear F131 Super Stock, that system will retain its Editors' Choice distinction for this go-around. Though the Alienware is flashier and is an improvement over the preceding model, the Maingear is a better performer overall?and is $300 cheaper to boot.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Alienware Aurora with several other desktops side by side.

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