The Worst Pre-Built We've Ever Reviewed: Alienware R13 $5000 Gaming PC Benchmarks

[Music] now we're doing a proper full review of the 5 000 alienware r13 if you've ever wondered how important thermals are exactly in a computer this is a perfect example of it because in this chart just look at it look what dell does to the 12900 kf they've effectively turned it into a 12700 kf so we're off to a great start because the alienware r13 has taken a 570 very good very high end cpu and turned it into one that's a 340 cpu still good but that's hugely wasteful so we'll be talking about that we'll also be talking about dell's cryotech cooling except um not that we'd know but there's there's there's no cryo anything in it it's just water let's get started before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly thermal grizzlies hydronaut and cryonot thermal paste are high performing thermal interfaces for use on cpus and gpus you can bring an old card back to peak performance by replacing it and doing preventative maintenance and thermal grizzlies hydrant is ideal for water cooling and air quote for new and old cards alike cryonot paste is one of the top performing pace for extreme overclocking with cpus and gpus and has been used in several world record scoring machines learn more at the link in the description below so we've shown in the recent past now with main gear with skytech with abs it is possible to buy a pre-built gaming computer that's actually good you don't have to diy obviously we encourage that that's what our channel is all about but if you're the type of person who really just wants to buy the computer be done with it or if you are the expert and your friends or your family are asking you what to buy and you don't want to become their tech support everyone who works here has been through that then a pre-built computer also makes sense our goal is to find one that doesn't suck this one does not meet that goal the alienware computer at five grand is offensively bad it is insane just it's actually incomprehensible i can't think of the words for it for how dell has managed to take such high-end parts as an rtx 30 90 and an i9 12900 kf those are the two core components in here and they have dunked on the performance of those two components just by building a computer poorly dell doesn't even make the silicon dell doesn't make the cpu it doesn't make the gpu all it has to do is build a computer correctly and have it function while at the end of it so the hard part has been done by other companies and dell's method of assembly which is to use very slow ddr5 4400 memory or ddr5 3600 yes that is actually a thing that is manufactured didn't know it went that low those are your two memory options they put a 120 mil closed loop liquid cooler on there that is shoved into an 80 millimeter mounting slot and stuffs behind three layers of metal plastic and glass or acrylic so we talked about all the mechanics of this in a separate teardown video it is fascinating how this was assembled genuinely this is a real compliment the mechanical engineering on this is masterful and brilliant and it is applied in the most inept asinine way possible but in this system alone there is a proprietary meaning unusable in any other circumstance except for dell's components another dell alienware r13 build there's a proprietary case cooler uh the because not only are the tubes oddly short but also it mounts to the case there is instead of using a back plate which is what intel uses there's a proprietary motherboard where the i o comes out the front that way if you ever have damage or a dead port you have to replace the entire motherboard and not just a pcb daughter board in the front panel and there's a proprietary power supply so up to four units because the power supply is not atx 12vo it's not quite the right size for that and the pin outs are different despite it also being a 10 pin the rest of the components fortunately can be salvaged that leaves you with the cpu the video card which is actually not bad by dell standards we tested it previously it did pretty well and then the ram is technically salvageable but not particularly good enough of that we need to prove why this deserves a little bit of exaggeration and hyperbole because the benchmarks and the objective data really back up the subjective conclusions on this one let's get started with some throttling numbers for performance first up is chromium code compile where we're using the chromium codebase and measuring the time required to compile it in minutes lower is better the normal 12900k takes 48.6 minutes to compile this code when stock with the 12700k which has fewer e cores and slower clocks taking 56 and a half minutes to complete the same compile as a reminder the kf and the k skus they're all the same other than the igp which is irrelevant the alienware r13 takes an embarrassing 56 minutes to compile the same code base with the same methodology so dell has chopped off 16 percent of its performance potential because of its own thermal and power limits dell has demoted its i9 12900 kf it sold us to the same class of performance as a 12700k in blender cycles the 12900k finishes the gm logo render in 9.4 minutes normally with the 12700k taking 11.5 minutes the alienware r13 required about 11 minutes for the same render meaning that dell is incinerating a possible extra 14 performance for nothing so much for the cryotech tm now this doesn't always happen in short tests like 7-zip compression the test can complete within the 56-second window and the results end up looking the same as a normal 12-900k in those instances so dell can have normal performance but only if your work or your game lasts under one minute we need to start with the horrible thermal solution for the hottest cpu and gpu on the market right now for desktop it advertises its new custom-made ultra-short-tubed closed-loop liquid cooler as quote the next step in the evolution of coolant calling it cryotech trademark and saying it quote offers gamers significant thermal advantages now not that we'd know but we're pretty sure that the word cryo doesn't just mean water mixed with propylene glycol not that we'd we'd know anyway dell goes on to brag about how it's cryotec tm cooler quote features a 120 by 120 by 30 millimeter heat exchanger and a pump that operates at 2800 rpm as if that's supposed to impress us quote the heat exchanger is 11 higher than what's available on our standard liquid cooling unit while the pump's duty cycle is six percent higher also compared to standard liquid cooling so here's what we have to say about all that the rpm number or at least the boasting of it being a little bit higher is irrelevant and the radiator is a standard size in fact it is the smallest mass-produced size on the market and yet dell has somehow gone in with the intent of trying to make it sound larger than it is in reality a 120 ml radiator is not special or large in any way and the 120 millimeter mounted uh fan is attached ultimately to an 80 millimeter hole which is also problematic as for the rpm number so pump rpm does impact performance a little bit especially in large liquid loops where the water has to move around quickly because it does start to heat up a little bit we've actually seen impacts there in this loop what they're doing is they're bragging about a six percent higher rpm that is within standard manufacturing variants for an ace attack liquid cooler which is what this is this is a rebranded aesthetic liquid cooler and their pump rpm manufacturing variants is plus or minus 10 so dell is claiming to be six percent higher okay now you move the plus or minus 10 maybe a little bit higher up the stack sure but it's still within the original variance functionally and even if at the high end you end up with an extra couple percent on the pump rpm it doesn't matter here with a full system workload the maximum cpu core temperature quickly spiked to 96 degrees celsius and was continuing to rise when del's a custom 56 second pl2 window ended and the cpu's power limit was reduced to 210 watts from the original 240 watts wow that's great cooling with the cryotec tm cooler only 96 degrees 4 degrees below extreme thermal throttling awesome but the default behavior for the 12 900k is actually infinite turbo except the r13's cooler is insufficient and cannot maintain the 12 900 k's official intel guidance and spec and so dell reduced the power limit from infinity which again is how it's supposed to be shipped to 56 seconds that is quite the reduction in time infinity is a very long time 56 seconds is not a very long time scientifically speaking the reported pl1 limit then dropped linearly from 210 watts down to 160 watts where it remained for the duration of the test the cpu is hard throttling and dropping clocks even with the revolutionary cryo attack tm cooler with a 2800 rpm pump and an 11 larger heat exchanger aka a radiator than what's on their standard liquid cooling don't want to know what's the standard one then so with the cpu heart throttling and dropping clocks it effectively reduces it a few classes down from the 12 900 kf you actually bought to something far cheaper and we'll look at those numbers in a moment the 160 watt number brought temperatures down to a steady state 87 degrees celsius which is still unacceptable especially seen as 160 watts is close to the power we'd expect to be pulled by an i7 11 700k one generation older and an entire step down certainly not 99 from the 12th jet dell basically pre-programmed power throttling for the cpu because it knew it would thermal throttle otherwise this liquid cooler is incapable of cooling the 12 900 kf at a sustained 241 watt power limit and also the 210 watt power limit basically the 160 watt one as well removing the front panel reduced the peak cpu temperature down to 94 degrees and steady state down to 77 from 87 previously the closed off case design is a major obstacle in addition to the undersized cpu cooler the fact that the cbs power limit has to be adjusted down to pretty close to 12 600 k is just outright embarrassing as you saw earlier in chromium code compile and and some other tests it ends up being pretty close to 12 700 k's performance still a good cpu but you're really overspending on it so let's see what all of this does for the frequency behavior the i-912 900k starts out at about 47.60 megahertz so the performance scores this is where it would stay if dell had cooled the system properly but instead it hard power throttles to keep thermals from running away the result is a fault 4 200 megahertz which is a 560 megahertz reduction just because they couldn't be bothered to cool the system properly and implemented their own custom power throttles that loss of frequency is huge and it demotes the i9 12900k to lower performance levels that we'll get to soon the e cores also drop falling from 3 900 megahertz to 3 300 megahertz that's another 600 megahertz reduction just like in the p course alienware has used its extraterrestrial technology to transmogrify the 12900k into basically the behaviors of something like an i7 this is all just unbelievably wasteful dell is putting these extremely high-end good expensive components into a system that underperforms it's said that some customers may not even realize that they bought high-end parts only to be throttle blocked anyway and dell does all of this talk these days about how environmentally friendly it is which would be awesome we are hugely in support of that we've given a lot of money to charities for e-waste because dell contributes to it so much and it's competitors but what we're seeing here is complete ignorance and dell contradicting itself where it's bringing down the performance of an otherwise high-end cpu which is wasteful now for the gpu the r13s case is the same basic aurora design that we saw with the r10 the square interior the case is tilted at an angle for aesthetic reasons creating wasted space at the corners and making the inside of the chassis small relative to the actual size of the system externally the gpu in particular has 1.5 centimeters of clearance for its fans at best this doesn't bode well for thermals it's going to be similar to running an aircool gpu smashed up against the glass the front panel has three layers of plexi plastic and metal in front of the front fans plus there's a large pcb housing leds and the power button yet there's no filtration gv thermals relied heavily on increased fan speeds to keep the temperatures down with the front panel on we saw a steady state temperature of 72 degrees celsius after an initial bump up to 74 degrees before the fans compensated it seems like dell's 30 90 keeps to a maximum 70 duty cycle one below 75 degrees celsius but as we'll see in a moment the fans are allowed to ramp much higher once that threshold is passed with the front panel off the initial temperature bump happened to hit 75 degrees through normal variants that slight difference triggered an exaggerated fan ramp up to 87 percent or 3600 rpm and a period of hysteresis before settling at about 70 at 71 degrees it's almost the exact same as the stock test but with some excursions above that speed the problem here isn't the fan ramp it's that the case is constructed in such a way that high fan speeds are necessary and therefore high noise to keep temperatures safe although the v bios should be programmed in a way ideally where there's a step somewhere between 70 and 87 speed to reduce how noisy and noticeable that ramp is as for noise the r13 is loud we can hear the pump noise constantly there's coil whine during gaming and the mechanical hard drive adds that mid 2000s gateway vibe here are some examples and the wine is mostly coming from the motherboard brm but this is the main problem this thing is loud in a lot of ways as for objective noise idle is about 31.5 dba and a noise floor of 26 but the r13 blasts to 49.7 dba peak to try and compensate for thermals with limited access to air and coolant it settles at about 45.5 after the boost expiration so this is just poor thermal and acoustic design gaming is short for this one just because testing a five thousand dollar pre-built against a bunch of fifteen hundred dollar p-belts is pointless it's obviously going to be better that's why we tested it versus a properly assembled 12-900 k and rtx 3090 using the stock guidance instead it's the same config it's just that we built it to the standard spec instead of the r13s in cyberpunk with our test settings at 1080p we saw the cpu frequency limitation in full effect in this cpu bound test you'll notice that average fps is about the same but the diy system pulls ahead in 0.1 lows this indicates better frame time consistency and pacing thanks to the frequency at 4k it's gpu bound and they run about the same for performance as we showed before dell gets credit for building an rtx 3090 that's actually okay that shows here so good job on that part dell now just do that for everything else please in rainbow six siege at 1080p the cpu bind illustrates the r13 falling behind allowing a five percent lead to the more standard approach we'll stop the gaming test here since we're not recommending the system on many grounds anyway but we wanted to give you a quick look as to this end of things for power consumption the r13 contains a cpu and a gpu that both have reputations for extremely high power consumption but also high performance that does however indicate that they are less efficient than their lower end counterparts starting with our extended blender test the immediate full system power draw was 394 watts well beyond the already inefficient 10700 f based aegis rs power drop 275 watts even with the significant reduction in the power limit following the boost period the r13 only came down to 292 watts average this is still higher than the peak power draw of any other system on this chart and that's again entirely because of the components not necessarily a bad thing to draw a lot of power for high-powered parts as long as the conversion to performance is at least somewhat efficient in terms of perf per watt based on what we saw in the torture test we would expect the full system power draw to level out at 260 watts over a long period of time gaming tests add the power hungry rtx 30 90 to the mix with the rainbow six siege testing averaging 546 watts that's a lot higher than the next entry on the charge especially given that level of performance that the skytech chronos offers for 350 watts cyberpunk was significantly worse with the r13 averaging 641 watts due to a shifting bottleneck in contrast the main gear vibe for example is a mid to high-end gaming system that pulls 352 watts on the same test it's also lower end though in terms of the gpu with the 360 ti all that said the r13's efficiency so the performance per watt consumed is overall poor relative to the performance offered compared to a properly built 30 90 plus 12 900k system as for peripherals the default option included a mouse and keyboard and opting out of both would have saved us a total of 10 bucks wow thanks those are quite the quality components that said we also don't think they're worth even ten dollars after having used them we'd recommend opting out you'll reduce the waste you'll probably just buy better components anyway especially if you're spending five grand on an alienware gaming pc alienware branded peripherals like their mechanical keyboards and headsets can also be added to the order as separate items they claim they offer a discount as well our one deviation from the default options was to opt out of dell's perennial scam the auto renewing subscription support fee they've gone back and forth on this feature it changed after our first alienware review and rant about the subscription warranty support and it changed between the time we placed our order for this pc and the time of the writing it will probably change once again by the time we publish the page layout was a nightmare when we ordered seriously watch as we scroll down past the easily comprehensible hardware options to the warranty and support section it should not take more than five seconds to figure out how to not pay for this as of this writing the 10 per month premium tier can no longer be selected and the cheapest option is a one-time payment for the premium tier the alienware product page only shows prices plus or minus relative to the sticker price so it's unclear whether the cheapest mandatory support tier is actually free or not and that's not a mistake this is intentionally confusing to trick you into buying an additional warranty you already have a warranty for buying the computer that's something they offer this is just extra time for bios and software we noticed that absolute tracking software was enabled by default in bios although it's also listed as deactivated the description checks every box you'd want for paranoia and even includes a tinfoil hat for example there's an option to pin a server on a regular basis there's tracking the system there's forcibly reinstalling the software from a module on the motherboard that's one of the more concerning ones maybe this is part of the premium plus service package that we opted out of and if so we are happy to have avoided it if you care about telemetry and you buy this computer at least disable all of this stuff if it's not already deactivated by default xmp was not applied but that's because the memory sent has no xmp there's still an option for it in bios so it should work fine on memory that does contain profiles if you buy it separately the memory was set to 4 400 mega transfers per second this is what dell advertised however the sticks themselves are rated for 4 800 so there's performance on the table here as for cpu overclocking oc lv1 was applied out of the box with no explanation at all of what that is setting the oc level to custom exposes some extremely basic controls over ratio and power limits no antivirus requested was the default option when we placed our order and this is actually awesome good job dell you did this one right there wasn't even a free trial of mcafee on the system just plain old windows defender which is what we want so good for dell for dropping av bloat seriously they should be encouraged for this because of this dell's bloatware rating isn't quite as bad as it could be there's still alienware command center alienware mobile connect my alienware registration and dell support assist all popping up notifications and creating backups that we didn't ask for but av is normally the largest contributor to performance loss and they've gotten rid of that one at least so that's it for the alienware r13 review let's recap a couple of quick things the biggest issue is the frequency dropping we'll put that back on the screen briefly the frequency drops as a result of a power limitation that dell has instituted in bios so this is not an intel thing intel official guidance on the cpu that is sold in this computer the i9 12900 kf it's the same as the k just it doesn't have an igp the cpu uh officially should infinitely turbo that means that the turbo boosting duration is forever and because of that the power consumption is high forever for as long as it's turbo boosting anyway so you're in the 240 241 watt range when it's turbo boosting and turbo boosting meaning that the frequency is boosting to one of the highest bins possible across however many cores you're using at that given interval and when you go in and you implement power limits so pl1pl2 usage at 56 seconds is what we observed for the first massive drop then there's another one a little later where it ends up at 160 watts ultimately what happens when you implement these power limits these hard power throttles is that technically speaking the cpu is not thermal throttling but that's a really tricky use really conniving way to implement the word technically here because yes it's not thermal throttling because you are power throttling it before it can thermal throttle and you're power throttling it because it will thermal throttle 96 degrees celsius is what this was running at when it was within the 56 second boosting window so within in less than one minute of full system load the cpu was almost at tj maxx which is the maximum junction temperature of the cpu before it begins to thermal throttle to protect itself from getting killed by runaway thermals so dell is triggering a power drop and that power drop is triggering a frequency drop and that frequency drop and we'll pop it up again is triggering a performance drop so again just to recap it in chromium we see it reduced to the level of a 12 700 k instead of a 12 900 k in something like 7-zip however which completes rather quickly in our testing scenario the performance is about the same as the fully unthrottled 12-900 k as it is on the dell version because the boosting doesn't really come into play because the test duration is simply not long enough so in any task where you are loading the cpu for more than a minute you're going to start seeing performance reductions and performance clawed away from you that you would have on basically any other computer including other pre-builds with the 12-900 k if they are built properly and if they are built in a way where they don't have to power throttle to circumvent thermal throttling so if you ever have anyone ask you how important is temperature really in a computer this is the video to send them because it's a fantastic educational example at dell's expense unfortunately for them of what really happens when you have built yourself into such a corner that you are forced to reduce the performance in order to keep it under control so that's pretty much the core issue is the performance we can complain all day about proprietary motherboard proprietary power supply proprietary case proprietary cooler and how silly it's built in general how it's brilliant mechanical engineering shoved into one of the most contrived computer builds we've ever seen but none of that really matters quite as much as the fact that you are paying close to six hundred dollars for a cpu which you are not really able to use you are only getting say 340 to 370 of value out of that cpu in the applications where it is throttling to a point of becoming an i7 instead of an i9 and you'll get value out of the i9 for 56 seconds so you know my question obviously to dell is why why would you do this to yourself because you're still putting the expensive stuff in there obviously the customer pays for it too so that sort of cancels out in terms of simple arithmetic there but that's basically how it works and yet you are not delivering on the performance capabilities that another company has built into their product that you are buying from them so dell doesn't even you're not you don't have to do the hard work here all you have to do is cool it and all that requires is pulling your head out of your ass for long enough to see that there are different ways to make a case than there were in the 90s now we talked to some people in the industry and our best idea for why dell might do all of this is that they simply and it's not just tooling they simply don't want to recertify a new case for emi or electromagnetic interference you have to pass certifications to sell in the u.s probably in the eu as well and emi is one of those certifications and one of the easiest ways to deal with it is to just have something that has already passed and continue to repackage it which is what's happening here you're bolting a bunch of plastic to something and probably the plastic helps with passing emi testing as well so that's the best idea we have for why they would do this that is not it's relevant to the consumer though i don't care what the manufacturer's viewpoint is if the product is beaten by all of its competitors it just doesn't matter what dell how it defends these choices because clearly competitors do a better job so we'd recommend looking at main gear if you are interested in a pre-built computer we just reviewed one of theirs it overall was actually pretty good we would generally recommend looking at skytech and abs abs is owned by newegg so keep that in mind some some potential issues there but alienware is not on our list one final note here too uh i've sent an email to dell's pr team and said hey we can fly out there and talk with you all they wanted to talk to us about their dell cam because they said we got it wrong they said it's not proprietary technically in that sense they are correct it's not proprietary just that dell is making a technology that would rely on its competitors implementing and adopting in order for it to be functionally non-proprietary and normally it doesn't go that way and only the competitors don't work with you uh on your competing technology because they don't want that in their system but anyway we'd be happy to dell we'd be happy to talk to you about cam on camera and you can correct us all you want but i would like to talk about this so it's fair trade you could give your story on why you think cam is the future and why you think your concept laptops that are modular which are clearly a first in the market are good for the environment and then i can ask you about how this is good for the environment with all the plastic the proprie actually proprietary parts and the irreplaceable parts i'd be happy to have that conversation i'm happy to be proven wrong let's sit down and do it i can fly out in two weeks check your email all right that's it for this one thanks for watching don't buy this trash heap buy something else instead subscribe for more go to patreon.com gamersnexus to help us out and buying things like this so we can keep giving you reviews we have another five thousand dollar computer coming in i think it's pretty good i hope so uh also you can go to store.gamersaccess.com to grab one of our modmats our toolkits or our coaster packs or shirts and we'll see you all next time

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 906,241

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, alienware r13 review, alienware r13 benchmarks, alienware r13 $5000 computer, alienware worth it, is alienware any good, best prebuilt gaming pcs, best gaming pcs 2022

Id: UnvxSkqJ8ic

Length: 29min 18sec (1758 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Dinklecorn]

GN had to roast this PC because Dell configured the power limits so it wouldn't roast itself.

[u/zeronic]

96C on the CPU during the initial 56 second turbo window(which dell modified from stock infinite,) holy moly. They've effectively used shit alchemy to transmute an i9-12900KF into an i7-12700K at best.

The saddest part about the pre-built industry is that most people will just never even notice they're being outright scammed. Dell has always been the worst for this.

The warranty thing is also pretty shitty. At best if you can decipher how to not subscribe it's a mandatory $10 charge for effectively nothing since it probably has a baseline one anyways.

[u/NKG_and_Sons]

Weirdly enough, it's "functional" enough that it doesn't even strike me as all that bad, initially.

My pre-build quality expectations are so low that "It needlessly loses like 20% CPU performance and the entire thing is loud as shit?" doesn't even feel scandalous.

When, of course, it is just that given that we're talking about a $5000 rig. Paying that much for throttled and noisy components is disastrous. I'm not even particularly against pre-builds and making a huge profit on the more expensive models. But the baseline should be the system running conventionally well.

Appropriate cooling. How about that?

[u/gotamd]

It’s so sad to see what Alienware is now. Back in the 90s, well before the Dell acquisition, they used standard, high quality components that were thoughtfully selected and assembled. I would have loved one back then.

[u/wallonthefloor]

maybe this should be posted in the r/alienware sub

[u/a12223344556677]

A rather interesting observation is how despite the poor CPU cooling solution, gaming performance isn't *that* worse compared to when using a proper cooler. Perhaps for bursty workloads like gaming you can get away with a cooler that otherwise would be insufficient for prolonged full load scenarios without much performance penalty.

[u/Stark_Athlon]

Watching this video baffles me, wouldn't it be cheaper to just ask some other manufacturer to make a case for them rather than spend all that effort in engineering? Why the hell is an i9 using a 120mm radiator? What the fuck is going on here??

[u/Kyanche]

I'm left wondering what the heck they were thinking. If they sold the R13's case separately they'd probably have to sell it for at least $400-500 to make a profit, given how much money was spent on R&D of that thing.

It's like The Homer of computer cases. So many brackets and springs and mechanical assemblies.

[u/nstern2]

Dell has had these plastic monstrosities since the 90s. Even their desktop server line of machines is full of plastic bullshit and not in the typical way that servers are designed. You would have thought they would have changed the design at some point when they realized how shit they were. Meanwhile I picked up an HP pavilon gaming desktop on the cheap and while it is still rather shit compared to a DIY machine, all the parts can be case swapped with ease and it uses a traditional sized PSU.