Given the extreme shortage of PC components right now, buying a pre-built system may be the only way to get a new Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU. I know I have been waiting a long time to see how this Radeon RX 6800 XT stacks up against the recently acquired GeForce RTX 3080 system.

The review system we obtained for review features new AMD hardware. The core consists of a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB of HyperX DDR4 memory, a 1TB NVMe SSD and a 2TB hard drive, with a Radeon RX 6800 XT handling graphics. Priced at just over $2,600, there are a variety of Ryzen-based configurations available, including an RTX 3070 for an additional $100 and an RTX 2080 Ti for $200. If you want an Nvidia GPU, you have several choices, starting at $1,100 and ranging up to $4,500.

Whenever you get an Aurora system for review, you must take time to bask in the ridiculous glory of its case design. Despite the noise and cooling concerns, I'm a big fan of this case. The build features a color scheme that Alienware calls "Dark Side of the Moon," and the black and front panel RGB light rings fit in well with the ambiance of my desk. At least, it's much better than the recently arrived desktops that aggressively use RGB.

I'm also a sucker for lots of USB ports. This is great for people who are streamers or who often connect everything they own to their PCs. As I said before, the rectangular space engine look is pretty much "love it or hate it". However, I think the black is much easier on the eyes than the Lunar White.

The system is loud and distracting while gaming, a complaint I had a few weeks ago when using the same case with the Intel/Nvidia Alienware Aurora R11. the Aurora case's two-fan cooling solution no longer seems to work well. the Aurora's two-fan cooling solution no longer seems to work well. The Aurora case's two-fan cooling solution no longer seems to be working well. It is time for Alienware to redesign the case for this new generation of AMD and Nvidia GPUs to achieve better quietness and heat dissipation. Tool-less access is one of my favorite aspects of the Aurora case. All you have to do is remove one screw, and then you can pull the PSU out with the swing arm to gain full access to the system interior.

The dynamic duo of the Ryzen 7 5800X CPU and the RX 6800XT is a big hit on this Big Navi desktop; the RX 6800XT is a worthy challenge to the low-cost RTX 3080. In our tests, AMD's offerings equal (and in some cases exceed) the RTX 3080 in terms of 4K gaming performance, but fall a bit short when it comes to ray tracing.

In our new benchmark protocol, the Ryzen Edition Aurora recorded over 100 fps in Hitman 3 and 70 fps in Horizon Zero Dawn at 4K on the highest graphics settings, while games like Metro Exodus and Control Games that support ray tracing, performance was particularly poor at 4K, ranging from 20 to 30 fps depending on the on-screen action. Thus, the RX 6800XT is an excellent 4K gaming GPU, but not an excellent 4K ray tracing GPU. Having seen how effective DLSS has been on Nvidia cards, the lack of a DLSS equivalent is a sore spot for the Radeon RX 6800 XT, and when FidelityFX supersampling is finally included, in some of the more demanding games this year We will have to see how effective it is.

The Ryzen 7 5800X handled our productivity benchmarks with relative ease, and while a bit more expensive than Intel's chips, the 5800X is a great processor for handling rendering and CPU-intensive games like Total War and the surprisingly physics-heavy Hitman 3. processor. It should be noted that these scores were achieved without overclocking. Overclocking can be done via the Alienware Command Center app.

Alienware's Ryzen Edition R10 is a powerful AMD system that can handle 4K gaming. It's expensive for an all-AMD machine, but it's considerably less expensive than Alienware's premium GeForce RTX 3090 build, yet the performance is nearly as good. And that's nothing surprising. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, these complete builds are also the best bet for getting ultra-rare products like the AMD CPU/GPU combo.

If you don't mind losing ray tracing, the Ryzen Edition R10 remains a high-end gaming desktop with great graphics performance.