Dell's Presidents Day sale is still going on, with a large number of gaming desktops and laptops on sale today. Among the many Alienware configurations, this mid-tier Aurora R8 gaming desktop stood out the most to us when we compared its sale price to its specs: $949.99 is just about the sweet spot for a DIY desktop, but the cost Instead of an AMD processor and graphics card to keep it under $1,000, this product uses an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU.

This Alienware Aurora R8 has an Intel Core i5-9400 (6 core/12 threads, up to 4.1 GHz), GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB GDDR6, 16GB dual channel DDR4 2666MHz RAM, 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD is included; a 1TB SSD is preferred, but this can be upgraded later or with Dell's dual-drive option at no extra charge.

However, if you want to keep the cost down to $949.99, you can lower the graphics card to a GTX 1660 and increase the storage capacity to a 512GB SSD primary drive and a 1TB 7200RPM HDD secondary drive. the GTX 1660 Ti is a GTX 1660 and is about 18-20% faster than the GTX 1660, so it's up to you to decide if GPU speed or storage capacity is more important to you. Either choice makes for a great gaming desktop.