I would never have bought a new Alienware computer again, although my Alienware Area-51 Desktop is still going strong. But a friend came across this 2010 Alienware Aurora R2 with a decent configuration for a song, as they say. So I couldn’t pass it up.
The case has not changed in the last couple of years. Still the same lighting, and the same door. Touch the Alienhead and the door gently slides down to access the media slots and DVD drive. this new computer is liquid cooled with a setup that looks like a alienware customized Corsair H80 single fan cooler. Instead of a lighted Corsair logo as the button to control the pump programming, the button is a lighted Alienhead.
This is the older case design. The Alienhead on the Area-51 case model from 2007 is the power button. To access the media drives, you swing the door with the alienhead to one side. The new Aurora case has a very small power button on the top above the alienhead.
Here is the configuration for the Aurora system.
8GB of memory and a single 1TB hard drive. The Graphics is an ATI Radeon HD 5700 with 1GB of video memory. Not too shabby.
And here’s the Windows 7 System Benchmark results.
This computer is faster than my 2007 Alienware machine [Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6700], but not as fast as my new Armor 90 [Core i7-2600], or my Cyberpower machine [Core i7-950]. Turns out that all the machines aren’t that far apart in processor performance.
I’ll set up Seti@Home when I can get into their website. They are down right now for some reason.
– ww
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