Alienware m15 R3 or Alienware Area 51-M R1?

hey up guys, as the titles suggests, I'm looking at purchasing either the Alienware m15 R3 with the 2070 super vs the Alienware Area 51-M R1.

The m15 R3 comes with the following specs,

- Intel 10750H
- RTX 2070 super. I'm not certain if it's the Max-p or Max-Q variant.
- 32gb 2666 memory
- 1TB 2x 512gb SSD M.2
- 300hz display (no optimus)

The Area 51m R1 comes with the following specs,

- i7 9700K
- RTX 2080 (OC)
- 32GB 2888
- 1TB NVME + 1TB 2.5 Sata
- 144HZ display

Out of the 2, which one is best to go for in terms of performance. I know the Area 51m R1 is tied to only the 9th gen intel cup's and the 2 series gpus.

If you guys know of any good gaming laptops with good raw performance and good thermals for/less than £2400, please let me know.

 

Should perform about the same. The m15 is very compact, but suffers from soldered memory and terrible inverted motherboard design. Bear in mind you will need to repaste and probably repad either of those laptops. 51M has much more expandability (up to 128GB RAM) given the size/weight but very little battery life. You would be able replace the desktop CPU later on with 9900 or 9900K too, but not upgrade to next gen.

It all depends on the use case. For me it would be neither: one has soldered RAM, the other no battery life. Take a look at some alternatives, such as the Clevo models at xmg.gg. Some even come with liquid metal compound.

Do you need long battery life? If not, then perhaps you would be better served with a desktop - way more performance in absolute terms and per £, no thermal issues, easier and cheaper maintenance.

 

The m15r3 comes with the max p 2070 super.

Are you using any discount vouchers to buy your machine?

I bought the m17r3 for £2400 with the following spec.

- i7 10750h
- RTX 2080 Super Max-p 150w
- 32GB 2666
- 256gb m.2 ssd
- 300HZ display

the machine is quite nice and good performance for the price.

 

The m15 comes with a max q, not a max p.

 

m15 r2 is max Q, but the m15 r3 is max P.

 

jamesjacks22 is correct. The m15 R3 comes with the 2070 super max-p variant and the 2080 super max-q variant. The 2080 super max-p is available in the 17 inch model.

 

Is there 100% confirmation (beyond what Dell wrote on their website as they have been known to provide much misinformation many times before)? I see there is a lot of conflicting information on this all over the internet. Anyone got confirmed wattage of the gpu?

Max-P would indicate ~115W variant of the 2070 SUPER, which wouldn’t make sense when the 2080 SUPER Max-Q upgrade is only 80-90W, making it actually worse in many scenarios. Well it is Dell so maybe that did make such a decision...

If it really is a 115W variant, I’d be tempted to buy this machine today .

 

I didn't understand the move myself. But I can confirm either later this week or next week sometime. I just had my tracking through for the m15 R3. I like the Area 51m, but prefer the slim factor. I know the pros far outweigh the cons for the area 51m. But its preference I guess.

I was going to check out Razor instead of Alienware this time around. But Razors thermals and customer service put me off.

 

Yes there is I can 100% guarantee is it. If you check Alienware sub-reddit there are many users posting there benchmarks of the 2070 super for the m15 r3 And m17 r3 being a full power laptop gpu pulling 115w and it overclocks well too.

The 2080 super max q is a 90w gpu that has been shown to pull 100w+.

I have had the m17 r3 with the 150w 2080 super and it’s a beast.

What spec did you order for your m15 r3?

 

I went with the below,


- Intel 10750H
- RTX 2070 super
- 32gb 2666 memory
- 1TB 2x 512gb SSD M.2
- 300hz display (no optimus)

£2379.99 (no discount code)

The 2070 super is good enough for what I run. I tried ray tracing and found that it's impressive, but not enough to justify the drop in frame rate. I had the m17 R2 with the 2070 max-q. I flattened the voltage curve to have consistent boost without the throttle. I was pushing 110-120 fps on resident evil 3 on high settings. I ran DMC 4 on ultra and had a consistent +70 fps without any drops in performance.

I hope your m17 treats your right. Put of curiosity, have you undervolted your CPU?

 

Got a 15% off code at Dell to use in UK, a little annoyed that I can’t get the Optimus g-sync panel with the 2070 SUPER, would it be silly to just get the 4K OLED?

 

You can get the 2070 super with g-sync it’s the base model that starts at £2249.

Don’t forget to use quid co you can claim another 6.6% back as well.

Nice specs, should last you a long time.

I’m returning my m17 as I had the 300hz screen and with the 2080 super, it virtually only has 1.5hours of battery life. Going to get the m15 with oled as I mainly playing games on the Xbox and RPG and coming from the aw13 r3 the 2080 is overkill to what I’m use to.

I undervolted by 100 and that helped with temps, good point is to create your own fan curves as that helps a lot.

 

I can see the £2199 mode offering it, but I guess it means giving up 32GB RAM (and no chance to upgrade from 16GB myself).

This dilemma almost makes me want to just get the m17 with 2080 SUPER and G-Sync .

 

Just received the m15 r3 today. It took 7 days in total to get to me in the UK from China. Packaging is spot on and at first glance the vents look slightly wider than the r3. I got mine in Dark Side of the Moon instead of Lunar Light or white. The finish is far better than the Lunar finish.

Indeed, my gpu is the max-p variant of the 2070 super. I'm going to mess with it tomorrow now. I'll be under volting the 10750H. I'll install Afrerburn and HWinfo tomorrow and get some temps posted up.

Overall, happy with this m15 r3. Oh and thank god they removed Tobi Eye Tracking on this 300hz panel. That Tobi drove me mad on the r2.

Go for the 2080 super max-p with the 144hz G-Sync panel. You won't hardly notice any tearing if you have any drops in frame rate. Not that it'll every really happen with current games and that specific GPU. Good luck with what ever you decide to go for.

 

By definition, there won't be any tearing with Gsync, however, there will be some extra input lag.

Ridiculous that the impact of 300Hz display on battery life is not clearly explained on Dellienware website.

 

The 300hz panel sure does kill your battery. 100% gone in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Just casually browsing the net just looking at answers for my track pad feels loose and making a tapping noise when touch ever more than slightly.

My temps are to be expected I guess with it being Dell-Alienware.

I've got an online engineer coming out to give me the other 512gb that China forgot to out into my configuration. Fantastic service as always

https://ibb.co/hBz7fxw

https://ibb.co/ydMxNCG

 

This is with a -100 undervolt core and cache. Not going to get anywhere near 5ghz with this cpu. 4.1ghz currently stuck at.

https://ibb.co/0JMDzpZ

https://ibb.co/f0jt3T5

https://ibb.co/WpHMPLL

Overclocking is looking like a no go for i7-10750H in this particular chassis.