The Alienware Aurora ALX-XL
Sometimes you get a chance you can't say no to, so that's what happened to me.
After some discussions and exchanging ideas with Dell, I am very happy to announce to you a build with a super case. It's allready beautiful But I'm gonna give it a try
The Alienware Aurora desktop.
And not only the case, but a complete configuration with the following components:
- CASE : Alienware Aurora ALX 875W-chassis (Matte Black)
- PROCESSOR: Intel® Core i7-3820 (4 Core, 10MB Cache, 3.60GHz)
- OPERATING SYSTEM : Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64-bits
- GRAPHICS : 1 GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 555
- MEMORY : 16GB (4 x 4 GB) 1.600 MHz Quad Channel DDR3
- HARD DRIVE : 256 GB SSD
- OPTICAL DRIVE : 8X Blu-ray Disc-rw-station en 24x dvd+/-rw-station
Before I start, first I want to thank all the great sponsors for making this build possible.
Alienware, for the system.
Nvidia to deliver GPU upgrade (more on this later)
And EKWB for the watercooling components
There will be a lot of pictures again in this build. What is new is that I now going to add videos, think this will be a nice addition.
First contact with an
alien
Always a great feeling to receive packages
Once everything is dragged into the living room to have another great feeling .....
unboxing
The Aurora is certainly well packed, they have given this some good thought.
A box in a box
Clips to unlock the cover
Almost
The Alienware Aurora
Nice shapes
Front also beautiful and clean
One touch on the Alien head and the panel slides down.
If the PC is turned on and you activate the sliding panel, the lights which illuminate the optical drives will turn on
Acrylic part what looks very nice ... especially when it is enlightened
Power button
Behind this is a pushpanel to the front I / O. containing
(2x) Hi-Speed USB 2.0
(1x) SuperSpeed USB 3.0
(1x) Mic
(1x) Headphone
At the rear is the handle to unlock the side panel.
Pull the last vent
To unlock the sidepanel
The PSU (Alienware™ 875-watt) is also swappable and modular
Another great gadget is the enlightenment on the back. Activated with a push button.
Also a great gadget is the Alienware Active Venting.
Next box. With keyboard and other accessories
The Alienware tactx keyboard with two-zone lighting setup
The Alienware mousepad
Some documents
Drivers and utilities
Cables
And two Alienware 3D avatars
Not finished yet ..... a monitor, the beautiful
Alienware OPTX AW2310
Specs:
•Connections Dual-link DVI (with HDCP), HDMI, 4 x USB
•Viewable Screen Size 23.5in
•Maximum Resolution 1,920 x 1,080
•Contrast ratio 80,000:1 (dynamic), static not quoted
•Brightness 400cd/m2
•Response time 3ms (grey-to-grey)
Back to the Alienware Aurora ....
the inside
First looks without sidepanel
And again a nice gadget: when the sidepanel is removed, the inside is illuminated without the power on.
Powered by rechargeable batteries
Very handy!!!
The caps for the airflow and coverup are very nicely designed and printed
Cap for the GPUs is rotatable and removable
Beautiful swappable, tool-less and cable-free hard drive bays
Also well thought about is the power suply for the side panel (Lights)
On the side of the powersupply are contact points which provide this
For now a Nvidia GTX555 is installed, but this will be exchanged for two Nvidia GTX680
Cooler motherboard
And the beautiful Alienware CPU cooler
Personally I really like this one, so it stays in this build (perhaps modify)
What cable management is concerned, everything is provided. But it looks a bit messy.
This will be better
Module for lighting, fans and other applications
This will be a lot of work, but a very exciting thing to do.
The first change that I'm going to do is swap the Nvidia GTX555 for two GPUs Nvidia has sent me.
Again thank you Nvidia
For sending me two Nvidia GTX680's
Engine Specs:
- CUDA Cores: 1536
- Base Clock: 1006
- Boost Clock: 1058
- Texture Fill Rate: 128.8
- Memory Speed: 6.0 Gbps
- Standard Memory Config: 2048MB
- Memory Interface Width: 256-bit GDDR5
- Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 192.2
Unboxing again
The beautiful GPU's
with one Dual Link DVI-I, one Dual Link DVI-D, one HDMI and one DisplayPort
And installed the new GPU's
And now it is time for some modding
First a window in the Alienware Aurora. And maybe two, one on both sides.
But this is for later... first one.
The sidepanel
Contacts for lighting has to be kept in mind
And the shapes / curves must be maintained
Everything is pretty easy to disassemble. Black panel removed and drawn the line for cutting
Disassambled the remaining parts
RGB strip for color effects
Detached the Acrylic carefully
What's left...a piece of iron
This is what we gonna use for cutting the window in the plastic panel
After some sawing and filing
Excess plastic also removed with my dremel to place the window (later)
first fit
Next step. We use the jigsaw
Removed the reinforcement strip and drawned the hole slightly larger than the window in the plastic panel
And saw it (and some filling of course)
The points which seem to be thin will be reinforced
Furthermore, it's still a strong frame
And placed everything back. The gap inside between the plastic and iron needs to be filled
And the window is almost finished
A big start topic with a lot of pics and vids, but hope you like it.
Until the next update!!!
Grtz.
Kier