Dell Alienware Aurora ALX

Intro, Design, Lights

The Dell Alienware Aurora ALX is an audacious gaming PC. It not only packs in high-end gaming hardware -- with an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards -- but it has the style, design and presence that will intimidate tame gamers

Dell Alienware Aurora ALX managed to get insanely high numbers in our synthetic benchmarks.

Design
Like the Dell Alienware Aurora reviewed in the past, the Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC has a case design of alien-make -- or so we'd like to think. Apart from the moulded plastic exterior -- which is tough and tank-like -- a lot of thought has gone designing the interiors of the Alienware Aurora ALX gaming rig itself. Right up, you see the hidden optical drive compartment at the front -- press the Alien logo to release the sliding door to reveal the connectivity ports and optical drive hidden behind it. Pretty cool, isn't it?

The Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC's interior cabinet design is extremely good and well laid out. You don’t see any hanging cables, drive bays are out-ward facing (when you slide-open the cabinet door), and everything looks neat and tidy. Switching hard drives and optical drives is as easy as it gets, as the mounting points and power interfaces are secured inside each bay -- all you have to do is slide in a drive and it clicks into place inside the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC. The only downer is the drives aren’t hot-swappable.

The Alienware Aurora ALX's micro-ATX board has a CPU that’s liquid-cooled via a reservoir that's mounted at the rear near the air vents at the top of the case. Unfortunately, the graphics cards are not cooled with liquid, so you'll still hear their fans roar into action once you load up your games. There are plenty of connectivity ports around the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX's cabinet, and a couple of back-ward facing USB, FireWire and audio ports placed on the top of the case which are awkward to access.

Lights and Vents
The most impressive part of the Alienware Aurora ALX's allure are its lights -- and they’re pretty much everywhere on the gaming PC's cabinet. The ones on the side panels, which illuminate the alien-like pattern on the plastic, are especially cool.  And you can customize its look and feel through the Alienware Command Center -- a preinstalled program in the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC.



The biggest difference between the Dell Alienware Aurora and Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC are the Aurora ALX's vent at the top of its case. These vents are not just for eye candy but serve an important purpose. These vents automatically open when the CPU reaches its predefined threshold temperature -- which is customizable through the Alienware Command Center. In our usage, the ALX's vents automatically opened up whenever it crossed the set CPU threshold temperature.

Hardware Features, Alienware Command Center

The Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming desktop PC comes packed with a high-end processor -- the Intel Core i7-920QX quad-core 3.2-GHz. This processor is slightly inferior to the one we saw on the Dell Alienware Aurora gaming PC. But along with the processor, you get 9GB of DDR3 RAM in triple-channel mode, 2TB of storage -- two 500GB hard drives in RAID 0 -- and two Nvidia GeForce GTX260 graphics card in SLI mode. The Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC ships with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.

Overall, the Aurora ALX offers larger hard drive space compared to the Alienware Aurora desktop we reviewed earlier. But since the Alienware gaming desktops are made-to-order, you can pick and choose your components with great flexibility while placing your order on Dell's website. Like the Aurora, the Alienware ALX gaming pc also comes with a back-lit keyboard and mouse -- same pair we saw with the Dell Alienware Aurora PC.

But that's not all. The Alienware Aurora ALX gaming desktop comes with a liquid cooling setup for the CPU, DVD writer drive, a 19-in-4 card reader slots, eSATA port, FireWire, and Gigabit Ethernet -- and surprisingly doesn’t make room for an HDMI port. There's also 7.1 channel surround sound support, SPDIF (TOSLINK) and Analog SPDIF (Coax) ports. On the top of the cabinet, there's a hidden compartment with a couple of USB ports, audio jacks, and a FireWire port. One thing’s for sure, if you upgrade your optical drive to include a Blu-ray BD ROM drive, the Alienware Aurora ALX will be future proof for more than a few years.
Alienware Command Center
The Dell Alienware Aurora comes with a control centre application called Alienware Command Center that lets you customize the PC's case, keyboard, and mouse lights under Alien FX Editor. There's also a utility in there which lets you monitor the real-time temperature inside the Alienware Aurora's cabinet case, courtesy of three sensors. There's also a thermal management utility which lets you control the PCI and hard drive fan speed. You can tweak and customize every minute detail of the PC to an endless level. The machine isn't quiet under full-load but it isn't excessively noisy either.

Performance And Verdict

Like the Dell Alienware Aurora earlier, the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX managed to get insanely high numbers in our synthetic benchmarks. A WorldBench 6 score close to 160 isn't as good as the Dell Alienware Aurora but it's quite high. It was a similar story with PC Mark 05, PC Mark Vantage, 3D mark 06 and CineBench -- all benchmarks returned high scores. This means that not only is the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX a beast of a machine in terms of size, but it manages to give excellent performance. Watching both 720p and 1080p HD videos was no problem at all. In fact, we think, apart from gaming and every day work, this Alienware Aurora ALX gaming machine can also be used for 3D video processing or 3D graphics rendering.

Gaming was also very good on the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming desktop. Its twin Nvidia GeForce GTX 260s (in SLI mode) managed over 20,000 3D Mark 06 score which is quite close to the ATI Radeon HD 5970 card's performance. At High settings, Crysis, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Far Cry 2 (1920x1080, 8xAA, HIGH settings) all ran very well -- Far Cry 2 gave an average frame rate of 65.61 fps. There was hardly any noticeable lag, and the overall gaming experience on the Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming desktop was very good.

Bottom Line

The Dell Alienware Aurora ALX gaming desktop PC is a performance beast. It has a cool and stylish cabinet, which is well thought out, it has high-end hardware configuration, and you won't go wrong with buying the Alienware Aurora ALX as a gaming PC for your home. In fact its hardware can handle even video editing and 3D graphics software, apart from just gaming.
Our only concern with the Alienware Aurora ALX compared to the Alienware Aurora is the price difference. The only noticeable difference between the Alienware Aurora and Alienware Aurora ALX gaming PC is the automatic heat vents on top. Is it really worth the steep price difference between the two gaming units? We let you decide.