The best high-end prebuilt PCs command premium prices, but that doesn't mean you can't find great deals that will still save you a lot of money. In many cases, you can get a prebuilt for less than the cost of building a comparable DIY system. For example, Dell is offering Alienware Aurora R16 GeForce RTX 4090 gaming PC for as low as $2,999.99. A standalone RTX 4090 GPU will run you $1,800 by itself, which means building your own DIY PC can easily cost more than $3,000. Although building your own PC certainly has its merits, a prebuilt is gaming-ready right out of the box without any assembly on your part and can give you peace of mind with an all-inclusive warranty.
Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4090 Gaming PC Deals
There are two configs that are discounted right now. The $2,999.99 model is equipped with an Intel Core i9-14900F CPU, GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, 32GB of DDR5-5200MHz RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. The $3,099.99 model upgrades the CPU to an unlocked i9-14900KF and double the SSD capacity. The 14th gen Intel Core i9-14900 is the most powerful consumer Intel CPU you can get right now. The chip is known to run pretty hot, but fortunately it's cooled by a robust 240mm all-in-one liquid cooler. The entire system is powered by an energy efficient 1000W 80 Plus Platinum power supply.
The RTX 4090 is likewise the most powerful GPU on the market. No other video card, either from Nvidia or from AMD, comes close. In his RTX 4090 review, Chris Coke writes, "The RTX 4090 may be huge and expensive, but holy smokes if it doesn’t blow the competition out of the water... Until the rest of the pack can catch up, between its impressive hardware specs and its DLSS 3 AI wizardry, even the $1,599 price doesn’t seem unreasonable for the unrivaled frame rates that this card can crank out." You'll be able to run any game in 4K with ultra settings and ray tracing enabled and still pump out high framerates, even the newest, most demanding titles like Black Myth: Wukong or Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.The 4090 is also the consumer card of choice for AI, thanks to its 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM.
A note on Alienware's newest "R16" desktop chassis
The R16 is Alienware's current 2024 desktop PC design. It's 40% smaller in volume compared to previous iterations. It features a simple yet proven airflow pattern; air is drawn in through the side intake vents over the GPU area and a 120mm fan at the front of the case, and exhausts by way of a 120mm rear fan and two 120mm top fans. A 240mm radiator for the all-in-one liquid cooling system is mounted to these top fans. Some configurations don't actually include the liquid cooling system, but we rarely include them in this roundup. That's because Alienware's liquid cooling solution is far superior to their stock air cooling and is easily worth the price premium.
Should You Wait for Black Friday?
In most cases, we would say that Black Friday has the best deals of the year. Dell, however, is quite the opposite. Historically, Black Friday hasn't always been the best time to buy an Alienware computer. The best time of year to score Dell deals are usually Memorial Day and during September and October, right after the back-to-school rush but about a month before actual Black Friday. Either way, the deals that are going on right now are quite good. Some of them are the best prices of the year (like the RTX 4070 Ti PC) and some are not.
For more options, check out the best Dell and Alienware gaming deals today.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
