Alienware Area-51m Review by Ultra Male

Specifications:

Alienware Area-51m Dark Side of the Moon

CPU: Intel 9th Gen Core i9-9900K 8 Core, 16 Thread, 16MB Cache, Processor, 3.6 - 5.0 GHz
Thermal Paste: Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut
Memory: Samsung M471A4G43MB1 128GB 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM (4x32GB)
GPU: nVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 w/ 8GB GDDR6
Sound: Realtek ALC3282 Audio
Headset: Alienware Wireless Gaming Headset AW988
Screen: LG 173WFG 17.3" FHD 144Hz IPS Display w/ G-SYNC + Tobii eye-tracking technology
Wireless: Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650x
Storage: 2x 2TB Samsung 960 PRO [RAID 0] + 4TB Samsung 860 EVO + 2TB Samsung Portable SSD T5
Keyboard: Alienware TactX keyboard with per-key AlienFX lighting, anti-ghosting
Mouse: Alienware Elite Gaming Mouse AW959
Battery: 90 WHr
Power: 180W + 330W (510W Total) AC Power Adapters
Extra(s): Alienware Graphics Amp, Razer Manticor Mouse Pad
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Warranty: 4 Year Next Business Day On-Site Warranty

Re-seller: Sharaf DG in Dubai Deira City Center
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Benchmarks:

Cinebench



wPrime



3DMark11 - CPU 5GHz - GPU 160Core-200Mem



Fire Strike - STOCK



Fire Strike - CPU 5GHz - GPU 160Core-200Mem



Port Royal - CPU 5GHz - GPU 160Core-200Mem



Time Spy - CPU 5GHz - GPU 160Core-200Mem



PCMARK10 - CPU 5GHz - GPU 160Core-200Mem




Temps after a 20 minute game play session in FIFA 19



AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark:



AS SSD Benchmark:



CrystalDiskMark:



Windows Experience Index:

 

Temps look fine for 5GHz all cores on stock Colgate and unusually high ambient temps as well.
Is it better machine than m15 or worse?

 

What are all your overclock & unvolt settings/apps for those scores?

 

What's the use case

What's better: an orange or a watermelon?

 

Only using the Alienware Command Center to overclock

 

Damn 5GHz at 1.1V. You got a lottery.
I can't even make my Jokebook HQ work at 3.1/3.5GHz at 0.9V, it uses 1.1V.

 

SSD Benchmarks added to the OP

 

What’s up with that 4K speed?

 

That's a good score for a drive that is not using WriteBack Cache. The Dell IRST Driver has not the support for this It doesn't install the real IRST app but install the Microsoft Store app that is buggy as heck.......

Here's what happens when I try to access the Performance section:

 

Yeah, DELL prefer do it this way. Weird use of apps for everything. Sad it will hamper the 4K scores. FYI. I haven’t seen notebooks from Dell with proper/high ssd performance. Whatever ssd brand you put in.

 

Grab the generic Intel IRST UWD driver, it gave a sizeable boost in writes on HDD/SSD. Response time is great too!

 

CPU temps of 75-84 degrees Celsius with the i9 9900K during gaming seems reasonable. I was getting crazy hot temps of 100 C and over on the new Alienware Area-51M system I received on Friday. No idea why it was getting so hot during a 20 minute gameplay session of Battlefield V set to ultra settings, and with ray tracing features enabled. I had the fans on “performance’ mode too. Sent it back to my reseller just yesterday, and hoping to receive a replacement unit by next week sometime.

It could have been that mine hardly any thermal paste on the chip, or just received a bad thermal paste job from the factory. All sorts of possibilities. I actually tried to open the thing up, to reapply the thermal paste myself, but couldn’t manage to even get to the damn heatsink. Shortly after I had sent the laptop back, I realised I had missed two screws on the rear of the system that I hadn’t removed, which was why I was struggling to remove the rear exhaust cover of the chassis. It should simply slide off with a quick tug.

If I happen to experience any CPU temperature issues with the new unit I receive, I may just play around a bit with the voltages, or change the stock thermal paste to Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.

 

That is it, really nice test! Contains everything what is important, I'm especially happy 3DMark11 score included too.

 

New record AS SSD Benchmark score with the new IRST v17.2.6.1027

No Caching involved even, just stock settings



@tilleroftheearth

 

Hmm, that RAID0 benchmark result looks low? This is what I get on a single 970 EVO Plus
in my m15, stock settings:

 

That is insane man! Compared to my previous results my above benchmark is a big improvement but that 970 EVO PLUS is killing it! superb 4K Read/Write speeds!

You aren't using any caching software like RAPID or whatnot right?

 

Like I said, standard settings. Now that you mentioned, I tried disabling write cache flushing - no difference to speak of.

My point is: are these RAID0 numbers what we would expect? Is the sequential single drive performance of the 960 Pro 2TB really just 1350 / 1200?

 

Yeah, so Samsung claims 3500 / 2100 for the 860 Pro, so unless there is a driver/hardware issue it would be safe to conclude that a single modern SSD maxes out the NVME interface and there is no point in putting 2 in RAID0 hoping to gain sequential performance.

 

Good score w/o any write cache involved.
What's the drive health considering that the drive has taken 80TB of writes in its lifetime!

 

the older one (almost 1.5 years old) is 99% and the 2nd 960 PRO which I bought 8 months later is @ 100%

 

Hmmm very good....
Does 850 EVO drive health behave oddly? I just wrote 2TB and Used Cell percentage is already 7 while my PM951 has written 20TB and still shows 4% cell used with drive health 100%. I just can't interpret Samsung SMART values. Different brands use different methods to calculate health.

 

Could you post results from Aida64 Cashe & Memory benchmark? Thanks

 

please remind me again tomorrow I'm in bed now

 

Here is the results from bro @Darkhan's Area-51m

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-owners-lounge.826831/page-1189#post-10917043

 

Here is mine. but how come his North Bridge Clock is much lower than mine and we have the same overclock even @ 50x?

 

Depends probaly how he have put power plans. The Cpu/mem info in Aida benchmark test will be added once you start the benchmarks. Could be the lowest clock frecuency on one core was very low (not all cores is taxed).

I use max performance power plans. + max performance settings in bios. And the info will be correct.

 

You are correct my friend.
Changed Power Plan for this one.

 

Here's my WEI:

 

And here is your older from your MSI Jokebook. So don't take this Windows Experience Index test too seriously, bruh. Same also if you run the OpenGL graphics test in Cinebench R15. As you know... The old 980M crushed the newer and much faster 1080 in OpenGL

Spent som time with my ram. Stock ram speed is 2133MHz ~2800MHz.

 

Nice benchmarks. Can you please share your wPrime 1024M, Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R11.5 results as well? With both stock clocks and your daily driver overclock would be nice. 3DMark Vantage would also be nice to show off your 9900K, as it is a pretty CPU intensive workload.

Thanks, bruh.

 

With no Software Installed, just drivers:




After everything was installed:

 

Is this Stock clocks? Or your 5.0GHz overclock? What have you installed that eat up all the performance?

This is with stock clocks and with tasks and Antivirus running in the background while testing.


Cinebench R15 and Wprime 32M - stock clocks