For a long time, RTX 3080 gaming PCs were hard to come by. In particular, they were difficult to obtain at near bargain prices. But that has now changed, as retailers are selling their inventory of PCs with previous generation parts at more reasonable prices.

This Alienware PC is a good example of such price reductions. We doubt that Alienware would have sold this PC for the MSRP of $2,449, and we would not have recommended it at that price, but this PC is now a new sale price of $1,500 in the Dell store (open in new tab), making it a more attractive offer.

For this price, you can get AMD's excellent Ryzen 5000 series 8-core CPU, the Ryzen 7 5800X (opens in new tab). This is the same chip I have in my home PC and is a real all-around performer. Not only is it a powerhouse for CPU-intensive tasks like video editing and Blender, but it doesn't slow down high-end GPUs. While there are certainly faster CPUs available today, we still feel it is a good fit for this build. [This is because it's paired with Nvidia's RTX 3080 10GB (opens in new tab). Anyway, until the original price doubles; this card, released in 2020 as a $699 card, will account for nearly half the price of this PC build, and even though there are faster cards available in the RTX 40 series, this card is still blatantly overpriced in most places This does not take into account the fact that this card is still blatantly overpriced in most places.

An older card but still very good, the RTX 3080 10GB is great for 4K gaming and high refresh 1440p and supports most of Nvidia's DLSS upscaling features, but does not work particularly well with shiny new frame generation tools ...

Nvidia considers the RTX 3080 10GB to be the current card in that it has yet to release a replacement in the same price range; the $1,200 RTX 4080 (open in new tab) is certainly not it; wait for Nvidia's RTX 4070, and when it comes out it is definitely worth considering if you can afford a PC built around it. The RTX 4070 is rumored to be available soon, but we don't yet know exactly what Nvidia will charge for a mid-range GPU or what retailers will charge for an RTX 4070 gaming PC. At the very least, it is likely that the RTX 4070 will perform well against the RTX 30 series when it arrives.

You will have to make a decision based on whether you really want the PC at that moment. Another thing to consider is that this is an Alienware PC and non-standard parts will be used in places. The first AMD machines used off-the-shelf parts, but that has changed now and is tied to a custom motherboard design and a PSU in a non-standard form factor. If you want to upgrade in the future, both are a hassle. Instead, the price includes one year of Dell premium support.

My colleague Chris reviewed the Alienware Aurora R14 (opens in new tab) last July. He noted that it was easy to set up and performed well, but that his particular model was overpriced and too noisy. Keep in mind that that build had a more radical CPU than this one, but the GPU was the same model, so it may not be the quietest PC ever.

As for other specs, this machine has 16 GB of memory running at 3,200 MHz.