This Alienware gaming PC is the cheapest Black Friday RTX-4090 gaming PC you can find.
Let me clear this up right away. Alienware PCs aren't bad for gaming. You do get decent gaming hardware, but there are some important caveats that I will address shortly. It's a Core i9 14900KF with a GeForce RTX 4900 combination. So it can handle any game.
Alienware gaming computers are expensive. The PCs are normally very pricey, and far more expensive than they should be. But Dell has done the right thing by reducing the price by $1,000.
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It's still a buck short of $3,000, but it's a RTX 4090 rig. This is the cheapest gaming PC I've seen so far in the Black Friday deals. If you're looking for RTX-4090 graphics cards, it can be difficult to find them on their own (unless you buy a Newegg bundle). I would recommend this Alienware R16 if that is what you want.
Be careful before you spend your hard-earned money. Dell's love of proprietary hardware is the first thing to note. Dell, unlike most system integrators, uses its own motherboards. This means that there are a lot of proprietary connectors.
If you don't want to mess around and upgrade your PC, it's fine, but you will likely bang your head if you try to change the cooling system, for example.
Dell uses a 240 mm Alienware AIO liquid cooler to cool the Core i9-14900KF. Intel's most power hungry chip needs something more substantial in order to keep its temperatures down under load. You can also lower the power limits in the BIOS of the motherboard. It's simple to do with a standard motherboard, but not so much with a proprietary one.
Dell's case is not open at the front, but has a gap around the edge. As we found out when we tested the Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4080, this isn't enough to allow for good airflow. This restriction and the relatively smaller cooler means that the CPU cannot reach its full potential.
This is also true for the RAM that Dell has installed in this version. The total amount of RAM is 64 GB, but the DDR5-5200 rating is disappointing for an advanced gaming PC. You may be able swap it for a faster set, but there is no guarantee that you will be able enable the relative XMP in the BIOS.
The storage is at least decent, with a standard 2 TB NVMe solid state drive and enough room to add another gaming SSD. The M.2 slots are right next to RAM slots because the motherboard isn’t standard.
This is a nice, classy case that's not too big. If you must have a RTX 4090 gaming computer, this Alienware Aurora R16 is the cheapest option.
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