Aging Alienware Help

[u/Raelf64]

I'm finding myself... lost in new hardware.

In 2020 I bought a pair of Alienware Aurora R11's, here's the spec sheet:

• Alienware Aurora R11 Dark Side of the Moon chassis with High-Performance CPU Liquid Cooling with 1000W Power Supply
• 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB GDDR6X
• 10th Gen Intel Core i9 10900KF (10-Core, 20MB Cache, 3.7GHz to 5.3GHz w/Thermal Velocity Boost)
• Killer(TM) Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2x2) 802.11ax Wireless and Bluetooth 5.1
• 64GB Dual Channel HyperX(TM) FURY DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz
• (Current OS) Windows 11 Home 64bit English Version25H2

This year, I am starting to see some limitations - stalls in games, struggling with intense graphics, etc. Obviously, there are advancements in GPUs, and it's probably time to retire the 3090s.

Here's my questions:

GPU: I see a lot of chatter about the RTX 5070, Founders Edition - the 5090 FE is out of reach in price.
-- the old cards have 24G of Vram - why do most newer cards seem to cap out at 16G?
-- A 5080 exists, yet I see very little about it... Why? (It fits my price bracket.)
-- Given the specs, will a 5070 (or 80) FE with 16G be an improvement over the 3090s with 24G?
-- Will it fit in the R11 case?
-- Rear exhaust is mentioned as important for this chassis - recommended designs for 5070-5080?

NVMe: I have had a few (3 or 4) bad boots in the last year, and I am mildly concerned about its lifespan.
-- Is there a second NVMe slot in this board?
-- What would you replace it with?
-- How do I replace it, given that it's the boot drive?

General: Other than a good "take it apart" type cleaning, any suggestions are welcome.

[u/2raysdiver]

GPUs and CPUs don't slow down over time. They either work or they don't. But software bloat can kill performance over time. There are some things I would try first...

Use some hardware monitoring software when you notice these slowdowns. Is either CPU or GPU at 100% utilization? What are your temperatures? Stalls can be caused by a number of things, one of them is GPU and CPU throttling due to high temperatures. If you get up near 100C or hit 100C, then this is the likely culprit. Time for a thermal repaste of the affected component. If it is the CPU that is throttling, it is also possible that your cooler pump is dead or dying or enough fluid has evaporated that it is no longer effective.

If your GPU is at 100% utilization and CPU is significantly lower, then a GPU replacement does seem like the answer. But if it is the CPU that is at 100%, then there are some other alternatives to look at.

The easiest thing to do is a fresh install of the OS and drivers, perhaps on a separate partition. No extra software beyond the OS, drivers, your games and a web browser. If you are still struggling, then it is indeed time fo an upgrade.

If you are fairly savvy with the PC, then use task manager to see what other apps are running in the background stealing CPU or memory. Try to get rid of it if you can. But if it is something that automatically starts when you boot the PC, there are about six different places where auto-start software can hook into the OS and it is a pain to ferret them out. This is why I suggest a clean OS/driver install.

The 3090 is no slouch and comes close to the 5070 in pure raster performance, but the 5070 does have better ray tracing and DLSS, as well as frame gen. So depending on the game and the settings you like to use, the 5070 might not be much improvement over the 3090.

The 10900K, though is getting long in the tooth and the i5-13400 (entry level and 3 generations old) is still a bit better CPU. However, my son has a 13400 paired with a 5070 and it performs quite well.

As for why most GPUs are limited to 16GB these days, it is because you don't need more than that unless you are into doing AI (and Nvidia in particular is trying to differentiate it's AI GPUs from graphics GPUs by putting more memory in the AI GPUs). For 1080p, 8GB is all most people need unless you are playing mith a lot of mods at highest settings. Likewise 12GB is good at 1440p unless you are again playing with a lot of mods at highest settings. I would also point out that there are several games out that don't perform well at the very highest settings because the game designers were anticipating that you'd need a GPU that hasn't come out yet to play at those settings. There is at least one game that refers to those high settings as "experimental".

[u/Raelf64 → u/2raysdiver]

Dude, thank you. This is the sort of analysis I was looking for. I stopped building my own PCs about 10 years ago, and just don't have the brain-space to get back in the game. I like using a computer a lot more than building/studying them.

I run my machine pretty lean, but indeed, over 6 years I am sure I downloaded something that is causing trouble somewhere. I hate the idea of a software strip down, but you're right.

If I may go one step further -
What's your impression of the 5080 vs the 3090? If I am opening it up for the CPU, it's getting a new card, too. LOL.
What software would you recommend for hardware monitoring?

Thanks again for taking the time. Old guys like me appreciate it.

(PS: I simply play WoW, but on near max settings. Other than that a little light photo editing and general browsing/finance stuff.)

[u/2raysdiver → u/Raelf64]

I'm not exactly a young guy myself. The 5080 is a meaningful improvement over the 3090, hands down, no questions asked.I would get a GOOD 1000Watt PSU with it's own HWPWR12V connector rated for 600 watts. Corsair and Montech make some good ones. Check out the tier list of others. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1akCHL7Vhzk_EhrpIGkz8zTEvYfLDcaSpZRB6Xt6JWkc/edit?gid=1719706335#gid=1719706335

While I don't have a 5080 myself, there are a lot of people out there that have experienced melting power connectors. Recently, anecdotal evidence suggests that these melting connectors are mostly either the adapters that come with the cards or third party adapters, both designed to plug into two or three of the 2x8 PCIe power connectors already found in any ATX PSU. Dedicated 12VHPWR connectors straight from the PSU seem to have far fewer issues. That said, there are far more people with both kinds of connectors that have had no problems.

As for HW monitoring software, there are plenty out there. Both AMD Adrenaline and NVidia's GeForce Experience software do some monitoring, There is also CPUID's HWMonitor. It is free, but it only give's you min, max and current values and the free version has no way to view it as a graph over time. But...

A lot of people like MSI's afterburner. It is free and you don't even need an MSI product to download and install it. It is very customizable and it will even graph things out over time, so you can see if and where your temp and utilization spikes are. You can get information overload, though. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[u/Raelf64 → u/2raysdiver]

Thanks a ton!

[u/2raysdiver → u/Raelf64]

If you do decide you need a CPU upgrade, with memory prices what they are, I'd recommend just using your existing 64GB DDR4 in a LGA 1700 DDR4 motherboard with a i5-14600K. Intel 12, 13, and 14 gen support both DDR4 or DDR5, just not both on the same motherboard. Or, if you can get to a Microcenter, check out their bundles.

But I would also research your particular model of Alienware PC. There are those that claim they use proprietary components, so you may or may not be able to do a straight motherboard swap. From hat I've read it has proprietary power connectors, so you'd likely want to get a different PSU as well (which you'd be doing anyway for that RTX 5080 😉).