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

There will always be people who believe anything and marketing hype is done by every company in one form or another..

Whether people believe such a thing is irrelevant to what's at hand. I just don't understand why you had to throw that into the picture, when it has nothing to do with what was being discussed.

Yes, it would be great if you wouldn't do that, for the sake of everyone in this forum who want's to talk Area 51M and not have to be distracted by irrelevant stuff.

 

@iunlock
I'm only going to grab a few things out of that wonderful post.

Silicon lottery is cool and all, but not a guaranteed winner. That's why i made the comment about it. Example, you have a SL 9900K that is not beating an off the shelf 9900K in a laptop (Lets be fair - Only talking about firestrike - This laptop might win at a test or two, but let's be real. That's about it. ). J/K And I haven't even tried it on a desktop board. But!, yes I totally get what you are saying which should hold true 100 percent of the time, but it doesn't. I'm also glad to see people are able to bin the lower cost chips, but back when we binned, it was 1100.00 and up per chip. Which also puts a cap on most people binning the high end stuff. - This pertains to those trying to reach the top. It is never cheap.

I have also long mentioned that there were different classes and people should not get them mixed up. Back when all the arguing was going on.
Gaming
Stock out of box and stock optimized gaming
Overclocked gaming
Maxed overclocked gaming
Benching
Stock out of box and stock optimized benching
Overclocked benching
Maxed overclocked benching
Stress testing
Stock out of box and stock optimized stress testing
Overclocked stress testing
Maxed overclocked stress testing

They all have their place. But one thing has always held true. To be on top, you need to be the best at more than just one. That has never changed. So if you win at gaming and lose at everything else. Sure, you look good doing it but you still lost. So you can not claim best in the world. And this breaking of parts in separate categories is fine and all, but it's still the machine that scores the best test run or benchmark or gaming benchmark average frames and so on that is the winner. not the guy saying I revved my engine to 12K rpm. Well guess what, no one is going to remember that, only the part where you came in last.

This round the manufacturer that broke the Nvidia line was Asus. They have been running a 200W vbios for some time now. AW broke the line with the 180W, then 190W and now 200W, while everyone else is sitting at 150W Nvidia mandatory maximum. Hopefully this will help get others to do the same. Although this mosfet issue with the 2080 AW gpu is starting to become a trend. One that needs to be addressed and hopefully that is what is going on now with the delay of the next batch of laptops. Speculations of course.

So that is definitely saying something! And also the Clear winner when going up against the Clevo. Factory Vbios vs Factory Vbios. There was no disputing this. I also made this known quite a few pages back. Clevo flat out lost! But as to the CPU, that is another story. In the beauty contest the A51M wins hands down. In the cooling depart, it loses sort of...meaning that if the cpu were allowed to run by itself, utilizing the whole heatsink (cpu-gpu side), then it would have the advantage over the Clevo cpu heat sink. As it is still connected in places to the gpu side while also using the fan shroud as part of it's heat sink. it's a clear loss when going up against the VC of the Clevo. Even with both having comparable temps at times.

As to the benching, that's why the benching threads are created. so that we can go in there and be ourselves and love the hobby and sport of benching. And it erks me when gamers come in pusing can you do that while gaming. WTH! or Stress testers saying you can"t run Prime95/Furmark/aida64 stress test for 250 hours while sitting on the carpet with fans set to auto at 5.2 Ghz. WTH! SMH!

Sort of exaggerated example, but not by much:
I also do understand your analogies with the fully dressed car, but you also must understand mine....My fully dressed car is running nitro, twin turbos and pushing 900HP. While rolling with 4 people in the car listening to the radio and watching tv pulling 10's. No one said you have to sacrifice anything, but it is all in what you put into it that makes the most difference..... So LM/AC/Delidded/Lowered room temps would be the equivalent to that. And that starts at the casual to the extreme. All in what that particular person wants to invest in their personal happiness. Lets face it, the shell already looks nice.

 

Well said. I'm a bit confused about the 9900K in the first paragraph, but my main 9900K exceeds that of an off the shelf 9900K. SL themselves list 9900K's tested that can hit or exceed 51x or greater is just 8%. The figures for those that can reach 54x I'm sure is far smaller in its percentages. If I misunderstood then forgive me .. it has been an early day and now going into a long night.

Different classes.. yes yes yes... very very important and I'm glad you're emphasizing that. Recognizing and respecting different classes and categories matters very much so.

As for being on top, not everyone want's or needs to be on top. The angle of approach may be similar for the majority of pure benchers, but I guess I'm the minority when it comes to the intent and purpose? - When I bench systems the primary focus most of the time is to maximize the potential to find its highest stable point, because that's ultimately what matters for those who will be using it for regular computing tasks or gaming.

I do also enjoy actual pure benching as well, however, I treat that as its own session and with the pure focus of going all out with making the best with what I have.

When it comes to pure benching, absolutely that's where it all changes so I totally get that. However, as we both agree everything has to be looked at in respect to its class / category.

It's very clear who are pure gamers that make those kind of remarks lol... The benching world is way above their pay grade and I say that humbly as a statement of fact.

Funny story, so a few weeks ago I was playing a game while tuning a system and as expected it would disconnect at times due to instability. A random player commented "why waste your time doing that?" so I had replied "well for one to get my monies worth and to know that it's running efficiently." - He was saying how he had a 2080Ti this and that so I simply asked him "so what's your core clocks?" and he said that he's boosting ~1700MHz or so... Then I said "oh neat, well if you're interested I'm streaming right now so you can check out how the game is running on my end with the same card." He saw the core clocks on my stream (2160MHz) and asked if that was my CPU. *face palm* ... --- So the moral of the story is, most of gamers don't have a clue about the benching realm and that's okay... if they want to learn there a lot of people who would be glad to help them.

I also miss the whole drag race scene..good ol' days eh? Brings back memories...

How about a modded vc heat sink for the Area 51M? Now that would be awesome.

 

To be fair, my OEM 9900K can hit 5.3Ghz, I am 99% sure if I had it in a desktop I can go higher. The Area-51m is limiting it going higher. I only got it up to 5.2Ghz in the Area-51m and did a 5.3Ghz CPU-Z validation.

Idk, even my OEM 7700K in my Clevo could do 5Ghz without any additional voltage other than stock clevo voltage. Maybe I got lucky in the CPU department.

GPU is another story. Mine doesn't seem to want to break past 28k.

 

@iunlock This is the second chip in here and it hits 5.2 ghz. Off the shelf. As for other 9900K's they pretty much all have done 5.1, but keeping some of them cool is another matter. (Laptops) They pretty much should all do 5.0 all cores. Some will do this with better voltage of curse, while others take more. This is what we need to understand in the A51M. When you get a chance. Set you voltage to as low as it will go (maybe 1.1 or something like that using custom) and set the offset to -100 and all cores to 4.9 with fans on Performance and start testing. See how high you can go for stability, before having to raise the voltage or offset. I think it will run 5.0 like this. I didn't have enough time to get it all sorted out, but i did find that the voltage itself is too high.

That "on top" comment is not meant for everyone. It is meant for those who are striving to be on top. Look at young @Rocktaze. he was striving to be on top for gpu clocks. And he actually was, but the first person to actually make everyone see the light was @thattechgirl_viv. And she did it sitting on a table with nothing but how the system came. So stock and optimized then overclocked to kick off the 29K gpu scores for the A51M. She basically beat everyone with a 2080 Asus/MSI/Clevo/AW/Aorus/Tongfang. I thought that was pretty hilarious to say the least. This was when everyone seemed to think the A51M's max clocks was +125/+200 or so. Which wasn't even close to max @HaloGod2012 showed this on more than 1 occasion(about +150 to +175/+1000-+1500 is max). Once that cat was out of the bag the scores started to climb.

And I pretty much have to agree with everything else.

That is a funny story though, but an even funnier one is when they start clowning and saying stuff like....You spent 6k on a desktop and your KD is -034. You should have spent 40 dollars on gaming lessons. Yeah, i'm not in a lot of games where people are talking about how many fps you're getting or what you running in terms of hardware. And if my KD is that bad, I sure as heck am not going to be telling them either! Find out you got smacked down by a chromebook would be....well...just embarrassing. Even though you look pretty damn nice taking a beating.

 

I have hit the limits of what my 9700K can do in XTU.

I can run 5.1 all core at -70mv. Any uv above that causes artifacting in FS and other benchmarks.
I can run 5.2, all core at -20mv. Anything uv above that causes BSOD's.
If I try 5.3, get insta BSOD when I hit apply

Would prefer to use TS, but if I set my multiplier to anything higher than 4.9 in TS it will not run any higher than 4.9 and 4.9 is as high as it will show in Riva Tuner OSD and HWInfo.

 

I think a lot of 9900K's can hit 53x just fine with either the luck of the draw or cooling. What I consider rare is it being able to hold and sustain 54x.

The testing and measures SL uses I don't quite agree with myself, but that's just me. I'm fully aware of their testing perimeters, take for example what they list a 9900K @ 5.0GHz at 1.3v with AVX at 2. That's not a silicon lottery lol... what's worse is what they have listed for an 8086K (which I have as well) listed as an SL at 4.8GHz @ 1.40v?! That's ridiculous.

It sounds like you've lucked out my friend. That's really awesome.

As I've mentioned above, 53x is pretty obtainable especially with good cooling. Where I start to consider it a SL is from 54x. Perhaps some of these 53x chips can do 54x with cooling and I have no doubts. I have over 10x 9900K's that I've binned myself and they were all able to hit 53x just fine with cooling, however, only 20% of them could hit 54x with the same cooling on 53x.

I'll test what you've suggested with the A51M.

As for the GPU score on the A51M, right out of the box without even being aware of any prior benchers that you've mentioned, I was hitting well over 29K on graphics, which I didn't even think twice as being something spectacular since I was actually after 30K from the get go... This system sitting on the table hits 29K consistently with back to back to back runs. As for the max clocks, I've never taken that into consideration for it to have any affect on my expectations. When I first dive into a system, I follow my usual protocol to a T on starting from scratch due to me treating every silicon like a clean plate since they're not all created equal.

As for gaming yea it's very toxic haha... there is truth to the hardware not really mattering at all, because I've always used this example...

Give a pro gramer crappy hardware and a very good gamer the best hardware, and the pro would still win 100%.

Try only having either just TS or just XTU installed. Personally I don't use XTU anymore and only TS... those two don't like living together so try using something like Revo to clean uninstall XTU then try again... hope that helps.

 

You got a golden chip. Nice temps. Is HWINFO accurate on reporting AC adapter rating of 510W for minimum and maximum?

 

29.3K is still quite a stretch from 30K with using a 200W Vbios. I eagerly await your crossing into the 30K range soon.

And as to scores, just ask @Mr. Fox and what I have to say about saving potential record breaking scores. Or the lack there of saving them to begin with. haha My favorite 4 to 6 words.

And @thattechgirl_viv was doing that with a 190W machine and first gen bios. So I already knew about getting 29k low to mid scores. And at that time no one was trying for 30K. That only became evident after it was shown to be possible. Most people were still trying to get 28K.

Now that the gpu seems established what is needed to know now is where the cpu will sit....

 

but it helps alot but sure, if ou have luck with your OEM CPU then you dont need an SL binned chip. I, usualy have no luck with my CPUs and buy pretestet -> i have done a few tests with my OEM Dell 9900k and my binned delidded 9900k -> pic attached

Pretested delidded stock



DELL OEM 9900k stock



DELL OEM 9900K max UV (not gamestable)



So my DELL 9900k with max UV (that was not stable ingame, just CB stable) can barley reach my pretested 9900k stock in terms of Temps and voltage. And the pretested is running -125mv now gamestable. So its at minimum 0.1v! better at the same clocks. But maybe my DELL CPU is just a very bad sample.

my wife regularly makes jokes about me sitting outside with my laptops benching them XD

I would instantly buy one... do you think its possible to design and produce one with teamwork?

thanks, 330w+180w thats why hwinfo is reporting 510w

 

I was mad enough to buy a portable 4K monitor to pair up with Area 51m

 

Because now the discussion and comparisons have moved to the general category of "laptop", we should then define the term better. We should consider the size of the machine to determine a weighted ratio of performance vs size. Of course Dell could make a 2" thick laptop with plenty of cooling, but as we have clearly seen with AW17 and the A51m, they are striving to reduce size (even to the detriment of the panels).

To summarise: I believe there should be a weighted score, eg something like [ performance / size ] to show you what is possible given a certain size. Size being whatever the user considers most important, thickness, width, weight, whatever.

 

So Alienware command center is giving me all those updates anyone know why ?

 

Indeed. (About the CPU that is..)

Has any Area 51M hit 30K yet? I don't see it in the search on 3DMark...

The focus for me is reaching the 30K Club (Fire Strike GPU score), I'm determined and confident to achieve it, for the sake of benching. That's my mission and I'll deal with the CPU after.

Just simply talking about benching motivates me, therefore, thanks for theses conversations. It's really refreshing...

Haha yea I totally understand. For me some of my best runs completed but were invalid... But I kept on truckin' along...

 

What make model is the external monitor you got? How is the picture quality compared with the FHD on the Area-51m?

 

It’s already broke long time ago, now you should aiming 30,5K
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Alien...ing-score-in-3DMark-Fire-Strike.414743.0.html

 

Ah ok in the 9700K/2080 class... I was only looking in the 9900K/2080 class....

Well now time to get to working on it...

 

Does any one find the black bezel around the screen marks easily.. I used a lint free cloth but mine has hairline marks on it already ...

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-389#post-10876548

 

Yup and the front speaker grill area too...

 

I just bought this one from China:
https://m.tb.cn/h.3A0rKuC?sm=085fec

In terms of clarity, full hd of course has no match to 4K monitor. But it is only a 60hz monitor so don’t expect it would be as fluid as a 144hz monitor.

I always prefer higher pixels (using PG27UQ at home) and I believe the RTX 2080 is up to the task of 4k gaming.

 

Some pics FYR

 

I can't get any higher than 30.3k currently.
I'm maxed out at +180/+1500 while Johnkssss can go up to +200

I can't wait to see your result.

 

Once again, I'm the one with the burnt Area 51M.

I have TERRIBLE news.

So it seems like they managed to find out what the issue was, I haven't got any details. But due to this, there is a recall of Most of the existing motherboards and CPU's for the Area 51M to make necessary correction to address this issue.
This caused an immense shortage on all orders of Area 51M, and it seems like there is A LOT of orders.

My order went in production This monday 25th of March. The estimated delivery is 29th of April!!!!

I will be without a laptop for A MONTH!!!

Also this is VERY important news here, spread the word if not already done. Once again there was a recall for Most of the existing motherboards and CPU's. Which could mean, every existing Area 51M user could potentially have this problem. Once again don't know much details. Just sharing the info I got.

 

Yikes. No issues here... What was the original issue with yours?

 

Which panel do you have the LG Phillips or auo 144 panel ? There seems to be a variance in quality of the 2 panels in terms of contrast ..

 

I didn’t know they had two different panels. I’m happy I got the LG as it’s much brighter than other panels I’ve seen. Measured it at 340 nits


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

explains why my order from march 9th got delayed 3 times, and is still not shipped/built but just entered production. My order status page still shows april 25th delivery date but if this guarantees that my unit wont fry itself so be it. Does anyone know if I should request a discount for all the delays ? will it be accepted ?

 

After 4 weeks of use. During playing Metro Exodus, suddenly pc went down, with smoke and burn smell coming out of it. Laptop completely died without giving any response. At the time, I was the 6th person that had this issue, in only the 1st month of the release of the laptop.

 

Just ran back to back benches on The Division 2 on Ultra at 1440p with BIOS 1.3.1 and 1.3.2

Overall, doesn't seem to have changed much, score improved slightly with 1.3.2 but the CPU was also used a bit more with 1.3.2. The interesting thing is the temps. On 1.3.1 the CPU hit 74 and GPU 71 and then with 1.3.2 the CPU hit 65 and GPU 68... weird, especially with the CPU being utilized more with 1.3.2.

Both tests were run with CPU at 5ghz and -75 undervolt and GPU at 120/200 through Alienware CC. 9700k/2080.

 

Yes I have the LG Phillips however it did not score well in terms of contrast in notebookcheck review. However I do like like I have to say but love to see the 2 panels next to each other ..

 

Wait....what?! Lol they better send out a global recall notice. I dont think us finding out about something like this via this forum is enough to go by. My Alienware 51m has been chugging through just fine but I also probably don't push it to the limits of a lot of people. And I'm not about to send it off for one whole month. Ain't nobody got time for that! That's what I paid the big warranty bucks for...they can come to my house and fix the issue

 

You got any proof of this?

 

But Azor said on Twitter there isn't a hardware problem A firmware fix will come. Openness has its price.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-541#post-10883428

 

Just stating what I have been told. A correction is required on most of the motherboards, so there is a shortage on them.
Doesn't sound like a firmware update to me.

I don't know anymore. I'm just extremely disappointed in the fact that I won't be without my system for 1 more month at least.

 

Twitter DM from @AlienwareTech

 

Can you take a screenshot please.

 

Soooo what you are saying is that I am technically screwed and not getting an Area 51m until late April-Early May. I had mine delayed from March 25-28 to now April 4-11. I can't conceive that being that I ordered after your issue and after they have isolated (or so they say) what the problem is I will be getting this unit. It seems they just keep putting undeliverable estimates to keep people from canceling so when they delay you AGAIN it feels like just another week or so.

 

The burnt part is the gpu dgff VRM. Why are they recalling the motherboard and cpu? Doesn't make any sense. If anything they should recall the dgff gpu.

 

Yes, please. Seriously considering cancelling my order from HID until this is resolved if this is accurate. Would like to see the DM if you don't mind terribly. Thanks!

 

Everyone needs to slow down with the reactions for a bit. One unverified message from twitter is not really something we can grab pitchforks for.

Lets hope we hear something official soon. Knowing Dell/Alienware, we will receive terrible communication and have to find details ourselves. My order with XoticPC is still scheduled for end of next week. I just returned the Area-51m I had with Dell, which functioned great for the month I had it.

 

screenshot or it didn't happen

 

I thought you knew already. @Rocktaze was all over that 30K. LOL

Yes, @Rocktaze was first to hit 30K+. I had assumed you knew that already with trying to reach 30K. Ergo my comment about 29.3K being a far stretch from 30K. Heck, even Frank acknowledged his score on twitter.

Oh, it's a hardware problem, that's pretty obvious. And I have yet to see pictures of the motherboard actually being bad, but a faulty video card will make a perfectly good motherboard look bad.

 

Do you have to get the 1.3.2 bios directly from the dell site? It's not being detected using either of the dell updaters (aw update or support assist). Just curious... on 1.3.1 atm.

EDIT: I did just move up to 1.3.2 manually... but was just curious.

 

I've just been doing them manually, wasn't sure if people used the support assist program or not

 

Just curious, when you were OCing the CPU to 5ghz with Alienware CC and you said it wasn't going past 4.9, did HWinfo show it as 4.9 or 4.990? I have mine OC'd to 5ghz with Alienware CC and its showing 4.990, I assume that could count as 5ghz, right?

 

correct

 

Upon inspection, we found a burned MOSFET on the GPU. Below are photos showing the location in relation to the DGFF RTX 2080 card.





The photo of the GPU underside heatsink below shows the thermal pad was making good contact with the MOSFETs.



At time of shipping, the system was on BIOS version 1.3.0 and 200W RTX 2080 vBIOS.

We hold the position that there is nothing we could have done better to prevent this issue from happening. We have documented and reported this to our senior contact at Dell. We are awaiting their response as to how they are going to fix this issue. Apparently, from our findings, this has the potential of affecting all Alienware Area-51M in the field until they resolve it.

 

Woah ... you're making me look bad right here.
Yes it was nice to reach 30k graphics score since not everybody was/is able to do so and at the time i had the highest graphic score for all RTX 2080 laptop so it was definitely nice to hit.

I believe i still have the best Firestrike score for 9700k/2080 by a little bit over 1,300 points i'm actually looking foward for some challenges.

 

No recall