Bought the Dell Alienware Aurora R16

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I ordered a Dell Alienware Aurora R15 on the 30th Sept 2023 (Friday) night. I was really happy about the purchase. It was for my boy.

I love the casing design, very unique and eye catching.

I placed the order on Friday night, and Dell does not process my order until the next Monday (3rd Oct 2023). I thought I paid RM9888.55 for it, but when I look back at the cancelation bill, it was actually RM10,409.00. Minus out the 5% would be RM9888.55, so I guess I forgot to apply the coupon during checkout.

Anyhow, after placing the order or visiting Dell website, Dell advertisements kept popping up in my Facebook page. Very effective I must say.

Then on Sunday, 2nd Oct 2023, I stumbled upon another Dell advertisement but this time it is something else. An Alienware Aurora R16? Hey…I thought the R15 was the latest version? Nevermind, I love the design of R15 anyway.

Still, I clicked on the advert and landed on Dell website. R16 starting price is just RM7,999! That’s much cheaper than the R15 starting price of RM9,xxx!

I played around with the configurations, and to my surprised, I can get better specs for the same price I paid for the R15! Much better! Highlights being the 64GB RAM + 2TB SSD! I don’t have to worry about buying RAM myself, which might not be compatible, or upgrading the storage space later! My previous selection was only 1TB SSD + 1TB HDD and 16GB RAM. Later only I found out that the 7200 RPM HDD speed is only 100MB/s, while the SSD used in the setup should be either 3000MB/s or 7000MB/s version!

• 13th Gen Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-13700F (16-Core, 54MB Cache, up to 5.2 GHz with Turbo Max 3.0)
• Windows 11 Home Single Language, English
  (Dell Technologies recommends Windows 11 Pro for business)
• NVIDIA® GeForce RTXâ„¢ 4060, 8GB GDDR6
• 64 GB: 2 x 32 GB, DDR5, 5200 MT/s
• 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
• Basalt Black

I then checked some reviews and R16 seems to be better in all aspects, with 40% smaller size (but maintaining the same inner space), 20% quieter with 10% lower CPU and 5% lower GPU temperatures. Some mentioning also the overheating issue of the R15 design, which concerns me.

I chose i7-13700F over i9-13900F as the price difference of RM1300 extra is quite a lot, and I read that most won’t need till 24 cores in gaming. Video rendering or 3D rendering might need that, but that’s not what we require now.

I chose NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060, 8GB GDDR6 over NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4070 12GB GDDR6X as the RM1800 difference upgrade is quite a lot. Again from the review I read online, RTX 4060 is already a great processor.

One thing I do not stingy on saving are the Storage and the RAM. I up the storage to 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive @ RM600 and RAM to 64 GB: 2 x 32 GB, DDR5, 5200 MT/s @ RM1275. Happy with the config.

I tried to maintain the budget at RM10k or below, and the final price after 5% coupon discount HLB5 or RHB5 is 10,073.80. Slightly over RM10k, but much better specs than the previous R15 selection.

Happy with the new purchase, can’t wait to see it soon!