I’ve got one of the best gaming desktops you can buy — but it can’t compete with this amazing Black Friday PC deal

(Image credit: Future)

I own the most powerful gaming PCs ‘round these parts here at Tom’s Guide, but even my mega rig can’t compare with this monster Dell is selling in an epic Black Friday deal.

Right now, the Alienware Aurora R15 Gaming Desktop is on sale for $3,339 at Dell. That’s a massive $1,100 saving compared to its usual $4,499 price. Only the most avid of PC gamers are going to be comfortable splurging over three grand on a beast of a desktop like the Aurora R15. But hey, if you can afford it, that colossal savings looks ultra attractive.

Alienware Aurora R15 Gaming Desktop: was @4,499 now @3,339 @Dell
$1,100 OFF! To do proper justice to this titan of a gaming PC, you really need to treat yourself to one of the best Black Friday monitor deals. With its RTX 4090 GPU and 13th Gen Intel Core i9 13900KF, this is pretty much as formidable as high-end gaming components get. This is a rig that demands a brilliant 4K/120Hz display to get the most out of it. Considering that graphics card alone usually retails for $1,500, this spectacular $1,100 Black Friday discount means you're basically only paying $400 for the best GPU on the planet. Not too shabby, huh?

So what do you get for an outlay that could easily buy you one of the best Black Friday OLED TV deals? The most cutting edge of components. That’s what.

We gave this monstrous machine an Editor’s Choice award in our glowing Alienware Aurora R15 review. My colleague Alex Wawro described the R15 as “an excellent gaming PC that improves upon its predecessors in a few key ways, packing the most powerful components you can afford in an attractive, easy-to-open chassis that stays cool under pressure.”

The specific build of the Aurora R15 Dell has massively discounted for Black Friday houses a 13th Gen 24-core Intel i9 13900KF inside its predictably attractive Alienware case — that’s one of the best gaming CPUs on the market. The 12th Gen Core i5-12600K that lies at the heart of my rig simply can’t compete with such processing grunt.

The ultra high-end rig also packs in 64GB of DDR5 RAM and a colossal 4TB NVMe SSD, giving you all the blistering storage you could ever want as you amass an ever escalating Pile of Shame of the best Steam games.

To top it all off, there’s an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU sitting pride of place in this beautiful PC"

And to top it all off, there’s an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU sitting pride of place in this beauty (because of course there is). That’s a big deal in itself, because Black Friday deals on this graphics card are extremely tough to find.

While my gaming PC also contains the most powerful consumer GPU in the world, the R15’s CPU and RAM easily outgun my own machine. To keep these demanding components juiced up, this desktop packs in a Lunar Light 1350W PSU. There’s also an Alienware Cryo-tech Edition liquid CPU cooler to keep your temps down, which you can admire thanks to the Aurora’s glass side panel.

Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are the two current poster children for flaunting the most graphically intense tech, like full path tracing features in the case of the latter. With more and more games embracing the demanding Unreal Engine 5 — featuring advanced Nanite and Lumen tech to create more detailed, realistically lit virtual environments — the components housed in this R15 may not seem like overkill for much longer.

So yes, the Alienware Aurora R15 has given me serious PC envy. And I can honestly say it’s been a looooong time since I felt that. If you class yourself as the hardest of the hardcore PC gaming enthusiasts, this is one Black Friday deal you should definitely consider… just don’t sell your spleen trying to fund it.

And if this beastly desktop is out of your price bracket this sales season, make sure to check out the best Black Friday gaming laptop deals.

Dave is a computing editor at Tom’s Guide and covers everything from cutting edge laptops to ultrawide monitors. When he’s not worrying about dead pixels, Dave enjoys regularly rebuilding his PC for absolutely no reason at all. In a previous life, he worked as a video game journalist for 15 years, with bylines across GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and TechRadar. Despite owning a graphics card that costs roughly the same as your average used car, he still enjoys gaming on the go and is regularly glued to his Switch. Away from tech, most of Dave’s time is taken up by walking his husky, buying new TVs at an embarrassing rate and obsessing over his beloved Arsenal.