The Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4080 Super Gaming PC Drops to Under $2,000 Ahead of Black Friday – IGN

As part of its Early Black Friday Sale, Dell is offering discounts on two powerful Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4080 Super configurations: the Intel Core i9-13900F model is on sale for $1,999.99 and the Intel Core i9-14900F model is on sale for $2,099.99. The RTX 4080 Super is Nvidia’s second most power GPU on the market and it provides more than enough horsepower to handle any game in 4K at high framerates, even with max settings and ray tracing enabled.

Alienware RTX 4080 Super Gaming PC from $1,999.99

The Alienware Aurora R16 is equipped with an Intel Core i9-14900F CPU, GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB GPU, 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. The 14th-gen Intel Core i9-14900F Raptor Lake Refresh CPU boasts a max clock of 5.8GHz with 24 cores, 32 threads, and a 36MB cache. This is Intel’s newest i9 chip and it boasts a higher clock speed, more cores, more threads, and more cache than the 13th-gen i9-13900 CPU. The “F” in 14900F simply means that the chip doesn’t have onboard graphics (iGPU). That won’t matter if you have a discrete GPU.

The 4080 Super is a second generation card. It’s about 5%-10% faster in performance than its 4080 predecessor thanks to its higher base clock speed, higher CUDA core count, and higher memory bandwidth. It’s Nvidia’s second most powerful card and a superior GPU to AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 RTX if you factor in DLSS and ray tracing performance. In our RTX 4080 Super review, Jacqueline Thomas writes, “If you’re in the market for a 4K graphics card around $1,000, it’s hard to think of any GPU that’s a better purchase right now. This is the RTX 4080 that should have launched in 2022.”

The 2024 Alienware “R16” desktop chassis is a major improvement.

The R16 is Alienware’s current 2024 desktop PC design. It’s 40% smaller in volume compared to previous iterations. It features a simple yet proven airflow pattern; air is drawn in through the side intake vents over the GPU area and a 120mm fan at the front of the case, and exhausts by way of a 120mm rear fan and two 120mm top fans. A 240mm radiator for the all-in-one liquid cooling system is mounted to these top fans. Some configurations don’t actually include the liquid cooling system, but we rarely include them in any of our articles. That’s because Alienware’s liquid cooling solution is far superior to their stock air cooling and is easily worth the price premium.

Why Pick a Dell or Alienware Gaming PC?

The Alienware Aurora R16 is one of our picks for best prebuilt gaming PCs of 2024. Not everyone is the DIY type, and these days prebuilt gaming PC aren’t that much more expensive than building your own computer. In fact, depending on the demand of certain components like the GPU, it might even be cheaper. Alienware desktops offer a staggering array of options, all built into a custom chassis that’s both easy on the eyes and easy on the wallet. Consistent build quality, frequent sales, and solid customer service are the main reasons why Dell is at the top of our buying list.

Should You Wait for Black Friday?

In most cases, we would say that Black Friday has the best deals of the year. Dell, however, is quite the opposite. Historically, Black Friday hasn’t always been the best time to buy an Alienware computer. Aside from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the best times of year to score Dell deals are actually (1) Memorial Day and (2) right before Black Friday from September to early November. Either way, the deals that are going on right now are quite good.

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Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.