Alienware Aurora ALX review

Alienware machines are some of the most unashamedly aspirational systems on the market today – powerhouses that place just as much emphasis on first impressions as they do framerates. The firm’s latest, the Aurora ALX, is no different.

The exterior features the dramatic lines and matte black finish that we’ve come to expect, and every crack and crevice is filled with a light – which, of course, can be changed to a colour of your choice, or even made to pulse and flash. The lid is adorned with a row of motorised fins, which are designed to rise up and let more air into the case should the temperature inside reach a certain threshold.

Inside, the major components are sequestered into their own areas to improve airflow and heat dissipation, while the processor is chilled by a Cool-It water-cooling unit. There’s even a battery-powered light that illuminates the inside of the chassis when the side is removed, in line with Alienware’s claim that the Aurora ALX is one of its most easily upgradeable machines ever.

While some of these additions sound impressive, they’re less useful in the real world. The roof fins, for instance, made no difference to CPU and GPU temperatures: when the system was stress-tested with and without the fins activated, the processor peaked at around 68. The graphics card, meanwhile, always ran around 5˚C hotter. With just a single intake fan at the front and another on the rear water module, those top vents just don’t get the air pushed towards them to be of any real use.

We also found the case awkward. The GPU cage and housing makes graphics card removal far trickier than it would be in the average chassis, and while there’s a decent amount of room to upgrade – three free DIMM slots, a pair of hard disk bays and a single PCI Express x16 slot – the numerous stray cables that litter the interior make the upgrade process a bit clumsy.

The water-cooling unit also generated plenty of noise, especially when the Aurora ran through our demanding graphical tests. It’s possible to reduce the fan’s RPM via Alienware’s thermal control software, but this still left an audible hum that became significantly louder during arduous sections. The use of water-cooling should really be about pushing a processor to its limits, but the chosen CPU – an Intel Core i7-920 – is inexplicably left running at its stock speed of 2.66GHz. A quiet heatsink and fan would have done the job perfectly well.