If you've been wondering where and how to buy an RTX 3080, one strategy is to buy a prebuilt desktop that comes with the card inside. Dell currently has configurations of the Alienware Aurora R11 with RTX 3080 on sale and set to ship within two weeks or even sooner.
Given the popularity of the RTX 3080 card and the amount of scalping going on, you wouldn't expect any kind of discount on a PC powered by one. However, in one of the best Prime Day gaming PC deals around, Dell has the Aurora R11 wirth RTX starting at $1910, a full $90 off its MSRP.
Given the obvious RTX 3080 stock issues, you might think you'd be waiting a month or more to get a machine, but according to Dell.com when we checked, the Aurora R11 would arrive on October 30th if you ordered it today. And, if you pay extra for expedited shipping, you could get it as soon as October 20th.
Unfortunately, the $1910 configuration doesn't give you the best specs as most of that money goes toward the graphics card. You get a Core i7-10700F CPU that's not overclockable and just 8GB of RAM with a 1TB hard drive rather than an SSD.
The good news is that you can pay extra for upgrades. We strongly recommend spending at least another $98 to move up to 16GB of RAM and another $176 to switch to a 1TB SSD. Of course, you can go up even higher on the RAM or upgrade to a better processor.
But rather than custom configuring your R11, you could go with the next level up. The $2,381 configuration has 16GB of RAM, an SSD + hard drive and an overclockable Core i7-10700KF.
If you want to go further, we recommend upgrading to 32GB of DDR4 3200 RAM for an additional $196 and moving to a single 1TB M.2 boot drive for another $49. The total price grows to $2626.
If money is no object, Dell also has an RTX 3090 configuration of Alienware Aurora R11 for $3576, reduced from $3649. This configuration comes with a Core i9-10900F CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD plus 1TB hard drive.
If you're not looking for a desktop with an RTX 3080 or 3090 inside, you can get the Alienware Aurora R11 with older cards such as the RTX 2060 or GTX 1650 with prices starting at $862. Or you can check out our list of best Prime day gaming PC deals to see other models.
