Alienware has officially announced the new Aurora R16 gaming PC, a desktop that evokes the company’s passion and prowess as a long-time gaming brand, and its commitment to evolving within the space. At the heart of this new PC is Alienware’s Legend 3 design language that debuted on its laptops at the start of this year.
The pillars of this design language are form, function, and quality. The “form” part of that ethos manifests in the ‘Stadium Loop.’ An oval shaped RGB light bar on the side of the chassis that is intended to draw your attention to it as the central aesthetic. It also surrounds the main air intake vent, which Alienware says is larger than it was on the Aurora R15 to allow for better airflow, helping to keep the PC cooler and quieter.
These were two things the company wanted to ensure were part of this latest iteration of the desktop. Because the cooler the PC is, the better it can perform and the longer it can perform at optimal levels. And of course, the quieter it is the less obtrusive it is during gaming. Alienware also designed it to have an optional clear side panel. The intention is that the side of the PC becomes the new focal point, while the rest of the case sort of blends into the background with its more minimal, simplistic look. That isn’t to say it isn’t still undeniably an Alienware PC.
A design overhaul is the cornerstone of the Alienware Aurora R16
Both the striking visual of the stadium loop and the larger air vent are two pieces of a whole. Making up Alienware’s overall vision of creating a PC with a more minimalist design that’s also efficient.
To help achieve that goal, a big change this year is the size. Alienware’s most powerful desktops aren’t exactly known for being small. On the contrary, they’re usually large, hulking machines. Taking up a large surface area of your desk like a miniature UFO. Alienware isn’t doing that this time around. The Aurora R16 sees a 40% decrease in the overall volume of the case compared to the Aurora R15. Giving it a smaller footprint than its predecessor. You’d think this would mean Alienware had to make some compromises on the internal space for hardware components.
However, Alienware says the internal volume is unchanged. So there’s just as much room for everything as before. And with the larger air intake vent, air can continue to flow freely.
An elite plug and play experience
As always, Alienware strives to provide a plug and play gaming experience with elite performance. Speaking of performance, the Aurora R16 promises to be an out of this world machine. Like all of Alienware’s products, the Aurora R16 has a variety of configuration options. Starting with the GPUs, Alienware will offer the Aurora R16 with options for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 12GB card, as well as the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB and the GeForce RTX 4080 16GB. There’s also a GeForce RTX 3050 8GB model, although this one and the RTX 4080 config will only be available in Asia and Europe at launch. The other two will be available globally though.
To pair with that you can get the Aurora R16 with a 12th Gen Intel Core i9F 12900F CPU and up to a 13th Gen Intel Core i9F 13900F CPU. As for storage, there’s options for both single drive and dual-drive bays. Starting at 512GB and going all the way up to two 4TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs. RAM meanwhile starts at 16GB and goes up to 64GB.
The Aurora R16 launches today at a starting price of $1,749.99 for the RTX 4070 model with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7F 13700F CPU.