Probably not helped with the combination of bad case ventilation, weak CPU cooler, and pre-installed crapware consistently consuming 2-10% CPU. Even going straight to idle from a cold boot, heat will accumulate, ramp the fan up, and probably never ramp back down until the machine goes into deep sleep (which may never happen, once again due to crapware).
The Alienware with the liquid cooling option(which isn’t that much more expensive) isn’t really that bad tbh in terms of cooling. Anyone who buys that air cooling system hasn’t done their research, as it’s an awful setup, shouldn’t even be sold with it as an option.
If I remember correctly in the GN video blasting the Alienware R10, they mentioned the fan seemed to be at 100% at all times.
If that’s the case, lol, pretty bad.
I tried going back to the video, and it seemed like the photo which shows 100% may be a bug or something, as the other fans don’t seem to show that. I don’t believe OEMs usually run their fans that high, as that’s usually about ~4000 RPM. Their idle dB was 36 dB, and if it was truly running 100% at all times, I’m sure it would be higher than 36. I skimmed the sections again and didn’t see him mention it, but maybe I missed it.
But, it’s not new that Dell has horrible thermals on most of their products, especially on the Aurora. That chassis is very old at this point and has been used by many other Dells, and if you kept up with them, you’d know that chassis has had poor thermals for years on the Dell Precisions(which is one of the luckier of the group), the older XPS desktops(ex. 8910), and the Auroras for years now(even the older aurora with the different design used this chassis). This is known as the chassis that has caused many customers with air cooling to call it a ‘jet engine.’ The chassis goes back to about 2016 or so.
The system however when chosen with liquid cooling is not that bad though in terms of temps. Anyone who purchases the air cooled option on the aurora is very uninformed, and hasn’t bothered researching anything at all, because this is a very well known thing for years. Why Dell never bothered to fix it, I have no clue, but they just don’t really care, but it doesn’t seem like their customers care either to look up stuff on Google for 2 minutes.
I’ve read the complaints on the chassis temps over the years, and Dell doesn’t usually do much about it, and customers will usually get the typical tech support response. For how Dell markets the systems, the XPS/G5 should come with the 95w cooler by default(without having to buy a K), and the Aurora should by default come with liquid cooling. I don’t think their customer base would really complain about the price difference. Part of the problem is Dell’s poor thermal management on the board itself, as they usually let the processors boost more than the thermal solution can handle, for example XPS 8940 systems with the default cooler with non-K i7s bursting to about 150 watts, then instantly throttling. Most other OEMs would just lock them at 65-75 watts at all times with this size class of desktop.
It’s worth mentioning that a lot of OEM systems are picky with replacement fans, especially the auroras from what I’ve read.
Seems like it’s just best to DIY if you can.
The only OEMs I have used in the past 20 years have really been laptops and work clients that I don’t really care about.
Laptops seem to even be in a better place than these big name desktops.
I generally prefer Lenovo for desktops. They’re a bit old fashioned in terms of their build philosophy(they use pretty old chassis designs as well, etc.), but they usually try to keep up and build a respectable system that’s overall ok. They skimp in some areas, but not as much as some other companies, and they usually have better thermal profiles. They on average have the most well-constructed desktops I’ve seen coming out of the OEMs, the materials are much thicker, and I appreciate that. You can walk into a Best Buy and just tell based on the chassis feel, that it has barely any flex at all. The HP chassis on display flexes a bit, and the Dell is about on par with HP now in that product category(the G5/XPS 8940 is better than the HP pavilion lineup now though in terms of build). The old inspiron desktop that just got replaced was built terribly though, very cheap hollow plastic, awful.
I’d say next up is HP and Dell. HP usually doesn’t do anything great, but not really anything poorly. They’re basically the value option, and are just kind of middle of the road. They don’t really use high quality parts, but they offer things for an ok price on sale. Dell uses better parts on average than HP, but skimp in some areas, and Dell can potentially be a better system, but you need to do your research on how to properly configure them. So, I’d rank Dell higher than HP if you’re an informed customer, and HP higher if you’re not exactly bothered to research your purchases.
Acer is kind of just there.
I’ve seen the legion systems and at least they have the general principles in place.
It’s really hard to F up a literal box, and yet Alienware still manages to do that.
The top looks like a standard PC build, perhaps lacking the modern PSU basement. The Alienware looks like repurposed Office PCs with plastic body kit.
1 Like
Dell tends to be a bit adventurous with their designs. They don’t like doing things the other companies are doing.
You gotta ask yourself why when there seems to be no appreciable benefit.
Outside of complication for the sole purpose of complication to deter user end maintenance.
I don’t have any experience with Lenovo desktops, but I have a Thinkpad X1 Nano laptop and there’s very little that I don’t love about it – mainly soldered RAM, but that’s understandable given size constraints, and mediocre battery life. Extremely pleasant machine to use, relative to the average Windows laptop.
Tangent here, but have you seen the new Framework laptops? Modular, user-upgradeable/customizable, promises for upgrade path?
Looks super cool.
Yep, they were announced like 1-2 weeks after I had received my Nano, lol. If I hadn’t bought the Nano I would’ve bought a Framework.
1 Like
If I wasn’t issued one for work and needed one, that’s what I’d get.
As it stands for work I get a Dell Latitude 7420. It’s actually got 10mn Intel in it…but not like that matters. It’s also docked 100% of the time so most of its portability and other functions are wasted.
The funny part is that Dell is the company with the most advanced hardware replacement guides, with a lot of pictures and such, I guess they think you need it. Lenovo has documentation, but they won’t really hold your hand. HP’s documentation stuff is pretty meh too, but HP regularly posts YouTube videos for their part replacement, which I think is great of them to do.
In my opinion, Lenovo tends to be the least offensive OEM in terms of the product they ship. They don’t necessarily always use the highest quality internal parts(sometimes they do), but they usually take the time to make sure the product isn’t unusable. Disclaimer: they did however have some bad QC for a period, where they were shipping their Legion Intel desktops with front fans placed backwards, and issues with them plugging in the RGB into the wrong headers of the RGB board.
2 Likes
From a purely cosmetic perspective, I really like the HP Omen desktops.
They just look nice and sleek with no frills.
Yeah this lines up with what I’ve seen too, especially when talking about their business class machines (Think line). Mine came with practically zero crapware, it’s one of the few machines I stuck with the stock Windows install on. Their consumer stuff is a bit more hit or miss in that category but still not as bad as Dell, HP, etc.
1 Like
Fun fact, those are pretty bad thermally as well, not as bad as the Aurora though. It only has airflow through the bottom front, and the slight opening at the front. For non-water cooled systems, the whole top is blocked off normally. Some opt to remove the plate. Some people put fans at the bottom by the PSU. HP was pretty cheap with those motherboards as well, with a lot of the boards for that system only having a single slot, which is taken up by the GPU. Pretty cheap motherboard overall. The new Rocket Lake/Ryzen 5000 Omen desktop motherboards come with two USB-C on the rear. I wish they upgraded the front I/O to have one instead of two on the back, but I think they didn’t want to make a chassis slight tweak. They did a good design with that desktop visually though. It’s one of my favorite OEM desktops look wise.
1 Like
Yeah, after my own experiences with cases like the NZXT S340 and H510, I don’t really think I’ll ever go with a closed front case ever again.
The 25L and 30L do look nice, though.
1 Like
Well, from what has been said, it is what the government wants to clarify for us, it is what QUOTES MARKS does not show its most reasonable reason to understand its censorship, and worse if it is the government of California.
Forgive me if it seems that I have put on an aluminum cap, but the USA are excellent at keeping many secrets for their absurd ideologies.
I have a 1440p 144hz monitor, but I honestly just turn it off when I’m not using my computer.