"DS: What is the longest you have kept an AW?"

i would have loved to keep my aurora r10 for more than 5 years but the mainboard, cooling and case are so bad that im afraid that its too much trouble or impossible to upgrade it in the future, so im about to sell it (with a guilty conscience) before its completely worthless... and then i will never ever buy another aw.

I have an R10 that is about a year and half old. The PSU failed within 8 months of the warranty. I plan to keep it as a 1080P gaming rig until it dies. However I don't foresee buying another AW PC because Dell has gone too far with the proprietary parts and case. You can't replace the PSU in the newer R13/14/15 because they use proprietary connectors. There are NO off the shelf PSU's that will fit the newer systems. It is possible you might not be able to buy a replacement PSU from Dell. The motherboard is proprietary even going to the extreme of making the front USB ports part of the motherboard. If a USB port fails, then it is time for a new MB.

The only option is to spend more by purchasing an extended warranty. When I look at how much these systems are gimped and lock you in and how much they cost vs the competition. I have decided to either build my next gaming rig again or if I go pre-builts, it will be either HP Omen 45L or the Corsair Vengance PC's.

I can't speak to AW, as my new R13 is the first Alienware branded computer I've ever owned. I'm only eight months in on that one...and loving it. But my prior computer was a Dell Studio XPS9000/435T. Gen 1 Core i7 Extreme Edition. That system is still chugging along 15 years later...sure I upgraded the PSU to an 850w and the GPU to an nVidia GTX970, but the mobo and CPU are still OEM and going strong as a web browsing backup machine.

We still have and use our last two Alienware desktop purchases.

Aurora-R1 (upgraded with Nvidia GTX-1070, SATA-3/600 PCIe card, and only SSDs inside now-days). Windows-10 Pro 64-bit

It's our new HTPC in the Home-Theater (with Onkyo-Amp, Epson Projector, and Harmony-Elite remote). Running Kodi for Windows and Steam Gaming (in Big-Picture-Mode) and a Sony DS4 Controller.

Aurora-R6 . It still has it's original Intel-i7, 16gb ram, GTX-1070, and 512gb-NVMe-SSD. I recently added a 2tb-NVMe-SSD on a PCIe-card. That's really about it since I bought it new in 2017. Oh, I managed to get Windows-11 on it. My monitors are a Dell 27" UltraSharp u2717d and a Dell 24" UltraSharp u2410.

It's my main Windows computer, so I run everything on it. Microsoft Office 2021 Pro, QuickBooks, Visual-Studio, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Video, lots of games (like Fallout-76) and sims.

Both of our older Alienware Auroras still have their original liquid-coolers, motherboards, ram, power-supplies, all that. They have been very reliable over the years (knock on wood). Both the Aurora-R1 desktop-computer and the Dell 24" UltraSharp u2410 monitor are over 12 years old.

Our most recent desktop purchase was a custom-build:

Intel i9-12900K (12th Gen & liquid-cooled) / 32gb DDR5 5200mhz RAM / Nvidia RTX-3080 FE (10gb) / Two 1tb NVMe-SSDs (4x4 speed).
Window-11 Pro

Have the R10 (gen1) since 2020, had a Dell Studio XPS9000/435T. Gen 1 Core i7 Extreme Edition air cooled before and that is still running. I gave that one to the kids next door for home studies during the pandemic. The only major problem I had with the R10, the motherboard vrm's fried because of the very bad awcc software. The fans went into idling for some reason in awcc and poof goes the vrm's.They did replace the mb. I replace the  dell memory modules with the crucial ones and so far it works great.

The Dell modules prices are outrageous.

I have the amd 3950x cpu but it's too bad I can't put in a 5000 series cpu.

Fan noise is not that bad ( quieter than my XPS) even if everything is set for performance . I can  run the CPU and GPU (AMD)  usage up to  85-95% and no jet engine noise, it's all very smooth. Somehow the air pressure seemed dynamically well balanced no need for extra fans. At idle I don't ear the fans at all , the r10 is sitting on a bench 2 feet from me.

Hopefully it will last me many more years. So far so good.

The oldest alienware in our house is an 8 year old Alienware 13 that is still used by my wife for office. Still runs great and silent! I use an 4 year old Alienware M15 R1 for work and gaming when im not at home. It still can run crysis with its GTX1060 Last year i bought an Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition. I can bulid PCs on my own but i got the R10 with Ryzen 9 5900X and RTX3080 for little more than these two components alone did cost here in Germany last year. So i decided to go for it and im happy with it all in all. Would be great if these machines could be upgraded with normal pc parts though.