Dell Alienware Aurora ACT1250 Black 2025

Great CPU, solid GPU, but the port situation is a joke. Buy it for the Core Ultra 7, just don't expect to plug much into it.

The CPU is the star here. That Core Ultra 7 265F is a 20-core beast that lands in the 87th percentile, so it'll chew through video edits, multitasking, and CPU-heavy games without breaking a sweat. The RTX 5060 Ti with 8GB of VRAM is a solid mid-range card, sitting at the 76th percentile. It'll handle 1440p gaming fine, including ray tracing at reasonable settings. But 8GB of VRAM is starting to feel tight for newer titles at higher resolutions. The 32GB of DDR5 is right where you want to be for a gaming PC in this class. Storage is the weak link in the core specs, just 1TB and only 58th percentile. You'll be deleting games to make room sooner than you'd like.

The HP OMEN GT22-3080 and Lenovo Legion Tower 5a are the two most direct competitors here. The OMEN typically offers better port selection and similar gaming performance, while the Legion Tower 5a often comes with more storage options at a similar price point. The Apple Mac Studio M4 Max is a different beast entirely, way more powerful for creative work but useless for PC gaming. The ASUS ROG GM700 is another solid alternative if you want more connectivity. The Aurora's CPU is a genuine advantage over most competitors, but the port situation is a real handicap that HP and Lenovo don't share.

We can't see a price on this thing, which makes value hard to judge. The specs suggest it should land somewhere in the mid-range prebuilt territory, but without a number we're flying blind. If it's priced competitively against the HP OMEN GT22-3080 or Lenovo Legion Tower 5a, it's worth a look. If it's creeping toward premium pricing, the limited ports and 1TB storage make it a tougher sell.

The Alienware Aurora ACT1250 is a solid mid-tower gaming rig that gets the core stuff right. You're looking at an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F with 20 cores, 32GB of DDR5, and an RTX 5060 Ti. That's a genuinely strong combo for 1440p gaming and everyday creative work. The CPU sits in the 87th percentile for this category, which means it's one of the better chips you can get in a prebuilt right now. But the port situation is rough, dead last territory at the 6th percentile. If you need lots of USB connections, this thing will frustrate you fast.

If you need lots of USB ports for peripherals, external drives, or streaming gear, this isn't the machine for you. The port selection is one of the worst we've seen in this category. Go grab an HP OMEN GT22-3080 or ASUS ROG GM700 instead, they'll give you the connectivity you need without dongles and hubs cluttering your desk.

The Alienware Aurora ACT1250 is a strong gaming PC with a genuinely excellent CPU and a capable GPU. It'll handle 1440p gaming and creative work without complaint. But the port selection is a serious flaw, and 1TB of storage feels stingy for a machine in this class. If you can live with limited connectivity and don't mind adding external storage later, this is a solid buy. If you need more ports or more storage out of the box, look at the HP OMEN or Lenovo Legion instead.