*OFFICIAL* Alienware Area-51M R1 Owner's Lounge

2080 RTX on this machine is a MUST as it's very close to desktop class GPUs unlike the 2060/2070 which are more behind the desktop GPUs and the 9900K if pasted correctly and tuned should run like a champ as we've seen from results here and future proof the laptop longer

 

In my opinion you lose a lot of rights if you do not just return it for a full refund.

 

If I were to speculate I would guess it's not exactly heat causing the problem, but instead too many amps for some component, either the wires from the DC input jack to the main board, or something on the main board that just can't handle that many amps. And of course, this would be causing even more heat, and more heat could cause the components to weaken. There was a similar problem with the DC input cable on older Alienware laptops melting because it was drawing more power than the wires could handle and causing the wires to heat up and melt. We really need someone who had the problem to tear down their unit and send some high resolution pictures of the area.

Edit:
Went searching for those old threads, and one thing people were mentioning to fix the burning cables on the old Alienwares was to disable fast charging.
I don't have my 51m anymore, but is there something in the bios for changing the charging behavior? I wonder if anyone played with those settings on some of the notebooks that have burned? I personally don't remember seeing it but I also only changed one section in the bios, and that was the CPU/Fan performance settings. Oh and the AHCI/RAID thing, I changed my system to AHCI instead of RAID.

 

If they're not willing to work with you, at the very least I'd draft up a story with pictures for different websites/publications.

Bad press about "Alienware's newest laptop is catching on fire" will surely get you some more proactive support...

 

yup, exactly what i plan on doung when getting home. i planned on repasting tomorrow morning, but i'll keep away from doing that until we know more about this issue..


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Is the 144hz FHD panel on the Area-51m HDR Compatible?

 

Same thing happened when I returned an m15. They even told me that yes, they could replace it with either another m15 or an area 51m. They later changed their minds, saying it was a 'miscommunication' and said my options were m15 replacement or full refund. In the end I was able to get a slight discount on a 51m, however, I canceled that the next day with the use of that 15% discount. I reported this to Alienware on the 7th and the area 51m arrives tomorrow, the 19th. That's a 12 day turnaround.

About the funds. If you haven't already, use dell financial services to pay for it.

 

Has anybody tried liquid metal with the area51m+ 9700K?

 

I agree. Even though I was in the middle of a marathon gaming session thermal performance appeared great. There wasn’t any drop in frame rate or performance. I didn’t make any BIOS changes regarding charging.

 

There was definitely a section for this on the m15. I considered turning it off since it would charge the battery from dead in an hour and thought I didn't have a need for this, might be helpful to the machine's health to turn it off.

 

I used dell financial services for the first purchase. I just don’t have enough left on the credit limit.

Good to hear about the turnaround. I never loved a machine like I loved the 51m. I won’t be able to resist giving them another shot.

 

I didn't either, had to put the new purchase on another card and forgo the reward points.

Don't know why I didn't convince myself to get a 51m the first time around, I've been dreaming about a machine like this since Palm devices were still a thing and I had found a way to use my cell phone as a modem for mobile internet.

 

Somebody should create a new thread titled something like "Alienware Area 51m Laptop Fire Tracking Thread" to keep a record of whose machines have burned up and what their specs were. The opening post could maintain a list of affected users and their configs as long as the person that owns that post is willing to maintain it. Then, that opening post could be tweeted and shared on Facebook.

How many machines so far do we know of? Six or eight?

 

There is a new bios that got updated today March 18th, but the version number didn't change 1.3.0 - I'm not sure if the Fixes and Enhancements has changed? ....

 

It's the same. I think they updated something on the page, but the file has the same CRC as the one I downloaded on 3/12.
Nothing new here.

I think it's only 5 actually. But someone needs to do a recount.

 

Completely agree, this is a terrible response by Dell and Alienware to having your $4K+ high end laptop burn up and for all you know could have taken your whole house with it.

Alienware needs to properly compensate people who had this happen to them instead of having you wait for weeks for a replacement or repair.
Document the situation and send it off to various tech publications who might pick it up and run the story and we might actually get a proper response and explanation from Alienware about this.

 

Makes sense, you're probably right

 

About 1.1A for an extra 20W on the GPU? It must mean this component is already marginal.

 

Seems that way. My Alienware 18 fried itself 3 times when equipped with the 980M, which consumed more power than the 780M. Power limits cannot be increased unless the supporting hardware is sturdy enough to handle the extra load

 

It will be interesting to find out (if we ever do) what the weak link is on these new systems. I hope some of the folks that had their new system fail due to burning will at least try to identify and photo document what fried before they ship it back. Otherwise, it will get minimized and swept under the rug as a means of PR damage control.

I have a gut feeling they cut some corners on something to save a few bucks with the power delivery and built something like they would for a BGA turdbook instead of a Z390 enthusiast desktop board, but that's just a wild guess based on past behavior. It could also be a defect in a component like a MOSFET or choke, or a flaw of some sort in manufacturing process rather than an under-engineering issue.

That's actually quite a few for such a new product and a relatively small forum audience. There are certainly going to be more examples that are not mentioned in this thread.

 

I would like to know if all the people that got the burning systems are using the new bios and 200W gpu update.

 

I really got no clue what's urderneat the F4 keys but while gaming that particular spot get extremly hot. Even with controlled CPU/GPU temps (Under 70C)
And so far 5 out of 6 laptop that burned seem's to have damage on that spot.

 

That would be good to know, but it might not be relevant. Firmware isn't generally going to result in a hardware failure, unless the product was already poorly engineered and just barely adequate. The 200W GPU power limit is more of a marketing publicity stunt than anything else. Increasing power limits doesn't do a whole lot for Turing GPUs because the voltage is so limited. Most Turing GPUs experience reliability voltage and thermal throttling before they exhaust their firmware-induced power limit because the Green Goblin screwed things up so bad. The algorithms these GPUs use are unnecessarily complex and bumping the power limit without changing anything else is, more or less, a waste of time.

Taking a guess from looking at the outside of the chassis, it appears to be (approximately) where the AC power jacks are connected. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense because these systems don't max out the capacity of a single 330W AC adapter, but it could be a weak component or a design defect that results in a failure that is not entirely reliant on an excessive current load.

 

Wish we had picture of the motherboard on the ''Keyboard'' side.
Would be a lot easier to pin point what's problematic.

 

I think we might be seeing the return of DC-IN cable burn that plagues 15r1/17r2/17r3 models even after 3 years.
For now, its better to stick with 180w rtx 2080 that actually kills 1080 stock from Dell. What do you think Mr. Fox? Maybe low capacity/wattage SMDs killed the AW51M? Not really sure!!!

 

Hard to say without more information, but that guess is as good as any at this point. Could be low capacity or just poor SMD quality, or both.

This sort of thing is one of the hazards of being an early adopter with any new product. We don't hear much about dying RTX cards any more, but we sure did in the beginning.

 

Exactly!

 

Yeah its bad! GP in SW was okay but GP on HW above 3000-5000$ completely unacceptable.

 

Maybe they should should go back to the old days. They should stop this cheapo outsourcing. The customers won't get an avantage from it. Only only DELL. Their customers suffer from it.
Finally giving up on Dell

Disappointment With Customer Care and Quality (Area-51m)

Doesn't matter. The first burned up Area-51m was with released firmware.

Btw.

 

Precisely, this and a million other "version 0.9" things.

A voltage regulator maybe?

 

Oh no!!!! When Windows updates fetches the new updates its disaster! I hope God can save their A51m's!

 

I was using both the new BIOS and 200W gpu update

 

That's what I mentioned a page or two back. I recall this similar thing with the older Alienwares, basically the cable would melt. People said it was actually happening when doing fast charging of the battery, it was drawing more current than the wires from the DC in jack could handle, it appears.

I held off on the RTX cards for that reason, but it looks like that problem might have been more related to bad Micron memory. The AW51M I had did have Samsung memory, so that made me feel better.

Regarding the "Btw" with the firmware update, this was also checked a few pages back. They may have updated some text on the page, but the file is exactly the same based on checksums. I downloaded it on the 12th, and my version has the same checksums that they have posted on their site.

 

My RTX 2080 Ti has Micron memory and it works great. And, it overclocks like a banshee. But, I was not an early adopter. (I am generally not any more because of this sort of nonsense.) Maybe it was an initial bad batch of Micron GDDR6 or something else. We never got any straight answers from NVIDIA on that, and probably never will. I suspect the finger-pointing at Micron was mostly speculation, but all anyone can do is guess at this point. It seems to be fixed now whatever it was.

We probably won't get any straight answers from Dell on this problem either. They will most likely find the problem and fix it quietly, without saying what was wrong. That's why I am hoping at least a few folks take a closer look and snap some photos to document their findings before sending it back.

 

If it happens to mine (when I get it), I'll take it apart and investigate for sure.

 

now that's funky... i crippled the 9900k to non-turbo and for fun thought i'd fire up resident evil 2, now my 2080's clock speed just hovers at around 600 - 900mhz and hwinfo constantly shows thermal and power limit on the card

edit: never mind, reboot fixed it. tf..


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I expect Dell have produced and sold several thousand of this model already. If this problem is on hardware level, how can they fix it quietly, without saying what was wrong? Firmware won't fix it. Recall the model for repair? Or will they send out a technician? Everyone will know if this being the case.

 

It is impossible to say at this point because we have no information yet. If they require that all of the affected systems are returned to the depot they can better manipulate/control the information. If they dispatch techs to replace parts, customers that watch will get to see, ask questions and take photos of what is uncovered. I suspect they do not want that to happen. If it is a defective batch of SMD components, they can blame the vendor(s). If it is an engineering defect, we will have to wait and see what sort of creative spin is applied to the situation. I think cancelling pending orders that haven't shipped yet is a smart move until more information surfaces and the problem is corrected. I think returning for a refund is also a smart move for those that have had one die. The alternative to have it repaired doesn't seem like a smart move unless Dell already knows what the problem is and will be replacing the parts with a revised version that keeps it fixed. Otherwise, the repaired units might just be a ticking time bomb waiting to die a second time.

 

My order status is now delayed saying awaiting for parts. I wonder what parts is that? It's either the Lunar White color causing the delay or something else

 

Hard to know. We have seen that reason for delayed shipments many times in the past.

Hopefully, all of the failures will be on an order of a magnitude as minor as we have seen reported here. It would be very sad and tragic to have any injuries, deaths or massive property losses (burned down houses, etc.) because of it.

 

Just repasted the machine with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Difference isn't that big, like 4 to 5 degrees on max load. Temps are now really nice between 70 and 80 for CPU and 70 to 73 for GPU. Thats with balanced profile. Max fan profile will be even cooler.

So easy to pull this machine apart comparing it to the AW 17r5.

 

Did you make pictures or video when doing it for rest of us?

Also, well done and happy you had luck with repaste. 5 degrees is crazy good for only repaste.
I agree with Mr. Fox

 

Is it possible to exchange the 51m if not happy with something with it and get a new 51m laptop?
Or only option is to send back and order new one and loss discount?

 

An improvement of 4 to 5°C on max load is actually pretty great. I wouldn't say it "isn't that big" because that can mean the difference between throttling or not throttling. It can also mean the difference between being able to use lower voltage or not use lower voltage. Good job on the repaste.

I am still waiting for results with liquid metal. If the heat sink fits the CPU and GPU die properly that could improve the results even more... like 10° to 20°C if the fit is good and the heat sink assembly isn't reaching a thermal saturation point.

@ssj92, have you applied Conductonaut or other liquid metal yet? If so, what was the result?

 

no one answered me yet is the screen on the Area-51m HDR capable?

@ssj92

 

i will probably repaste (even though i was going to wait up) with conductonaut tomorrow, i'll leave feedback as of what i got after repaste. i'm only have the cpu running low clocked atm, but for tests i can upclock it again of corse


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edit: just to say sorry for all the d@mn typos xD

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040263/windows-10-hdr-advanced-color-settings

 

Cool. Please tag me when you post the results with liquid metal. If you can make a teardown video and show a good close up on what is on the keyboard side of the motherboard while you are doing that, I am sure a lot of folks would appreciate it. Especially those curious about what is getting burned.

 

If you tell me how to check then I can do it for you!


NOTE, what I found out looking into my laptop for screen.
1080p, 144hz, 8bit colour, RGB, SDR(Standard dynamic range).

I believe it should had said HDR instead of SDR if HDR capable.

 

PC Settings > Apps > Video Playback > Windows HD Color Settings

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040263/windows-10-hdr-advanced-color-settings