Alienware Can't Get It Right - R15 2023 Pre-Built Gaming PC Review

they should go back to the massive alienware cases from 2003 with the bright color options, green, red, blue, black, etc.... those cases looked really cool and really emphasized the Alienware name. on top of that the cases were massive and had lots of room for upgrades. in todays world those cases could be updated to include better more modern ventilation while maintaining the iconic look. for some reason they went backwards and decided to make everything smaller and more compact and ugly...

Tried ordering one of these from Dell's website and they're no longer in stock. I guess with the new R16 case, Dell's not going to make these R15's anymore? The R16 case is boring.

I've been an Alienware computer user for ten years. My first was the Area 51, and now I have the R15 and it's fantastic, just as the Area 51was. I'm not a gamer, but I use many intense programs at a time and have never had a problem. I would recommend the R15 to anyone wanting a high-performance computer. Oh, and by the way, the only reason I replaced my Area 51 after eight years of heavy use is because the headphone jack stopped working; so, I gave it to a ten-year-old girl to use to expand her horizon's. One more point, until I started using Alienware, I lived in a computer nightmare with crashing computers. I've never had an Alienware crash...

the reason it has dust is because its made in foxcomm which happens to be manufacture in mexico I believe the location is actually Juarez next to el paso texas there is a lot of wind dust in those areas I am surprise you are getting the same issue I got when I bought my computer from like 8 years ago same. I want to say I'm wrong but track the location lol

If that Alienware Build was a motorvehicle it would be a Greyhound Bus.

what is a good prebuilt to buy???

I've been building my own PCs since... forever. Recently, I caved and ordered an Alienware R15 from Dell. I did this despite your very helpful and insightful review. Why?

- I hate installing coolers and spreading thermal paste. I always feel like messing it up can be very expensive (despite never having once messed it up).
- I stepped down the components. The R15 I ordered contains an RTX 4080 and the weaker CPU (i7 13700F) because your review said that in this case with Dell, the more expensive CPU is behaving like the performance profile of the weaker one. So I just went with the weaker one, and bumped the NVMe size to 1TB and the RAM to 32 GB.
- They offered $600 off the total cost due to a sale. The brought the pre-built cost down to about what it would have cost me to get the parts individually, minus the stress of having to build it myself. Since it comes with a 1 year warranty, I figure I will know if it's a lemon within that year.

I'm mostly going to use this PC for gaming, so I hope with the reduced power consumption the thermals are going to be OK. You did say the GPU configuration was one of the few things Dell got right. Since I won't be doing a lot of CPU intensive loads, I have my fingers crossed. The 4080 represents nearly a 3X performance upgrade from my 1080 (I don't even have the Ti).

I bought this PC thinking there wouldn't be a problem adding in the wig card for my VR headset, but ends up that there isn't a PCIe slot to put it in. After watching your video it looks like there may be 2 other slots on this system, but are they fully blocked by the video card? Sorry I am a newb so if this is a silly question can you answer it please. Can I add a Vive Wigig card to an existing pcie slot on this system? Thank you.

I bought an alienware ON SALE 33% off. Then fixed it.
The power suppplies are junk, change them.
Cheap out on the ram during build, buy better ram for cheaper (get dual channel, atleast 16gb, 32gb is ideal)
They overcharge for the ssd, so cheap out on that too. Because they ALL have a second slot, so buy a second storage drive and youll be fine.

The bios is solid. The board is good. The compatibility is reasonable. The price CAN be right if you know what you are doing and what to expect.

They are on sale for 3500 now and I'm still scared. Thanks for the review.

Im still rocking my r7 i bought in 2017

bought alien once big mistake never again 🤮

Why do people buy Pre-Builts, its not hard to build a PC.

Alienware has a tranny mod working in their discord that will attack you for not following their stupid formalities (on a discord? really) such as not addressing their ze zir they them gender when you ask the mod a question after they reply to you. Then the white guy that works for Alienware directly actually doubles down on this and not addresses the issues with the product for the customer. Seems like they have their entire focus wrong and I will never buy another alienware system again. Oh and final thing, they dont even honor giving you a m.2 heatsink which they should have shipped with the laptop if you are over the 30 day period.

Intel 14900 CPU, Asus Strix z 790-A MB, 4 TB M.2 WD Black, 2 TB M.2 Samsung 940 pro, 64gb Corsair Titanium 6800, gigabyte 4090 GPU, Corsair H150i AIO, Asus 1200w Platinum PSU, Asus Tuff Mid tower case all for $4500 that I built myself. Thats crazy is that they are charging more for rebuilt PCs and use less powerful components.

I feel like they could make that look for the case work if they just got rid of the plexiglass at the front and made the top dome into more like a mesh panel so that it has direct air flow rather than forcing it into the 90° turn to exit at the back

Alienware prebuilts are such a relic of the past, they just havent evolved at all.

Why do I both think that Steve is at the very least a musician, and best an audio engineer, and that maybe we could see stuff like this on a breakout channel ?👀👀👀

Thanks for the review. Very helpful

I bought an Alienware because of an excellent sale and returned it within 48 hours. It was still incredibly loud, and the thermals were still awful.

This kind of stuff makes all prebuilts look bad… Corsair Vengeance i8200 is an amazing prebuilt and the Corsair Vengeance i7500 is also amazing but even cheaper than the PC in this video

Is nobody going to mention how ugly these Alienware PCs are?

It fucks me up how these things aren’t made to order and they’re still fucked.

diy pc elitism aside, i feel bad for all the people who don't know better. but i think with a lot of industries, you get ripped off if you're not a nerd :/

Would love to see you guys do more pre-built reviews. I love how thorough and honest you guys are. Keep up the good work.

I copped the g516 last week. 5600x3d, 6650xt for $750. It’s basically this pc but micro atx, better cable management, the thermals aren’t shit, and the case has actual airflow. Pretty happy w the cop

you guys should do laptops too

lol why do you guys keep buying this trash? you proved the point 4 times over.... dont buy 5k$ alienwares... or almost any 5$k computer.

I know this one was pretty rough, but I bought an Alienware Aurora R7 back in 2017 with 0% financing for around $1800. Got an i7 8770k, 16GB RAM, and a 1070ti and honestly I was and am really happy with it. I just "retired" that machine after upgrading a bunch of the parts over the years and just bounced it to my wife for her, much MUCH more casual use. 6 years later and it's still going quite strong with 32GB RAM, and upgraded modular PSU, and a 3070 in there now.

Shittiest looking 4090 😭

This case looks like it was cool in the 90s...

You are lucky the FETs blew open. If any of the 12 is shorted, it blows up the CPU. The CPU voltage goes to 12V instead of 1.199V.

The "VRM" uses 12 copies of the 1920 buck converter instead of the 2-phase 2011-Ćuk-buck. That way they can provide worse performance at a higher cost and maintain their commitment to 1920 technology.

is it just me or it's hella ugly too ? with all the cables connecting to random pins on the motherboard, the overengineerd components arranged like it could make a cave diver feel claustrophobic, and the tiny window ? It only looks good from the front. People are really spending an extra 1000 bucks for proprietary parts at a 10⁰ angle, blue-ish green lights and a logo ? Really

To this day it is still a surprise that Alienware is still up and dell didn't cut it

hello, and we're back with another update on my R15. we finally got a hit on the root cause of the blackouts. apparently the gpu power cable is tapping out. while I could not identify this issue myself using the monitor (gpu takes the hdmi connection with it) dell support was able to use their remote connection to bring up the device manager. the gpu was awol.

good news: problem identified. bad news: dell is completely incompetent. it went into the workshop again so that they could... i don't know what they could have done. replace the cable maybe? we replaced the gpu twice already. the first time bought me a week or so, but then we were back to constant blackouts. the second time was less impressive. dell also replaced my solid state drive, fans, motherboard, cpu... essentially everything shy of the power supply and RAM.

Tech support claims they had no record of other R15 crashes. I've seen two on the first reddit I found. at least one was in repeated contact with dell tech support over these same symptoms. so somewhere they are dropping the record. Dell technicians would do nothing outside of the base diagnostic tools, which were completely incapable of discovering the gpu failpoint. what was able to trigger the blackout consistently was sending a file containing my device's specs through remote assist. that knocked out the gpu both times, and the second was how they identified the issue. Valheim, satisfactory, timberborn, modded minecraft. hell, even realm grinder managed to trip the (gpu) blackout. most of these games had a random amount of time, and or a coin toss as to whether they'd blackout. I've had as many as four blackouts in a single day across multiple programs.

The R13 apparently had a similar issue / similar thread of use based troubleshooting. found a video for that too.

I really did not expect such a perisistent problem when i bought this device. I got high praise when it came to the service that dell would provide their customers. so much so that I committed to buying this device ahead of schedule. going through the support team enforced a lot of downtime. the effort put in by their in house technicians was pathetic. at the very least, I expect they (the shop techs) could have recreated the blackout issue using any of the softwares listed, or some alternative stress testing. I am disturbed by the amount of 'field testing' is was asked to do.

Five months i've been at this. according to dell, I'm on the more patient end of the spectrum. this was before they could identify the problem. I've been called to factory reset several times (thanks for teaching me how to do that), and been shocked by how many times i've had to regress. I should have returned it when it started bluescreening in the middle of the night, while I was sleeping. one month was not enough time for the original gpu/cable to degrade to the point of interrupting gameplay, meaning i could not return it when it mattered. I am torn between selling the parts, holding onto the gpu for a custom build, or tackling the cabling monster myself.

That's the most rediculous case I've seen. They really need to stick to normal standards and lose the 1990's Apple looking cases that over over engineered but don't deliver.

what an embarrassing unit.

1st gaming pc was an Alienware back in 2006, poop load of coin and it was a complete POS. Tech support was a joke. Do your self a favor and learn how to do it your on your own. Not hard with all the how to do vids.

Steve Why your Video is keep on cutting on around 4 min edit?

Sounds like you need to build a computer of your own.

Great review.

Absolutely love your channel man! I've watched so many videos and great un-biased content! I believe your channel actually makes companies improve their products if they listen.

First of all people that buy Alienware don't watch this channel...your review is ridiculous and full of obnoxious no shit moments that leave it clear you don't know anything about money and marketing but really love hearing yourself talk in sentences that are 15 times longer than needed to say the same thing...

For every good ideas the case has is immediately overshadowed by the fact that it's just a dell workstation chassis shoved into a plastic shell

In summary, Dell has yet again overcharged their customers for a computer that underperforms, and nobody should buy this heap.