The Alienware Aurora ALX-XL Sometimes you get a chance you can't say no to, so that's what happened to me. After some discussions and exchanging ideas with Dell, I am very happy to announce to you a build with a super case. It's allready beautiful But I'm gonna give it a try The Alienware Aurora desktop. And not only the case, but a complete configuration with the following components: - CASE : Alienware Aurora ALX 875W-chassis (Matte Black) - PROCESSOR: Intel® Core i7-3820 (4 Core, 10MB Cache, 3.60GHz) - OPERATING SYSTEM : Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64-bits - GRAPHICS : 1 GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 555 - MEMORY : 16GB (4 x 4 GB) 1.600 MHz Quad Channel DDR3 - HARD DRIVE : 256 GB SSD - OPTICAL DRIVE : 8X Blu-ray Disc-rw-station en 24x dvd+/-rw-station Before I start, first I want to thank all the great sponsors for making this build possible. Alienware, for the system. Nvidia to deliver GPU upgrade (more on this later) And EKWB for the watercooling components There will be a lot of pictures again in this build. What is new is that I now going to add videos, think this will be a nice addition. First contact with an alien: Always a great feeling to receive packages Once everything is dragged into the living room to have another great feeling ..... unboxing The Aurora is certainly well packed, they have given this some good thought. A box in a box Clips to unlock the cover Almost The Alienware Aurora Nice shapes Front also beautiful and clean One touch on the Alien head and the panel slides down. If the PC is turned on and you activate the sliding panel, the lights which illuminate the optical drives will turn on Acrylic part what looks very nice ... especially when it is enlightened Power button Behind this is a pushpanel to the front I / O. containing (2x) Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (1x) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (1x) Mic (1x) Headphone At the rear is the handle to unlock the side panel. Pull the last vent To unlock the sidepanel The PSU (Alienware™ 875-watt) is also swappable and modular Another great gadget is the enlightenment on the back. Activated with a push button. Also a great gadget is the Alienware Active Venting. Next box. With keyboard and other accessories The Alienware tactx keyboard with two-zone lighting setup The Alienware mousepad Some documents Drivers and utilities Cables And two Alienware 3D avatars Not finished yet ..... a monitor, the beautiful Alienware OPTX AW2310 Specs: •Connections Dual-link DVI (with HDCP), HDMI, 4 x USB •Viewable Screen Size 23.5in •Maximum Resolution 1,920 x 1,080 •Contrast ratio 80,000:1 (dynamic), static not quoted •Brightness 400cd/m2 •Response time 3ms (grey-to-grey) Back to the Alienware Aurora .... the inside First looks without sidepanel And again a nice gadget: when the sidepanel is removed, the inside is illuminated without the power on. Powered by rechargeable batteries Very handy!!! The caps for the airflow and coverup are very nicely designed and printed Cap for the GPUs is rotatable and removable Beautiful swappable, tool-less and cable-free hard drive bays Also well thought about is the power suply for the side panel (Lights) On the side of the powersupply are contact points which provide this For now a Nvidia GTX555 is installed, but this will be exchanged for two Nvidia GTX680 Cooler motherboard And the beautiful Alienware CPU cooler Personally I really like this one, so it stays in this build (perhaps modify) What cable management is concerned, everything is provided. But it looks a bit messy. This will be better Module for lighting, fans and other applications This will be a lot of work, but a very exciting thing to do. The first change that I'm going to do is swap the Nvidia GTX555 for two GPUs Nvidia has sent me. Again thank you Nvidia For sending me two Nvidia GTX680's Engine Specs: - CUDA Cores: 1536 - Base Clock: 1006 - Boost Clock: 1058 - Texture Fill Rate: 128.8 - Memory Speed: 6.0 Gbps - Standard Memory Config: 2048MB - Memory Interface Width: 256-bit GDDR5 - Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 192.2 Unboxing again The beautiful GPU's with one Dual Link DVI-I, one Dual Link DVI-D, one HDMI and one DisplayPort And installed the new GPU's
And now it is time for some modding First a window in the Alienware Aurora. And maybe two, one on both sides. But this is for later... first one. The sidepanel Contacts for lighting has to be kept in mind And the shapes / curves must be maintained Everything is pretty easy to disassemble. Black panel removed and drawn the line for cutting Disassambled the remaining parts RGB strip for color effects Detached the Acrylic carefully What's left...a piece of iron This is what we gonna use for cutting the window in the plastic panel After some sawing and filing Excess plastic also removed with my dremel to place the window (later) first fit Next step. We use the jigsaw Removed the reinforcement strip and drawned the hole slightly larger than the window in the plastic panel And saw it (and some filling of course) The points which seem to be thin will be reinforced Furthermore, it's still a strong frame And placed everything back. The gap inside between the plastic and iron needs to be filled And the window is almost finished A big start topic with a lot of pics and vids, but hope you like it. Until the next update!!! Grtz. Kier
Wow! So cool already. Looking forward to seeing this. KayinBlack's log has been awesome, so these cases seem like they will yield some cool results.
Careful what you do with that name, apparently it's a summoning spell. Great start, let me know if you run into any problems, I've got my Area-51 case able to do just about everything short of walk the dog now. I've been able to get the ESA working with third-party boards, as well as getting GPU clocks tied into the deal. When you get into cable management, have fun with that nightmare. Also, if you'll pull the PSU I can tell you if it's a straight swap with the 1100W Delta that came in mine. I can also show you where to get those dirt cheap, if need be.
You're right! But kier will make them nice. It's looking better already with that window cut. Good luck.
Thanks Thanks for the tip, didnt saw KayinBlack build before... sorry Kayin Hi KayinBlack thanks, your doing a superb job my friend subbed for sure. the PSU is fine for now but thanks. About the cables.....hmm the cables, dont want to think about now Thanks Thank you Attila
The design of the sidepanel is fit perfect with the case very nice Kier. Looking forward to the next update.
