Alienware has always prided itself on being a force that introduces new ways for gamers to experience the joys of gaming, PC tweaks, upgrades, and pure high-performance hardware that makes people’s heads turn in awe and amazement. When I first joined Alienware in May of 2004, the brand consistently delivered this kind of experience for gamers and today we are continuing to beat that drum – loud and proud.
At the start of my 15 year tour, we had two main desktops, Area-51 and Aurora. At the time, they were identified by what CPU they 
carried. Auroras were AMD CPU-exclusive while Area-51’s were Intel CPU-exclusive. Alienware’s AMD-based flagship was the Aurora ALX and it featured the AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 processor, a CPU that made big waves throughout the PC gaming and computer technology worlds. Despite its single core, single thread, 2.4Ghz core speed and 1MB of L3 cache it was a champion of its time. We offered and shipped it liquid cooled and overclocked with your very own top three games installed, out of the factory, which was a service that very few, if any, PC gaming manufacturers offered.
In 2009, our naming strategy shifted from processor to form-factor-based and the Area-51 became the full-tower and Aurora became the mid-tower. Fast forward to 2019, Alienware unveiled the Legend industrial design which is heavily based on Alienware’s earlier designs combined with countless sci-fi stories and movies over the years.
Today, we are introducing the new Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition desktop which is not only an ode to the past design but also the first time in more than a decade where Aurora and AMD processors are reunited. The new platform introduces the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X – AMD’s flagship 3rd generation Ryzen processor featuring a 16-core processor, offering a gargantuan 64MB of cache, and a max boost speed of 4.7GHz. If you want to go above stock performance, download AMD’s Ryzen overclocking utility for the most hardcore CPU tweaks and keep using Aliewnare Command Center for graphics overclocking and tweaks.
This is the first Alienware (and Dell desktop) supporting PCI-Express 4.0 technology. It is also the first Aurora, or Alienware mid-tower, supporting 16-cores. Gamers who use core-hungry applications will love an Aurora Ryzen Edition with a 3950X proc. Typically creative applications for video editing, content creation, streaming, and megatasking are perfect use cases for CPUs with really high core counts. In fact, according to AMD, the Ryzen 9 3950X is a star performer on applications like Handbrake encode, Photoshop RBD filter, DaVinci Resolve, Vray benchmark, Corona Render Benchmark and Keyshot FPS.
Despite there being very few applications today that take advantage of the bandwidth offered by PCI-Express 4.0, Aurora Ryzen Edition owners will be happy to know they have the latest technology and their system is enabled for high performance graphics upgrades in the future.
On that point, if you have ideas or examples where an AMD Ryzen Edition 16-cores processor and PCI-Express 4.0 offer unique advantage over everything else out there, I’d love to hear about it. Please tweet your examples to me, @EddyGoyanes, and tag #AWARE-DT19, and if you’re lucky, we’ll feature this kind of demo in one of our upcoming events where the Aurora Ryzen Edition desktop is featured. Alternatively, if you happen to be at Dreamhack Atlanta 2019 come by and say hi so we can talk about it! We will be taking over the HyperX Esports truck booth #403 and hosting 5v5 gaming action for attendees to check out the new Aurora Ryzen Edition desktops in live matches while playing Rainbow Six Siege.
The Aurora Ryzen Edition desktops are available for sale today in North America at $1,199 USD with an AMD Ryzen 5 3500 (6 core, 16MB L3 Cache), AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB GDDR6, 8GB HyperX FURY DDR4, 1TB HDD, and 850W power supply. The entry point including the new 16-core technology starts at $2,349.99 USD with CPU liquid cooling, AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (16 core, 64MB L3 Cache), AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB GDDR6 and 8GB HyperX Fury DDR4 and 1TB SATA. China and Europe plan to launch the Aurora Ryzen Edition desktop in the first half of 2020.
I’m thrilled to share this news with everyone and proud of Alienware’s ability to continue ushering incredible technology with different choices that span the needs of different types of gamers.
