Customer Ratings & Reviews

Very disappointed in the performance. The 1999$ price was much more reasonable than the second wave of 2199$ especially with the upgrades that need to happen. You have to put alienwares water cooler in to keep it from over heating. Or turn case fans too 100 which makes it sound like it has phoned home and will be returning to the mother ship lol. The one stick of 16g ram is ridiculous. I’ve gotten a bunch of PCs for my business and this is only one that hasn’t come with dual channel from the factory so yet another expense. Stock it is gaming on cod mw at 97-120 FPS on high settings with dlss on at only 1080p. All other 3080s I have were clearing over 220 FPS. I don’t know how much of this is do to only the single channel ram. I haven’t had a chance to upgrade it yet. Because I don’t know if I’m going to keep. I’m just really disappointed in it and Best Buy for selling it like this. With the water cooler and dual channel for 1999 or 2199 it would be much more reasonable but that’s a lot of upgrades and possibly case fans as well. If you don’t want as much noise. I will say you can do some really cool things with Alienware software suite. But I had to watch a 30 min YouTube video on how to use it lol. And it is kinda pretty. But it’s a chunk and is surprisingly heavy too. The way it comes apart is pretty cool too. So it does have some neat features. And has a decent 3080 I think. I haven’t been able to really stretch it because of the limitations of the cpu cooler and ram I believe. I will update if I pull some ram from another computer or get some to put in there and get a drastic improvement. But so far feels like a flop if you want a 3080 I guess it’s one way to get one but don’t be expecting great frame rates out of the box. That’s the most honest review I have for you.

I was excited to pick this one up to say the least. Fresh out of the box was a basic keyboard and mouse. So keep that in mind, usually you are just upgrading and should already have a gaming mouse and keyboard already, if not make sure to buy those items. Upon powering up the set up as fast I mean lightning fast, this thing comes ready to game with a 16 gigs of RAM and plenty of storage. There’s four different zones of lighting, in front zone there’s three different colors zone you can choose as you can see in my pictures, it on the back right side you can choose another color for the Alienware wording. Overall this is a great gaming computer it’s fast and runs cool, but I do notice at times it can get a little warm and at that point you can open up the side compartment which Dell made it really easy to actually open this thing up and get access to everything. That makes the computer run cooler and it very easy to upgrade it in the future as well. Once you take one screw in the back and basically unscrew it a few turns and release the latch the power supply can just swing out of the way to get access to the cpu in the middle of the case which is liquid cooled and also the ram area (128gb max). Additional storage is located at the bottom of the case where you would normal see the power supply. I do like the Alienware command center overall, it makes it easy to change the lighting on the computer as well as set different fans and power setting for the different games that you play automatically. You will then notice once you switch to different games the lighting will change accordingly and depending on how demanding the game gets so will your fan settings based on what you set them as far the different games. The Dells site makes it very easy to keep your computer up-to-date and protected and it’s basically one of the first place you can go to to make sure your computer is up-to-date. Do you also get Dell support with getting a Dell product which is a big plus at least for me. I will say it’s price very aggressive though. My main gripe with this all said and done is that out of all my computers I have or had I won’t say any names, Dell computers seem to run the warmest so I would keep that in mind. There could be a fan upgrade in the future for the Graphics Card area.

I am not too sure what the previous reviews are referring to when they call this desktop computer “terrible”, “horrible”, “nightmare”. This computer is a winner. CPU temperatures while light use (youtube video watching) are ~43°C, which is perfect, while the gpu is ~36°C which is also perfect. While gaming Call of Duty Warzone, the CPU temps reach ~74°C and the gpu reaches ~71°C. (Everything stock). As soon as I got it, I upgraded the 16gb single channel ram stick that it came with, with 4x16gb of corsair’s ram, giving me 64gb of ram and have already installed the liquid cooler and heatsinks to upgrade the air cooler that dell includes in these machines. I have also upgraded the front fan with a corsair one and the top with two (push-pull) fans also from corsair which push and pull air through the radiator I installed. People are complaining about the air cooler and the loud fans that it came with, however, this is not something they hid while selling it, it comes with a really bad air cooler (gets the job done, but it is not the best) but I knew what it came with. The fans that it comes with are very loud, which I knew this too, reason for me having all the parts I will be needing for upgrading it in hand, prior to purchase. The temps I listed are with stock everything, if Bestbuy allows it, I will update my review to the temps after i actually use it, since I haven’t had time yet. Have no doubt in your mind, this is a great machine and Dell nor Bestbuy are hiding what it comes with at the time of sell. Also, if you buy the one with the 3070 rtx or lower, it comes with a 550w power supply, if you buy the one with the 3080 rtx, it comes with a 1000w power supply. Do yourself a favor and buy the version with the 3080. My warzone is consistently running 240 fps at 1080p while averaging at 190-200 fps. Hope this helps.

People have been buying Alienware desktops to rip out the GPU. A few weeks ago, I bought one from a guy after he took out the RTX 3080 and RAM. I then put in an NVMe SSD, 16GB (8GB x 2) of quality RAM, found an old GTX 1080 and gave the PC to my dad. It's a super nice mid-level gaming PC. He LOVES it. Some people think they look tacky, but it's fun. And it has TWO USB-C ports! After trying to get myself an RTX 3080 since launch I had the chance to buy this. I figured I would just keep entire PC and sell my current gaming PC. Then I read the reviews... Honestly, it really seems to me that they cut corners on this build because they assumed people would just rip the GPU out. I returned it several reasons before I even opened it. 1. One stick of RAM. ONE. This means it's running in single channel vs dual channel mode. There are some benchmarks of RAM that suggest you'll get same performance out of 1x16GB vs 2x8GB, but they also noted that single channel config caused higher CPU usage. 2. No water cooling. The picture shows water cooling on the CPU, but that is not correct. In fact, the BOX had a symbol that indicated water cooling. While I did not actually open the PC to verify, I did go to Dell's website to pull build and confirmed it has an air CPU cooler on the specs parts list. (You can too...use Service Tag: 17GQZC3 to look it up) 3. The pictures on Best Buy clearly say R11 on back of case. It made me skeptical overall of what I was getting. 4. i7-11700F instead of i7-11700K or KF. Go look up comparison of K vs F variant. For such a small price difference, just use the K/KF variant. 5. Only one M.2 slot. There's tons of space for HDDs (and I think there's a RAID controller), but I'm so used to having two M.2 slots that it seems silly to only have one. 6. Ghetto-looking RTX 3080. Sure the case does NOT have a window and you won't see it, but it just looks like a knock-off. I'm sure it's legit and all, but it just doesn't inspire excitement and after spending $2,200 I want to be excited. 7. Loads of people are reporting cooling issues. Of course my first thought would be to put water cooling on it, but another review mentioned they had issues with the cooler being recognized. And the fan noises sound rough. I have a pretty great PC right now running i7-8700k and RTX 3070 and it seemed like I would be spending $2,200 to get less performance and more hassle. I'm pretty bummed because this was the closest I got to getting a 3080 finally, even if I did have to buy a whole new PC. If you don't want to tinker with your PC, I still think Alienware is not a bad option, but you better get one built correctly, and this is NOT it.

Im going to do some quick pros and cons. Let me start this off by im a loyal best buy member 5k to 10k spent every year at the store no problem this order missed the pickup date by almost a month i only got comunication when i say that it was back for sale on bestbuy.Com and i havent received mine so i contacted support for the 3rd time i believe... i still have not received my intel gamer days code either ... such a bad experience... now the alienware i bought for a very specific thing and it does its job just fine and the dell 3080 is one of the best build cards and easy/cheep to mod out of all of the 3080 cards no matter what after a quick paste mod my vram temps never go past 92c even when ots hot in the house usally they stay at 88c for the price add a watercooler and another stick of ram if its your daily with the chip shortages this is the best way to go

What a terrible job by Dell. For a company that has been around so long I don’t understand why they knowingly put a product out that performs like this. There is a solution to the cooling problem. You can buy a couple fans remove the hard drive and put another intake fan in its place. You’ll also need to put a liquid cooler. I used the H60 120mm by Corsair. I did a push pull config for it on the top of the case. Lastly I bought the heat sink that Dell should have already included in this build. Hopefully this helps someone. There are many guides on youtube on how to do all of this. GET IT RIGHT DELL.

Bought this for the 3080, terrible cooling. If you are buying this, make sure to purchase a Corsair H60 or similar water cooler for the CPU, and a tube of premium thermal paste. I was able to get the temps down to 35C and 70C during intense load. Before the water cooling, this thing is awfully loud and runs super hot at over 95C+. If you are are mining, make sure to add thermal pads to the 3080's vram modules, otherwise they will run too hot.

This gaming PC performs well after upgrading the RAM and running through Dell’s updates. I’m using this computer with my my Samsung G9 and everything works well. I’m also using this to Mine bitcoin on the side, when mining I recommend you remove the side panel. I wish this came with dual channel RAM

This is absolutely ridiculous. I own a few Dell laptops and I know they aren't known for their quality control, but wow... There was a piece of plastic between the cooler and the CPU! They forgot to remove it during assembly for a $2000 computer! Luckily I was swapping the cooler for an AIO and noticed it before I turned it on but just wow... Never trust Dell to get anything right, especially with the thermals of their machines. So who do you support to get a 3080? I'm leaning more towards ebay scalpers over Dell because this is just ridiculous.

The Alienware R12, R10 runs hot! the case design is too compact. The 3090 and 3080 is awesome you just have to know your way around it. YouTube it. Overall the whole systems works great. I have 3 R12, 3090, 3080 and 3060 Ti

Havent bought a prebuilt so i thought this might be decent for the specs. I'm an avid builder and am still super shocked by Alienware, supposed to be the high end of gaming Prebuilts, makes utter garbage still. Make more ventilation. Its not hard, not only will it make the PC run faster, but it'll last longer, less crashes, and have quieter operation... Youtube, reddit, and twitter exposes all the dirty deeds. Tend to your customers more before you fall behind. Watch gamer nexus on youtube. They exposed a lot of bad practices by Dell... careful out there. Theres a reason why reviews are trash. Honestly im staying away from Dell until they show they care more.

Very nice desktop I love it. It runs every high quality required game very well

I got an open box excellent one and gpu fan was broken. top fan was not working

look at the power supply for the CPU... and broken power connector for the hard drive... the worse part, in my option, is the fresh air in and hot air out design... Returned.

I'm giving it three stars because you have to invest money to fix the overheating issues. Dell customer service here need to stop telling people their issues will be fix with a bios update. I updated the bios and all the drives of this pc and then started a remote session with Dell customer support. They run a stress test on the CPU and the CPU throttled. Pros: RTX 3080, 11 gen i7, M.2 SSD drive, 1000 watts power supply. Cons: Memory RAM CL @ 22 and only one channel CPU air cooling. Only one M.2 slot which is currently in used by the OS drive. There are many things you can do to improve air flow and temps inside the case which I think some people had discussed in their reviews like changing the CPU cooling, and installing more fans. You can also improve performance installing dual channel memory. Because of the RTX 3080 and the other Pros I listed in this review, I still would recommend this to a friend. Specially because is the only way to get an RTX 3080.

TLDR: Only buy this if you're desperate for a 3080. Pros: Relatively affordable 3080, although stock memory temps exceed 100 degrees celsius when gaming. According to dell forum posts, this GPU is sourced from MSI. Cons: Annoying Alienware Software, single channel DDR4 16GB RAM, terrible stock CPU cooler (designed for far less wattage, fan ramps up/down constantly), unreliable motherboard. Basically, if it weren't for the unobtainable GPU it's blessed with, I never would've bought this. Even after replacing the ram and cooler, I've occasionally had issues booting into windows. The Alienware logo on the front flashes yellow, alternating between 5 blinks (graphics issue) and 2 blinks (motherboard issue). The GPU works fine (I tested it in another computer), so it's definitely the motherboard.

I’m coming from an R5 model of the same line and this felt like an awesome upgrade, with some of the same caveats I’ve experienced before. PROS Overall decent specs for the price, a good CPU, good amount of RAM, fast SSD and an RTX 3080 with smaller footprint. The machine inside is exactly the same, they just changed the plastic outside, so all of the same old hacks you’ve known can be applied to this machine (adding fans, swapping fans, etc). I actually like the size of the 3080 card with its dual fans. One day I may pull it out and stick it into an eGPU enclosure or another case that doesn’t need to be huge. Having a 1000W PSU is great! Plenty of room for your needs. WiFi built into the computer, fast Ethernet, Bluetooth, good number of USB ports. CONS The RAM is a single stick, so no dual channel, but I suppose that leaves you room to add another 16GB easily. The CPU cooler is an air cooler instead of a liquid cooler, and it’s also noisy. You can’t just go buy any cooler and replace it. And the official Alienware one is not something you can go to a store and buy. The RTX 3080 gets hot quickly, it needs better thermal pads and it’s missing some cooling, so unless you’re willing to pry it open to make enhancements be prepared to be throttled. Not very many PCIe ports, so you’re limited to how many expansion cards you can install. Conclusion I’ve tried a couple of different PCs with RTX 3080 cards and what sold me on this one was the prior experience (positive) I’ve had with Dell support, and the quality of the components. I’ve owned several Alienware systems and they last a long time.

First, if I didn't mod this a little bit, I would have easily given this 1 star review. Things you need to do: 1) Most important thing you need to do is get an AIO Cooler. I found out Alienware's vendor Asetek didn't have any more so they are stuck shipping this with a CPU fan cooler. This is pure crap for CPU with this kind of build. 2) Add another stick of RAM. Seriously, you guys should have just used 2 8GB sticks for RAM rather than 1 16GB stick. Warzone went from 30 40 fps back up to 120+ in 1440p. Dual channel is REQUIRED. 3) What the hec is with all the brackets blocking airflow? Take out the 2 SSD caddies in the bottom and the big bracket on the front. 4) Get some splitters and add 2 fans on the bottom and add a fan to the front where the large HDD caddy was. You will have 2 fans below helping the GPU, 2 fans in the front, and a radiator and fan on top. Be careful with the fans you use, some give error messages when you replace the fans with a different brand. There's a BIOs edit that fixes it though. 5) Pull the aluminum shield off from where the PSU is and the ports are (not the fan shield of the PSU part). Removing the brackets increases airflow and keeps the device cooler. If you are mining with it, take out the side panel and move the PSU open.

most of the reason I purchased the R12 is the video card. 3080's on ebay are the same price as this PC. Most of the video reviews on youtube of the R12 say it all,the case is certainly too tight for the components.But the upside is alienware has top,side and cpu fan control's that can be cranked but they are the loudest fans ever (cheap fans) I tried userbenchmark on this PC but it does not recognize the video card so i researched the cuda cores,mem,ect and it appears for now its an RTX (legit). I did find that the video card is an exclusive of dell. These cards are not available to the public there only found within the R series.The memory card is 16 GB but its a kingston(cheapest) and only one slot out of four. in general all triple A gaming like cold war for instance require the fans at 80% minimum or the processor could rerach close to 200c if not careful. I run side and top fans at 75% and the cpu fan at 85% the results are high 160's-170c ..also I opened the side panel to try to swap out the memory and thats like opening the hood to any one of todays cars. Impoissible to get at. the outside lighting is kinda cool with options of control but because the case is so HOT I keep them off ALWAYS. If I keep goin ill reduce this review to one star.

Here is some problem with this PC 1: it only have 1 RAM (16gb hyperx fury 3466 RAM) 2: air cooling suck, the CPU tempreture reach to 100 degree when I open pubg within 1 mins 3: extremely noisy, and the top of the chassis really hot. 4: Alienware chassis can only install one liquid cooling system, and only 120mm liquid cooling fit in, I dont think it is enough for the cpu So basiclly, it is a pre-build model, if you want to buy this one, you need to fix all the issue by yourself, could be a good value since it have RTX 3080, but im not PC pro, so I dont wanna waste my time on it.