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

Thank you for the advice. I finally tried sending a message to #DellCares. They agreed to ship me a new GPU! I just have to return the old one when it gets here. So, I will let you guys know if the new GPU works or not. Probably be a few weeks.

On that note, does anyone know how I can force this thing to use the Intel UHD 630 over the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter? Even when I disable it in Device Manager, Dxdiag still shows it as being used. I'm trying to play what I can on here (Gary Grigsby's War in the East, Diablo 2, etc) while I wait for the new GPU to arrive. Unfortunately, no OpenGl support with it being the basic display adapter. I can't switch it in the bios which, apparently, is extraordinarily locked down. Thanks!

 

?????

 

Nothing official yet so if you really want it, it's better to wait

 

I heard Alienware marketing chief say that there will be 1440p and 4k panels available later this year (in a video where he presented the laptop on youtube). I'm just not sure whether we'll have to replace the screen panel itself or the motherboard as well (which doesn't make sense in most cases). I'd love to have some more clarity on the topic but it's kind of hard to get a hold of one of Dell's related representatives on twitter.

 

4K panels only, no 1440p. Someone had Frank’s Twitter reply somewhere in the previous 700 pages saying that there will be UHD only, no QHD.

 

That sucks. The RTX 2080 chip is more than capable of smashing most of the games out there at 1440p. Guess I'll have to live with an external monitor then.

 

Actually in speaking to Frank Azor it seems that there will be NO 1440 coming to the A51m at all. He says there is no thin bezeled version currently on the display suppliers roadmap. Instead he mentioned a 120hz 4K display coming 6-8 months down the road. I had the same dilemma of waiting or not and ended up ordering mine after seeing that news.

 

Why don't you buy a graphic amplifier and a stand alone GPU in the meanwhile - I guess is the best way to enjoy your machine, and is a good solution for backup

 

Going to PowerShell and typing:

powercfg /batteryreport

generates a report in system 32, I got:

Installed batteries
Information about each currently installed battery
BATTERY 1
NAME PABAS0241231
MANUFACTURER COMPAL
SERIAL NUMBER 41167
CHEMISTRY Li-I
DESIGN CAPACITY 90,003 mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 86,195 mWh
CYCLE COUNT -

I have only had this for less than a month, is this normal?

 

Yes. Very normal. Almost no battery will meet their design capacity. Laptops have been having about 5% "wear" out of the box for years now.

 

Very impressed with this laptop so far. I was able to overclock my 9700k to 5 ghz with reasonable temperatures during gaming and the 2080 is running around gpu clock rates of around 2000 mhz.

I think most of you need to realize that the 9900k and 9700k are hard chips to cool even on full desktop rigs. I have a dancase A4 with a 9900k that I can only run at 4.7 ghz all core and that's water cooled. I went through several iterations to get it optimized enough to even run this. So for Alienware to even offer this in this sort of form factor is incredible and a marvel of engineering.

Those that require a true desktop replacement, you should honestly look into small form factor builds. For example my dancase A4, portable monitor, keyboard, and mouse fits in a easy to carry backpack. Even that said the area51m gives my small form factor build a run for the money!

Only complaint with the area 51m is being locked in by the crappy Alienware command center overclocking utility. I would much rather use XTU.

 

Machine is (finally) at my local sorting facility; and FedEx says it’ll arrive by 10:30 am tomorrow... we shall see!

I9 9900k
RTX2080
Lunar White 144 GS

64gb and 2x1tb ready to go

 

Same here. 1h20 Division 2 on ultra settings, FPS capped at 90 (and I mean a rock-steady 89-90 fps at all times) and -75mV UV. Not bad at all for a laptop.

I'm particulary amazed by the PCH temps (for those who remember the tricks we had to do to cool it off in the 17R4 )

 

I remember right you have an delidded CPU?

 

Hello together,
I am thinking about a new order after my first one had several problems and went back after two day ... within the two days I was not able to test some things, so my questions:

I am going to purchase it with i9900 and RTX2080. I would undervolt with TS and I am able to use power management within Windows.

1. Is it possible to work with office without fans? I have to use it in a quiet office ... so it would good if it could run without fans during light use.

2. Does it have a good manuel fan control?

3. Do I really have to use the full power fan profile for gaming? In the review from Notebookcheck is written that you have only full gaming power with max fans ... is that true?

Thanks for your help!

 

Are there alternatives to the 3N3W3 SSD heat sink? a 970 pro 1Tb without heat sink would suffer too much?

 

1) Yes and No. Fans are on, but not very audible (about 5 DB would be my guess) in most desktop tasks.

2) No. Manual fan control is present but does not work. There are about 5 different fan profiles that work though.

3) From my testing, only the "COOL" fan profile has built in down-clocking of performance. QUIET, BALANCED, PERFORMANCE, and FULL SPEED all deliver normal performance.

 

THIS IS JUST MY PERSONAL OPINION ON THIS MATTER (2c):

Looking at the 200W 2080 vBIOS update it seems like they simply raised the TGP and forgot to adjust the boost tables accordingly. (They may have done that since starting from a 150W base. 150>180>190>200)
Usually one would adjust the default and boost clock points as well in order to prevent the GPU from automatically running at much higher voltage than needed at lower clocks due to the way Turing's automatic over-boost works.

I would suggest to undervolt the GPU manually in order to prevent the MOSFETs from overheating until they release a new version:

 

So this is wrong? http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-621#post-10887707

 

I might be wrong... But I think the first documented blowout was before the 200w was even release...

 

No idea, have not reached the 84C temp thresholds. But probably accurate or close to accurate. What I mean by "normal performance" they are not slashing the GPU 50% across the board like the "COOL" profile.

@Mythbuster wanted to know if the Notebookcheck article was accurate, and it is not (They said only performance mode worked, and the others slashed the clocks)

 

Maybe @Prema could take a look at the first vBios as well. Here it is http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-653#post-10889472

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Btw. Have the owners seen similar like this? AW Area 51M bad paint quality under keyboard

 

Pretty sure Prema was meaning "Since Development"

In which case that was a 150W base from NVIDIA. And they bumped it all the way to 180W on release, and 200W shortly after release. They may not have done any voltage tuning from 150W to 180W to begin with.

 

SSD heatsink is not necessary. It's more of a fashion accessory ;-)

 

so what you are suggesting is that at the current 200W state, the large passive heatsink is not enough to dissipate the heat generated by the VRMs/MOSFETs?

 

Would it be better to just choose one voltage and undervolt the whole curve (CTRL + L method) or would it be more beneficial to tune each point (way more time consuming)?

BTW nice to see you around here again.

Hmmm

 

It will definitely decrease temperatures, but if there is no performance difference - why bother? Reminds me of all desktop RAM that is sold with fancy heatsinks ;-)

 

Because if it's running cooler the SSD won't die hella fast.

My SSD in my AW 13 R3 went from 100% life to 97% life within a few weeks because it kept hitting 99C+.

Kinda wish AW designed the cooling so it would suck air from the speaker area like the P870DM from Clevo. Then it would help cool RAM & SSD.

 

It actually hit 99C? Wow, the cooling is really bad on this model. Alienware definitely should've added more vents above the drives.

 

I said AW 13 R3 which was their 13" model. I used some thermal pads and mini heatsinks in that model to fix things up.

In this model with heatsink it performs fine in everyday tasks. However things like benchmarking or long heavy file writing brings temps up high as well into the 90s. There's two sensors in HWINFO and we still don't know 100% which one is the correct one or what they belong to. Sensor one stays 50-60C in most cases with peaks to 70C. Sensor two is around 60-70C with peaks to the high 90s, sometime 100C.

 

Even on this model these are pretty high temps. Alienware should've added more vents or at least included a heatsinks for all m.2 slots.

 

No, cooling capacity is not the issue.
It's the unnecessary bursts of too much voltage that should be avoided.

Undervolt the whole curve and cap it at the top.

Edit: Exact voltage depends on each cards ASIC, but from what I have seen an undervolt of up to 50mV- at the top clocks should be within reach.
e.g. set a card that boosted up to 1.062v to something like 1.025v

 

ah.. something like a "surge" or "spike" in voltage. that explains a lot. thanks

 

Ok I did a test tonight and here are the results:

Setup :
1. CPU (i7 8700)- 150 mV offset (XTU)
2. GPU -RTX 2080 DGFF power normal (out of the box profile)
3. 2x330W - correctly showed in Bios as 660W.
2x16 GB Corsair (aftermarket)
1x1TB Crucial P1 (aftermarket)

Cooling:
3. Full speed fans profile
4. Cooler Master U3 (3 + 3 fans - USB)
5. original everything (cooling pads/cooling paste/CPU is not delided)
6. start temps:
a) CPU 34C
b) GPU 31C
7. Ambient Temperature 27 C

Software used:
8. AIDA64 - stress test 30 min (CPU/Cache/MEM/ GPU)


After 30 min general results:

Max CPU temp core 93 C (hottest core)
Average CPU was 88 C (hottest core)
Average VCore (CPU) - 1.094 V
Average CPU speed 4.289 GHz

GPU temp started 70C reached 79C (after 30 min)

vGPU started at 1.063 - decreased around 1.05 then around 1.043 (stayed there for about 10-15 min, around min 16 I started to overclock the GPU core:
a. phase 1 (min 16) initially added +60 offset (GPU actual frequency 1935)
b. phase 2 (min 20) added +130 offset (GPU actual frequency 1995)
c. phase 3 (min 28) added + 136 offset (GPU actual frequency 2010)

Initially GPU frequency 1905 - decreased up to 1875 and stabilize there, except the first 20-30 seconds the GPU voltage was not passing 1.05 (maybe for 5-10 sec it was 1.063 at the beginning). First 12 min the gpu voltage was 1.05 / last 18 min it was 1.043.

After I started to overclock (min 16) I noticed that the VDDC was dropping from time to time at 1.018, causing a drop both in core frequency as well in temp, there were a few spikes like that, so I presume there is a power state at 1.018 which is hit based on GPU temp or some power draw limits.

My GPU is scaling like this:

offset(+) - Core frequency
0 ------ 1890
15 ----- 1905
30 ----- 1920
45 ----- 1930
55 ----- 1935
60 ----- 1950
90 ----- 1965
105 ---- 1980
120 ---- 1995
135 ---- 2010
150 ---- 2025
165 ---- 2040
180 ---- 2055

 

Prema walks in randomly in the thread, it's like a classroom when all the kids are messing around and then suddenly the school headmaster walks in and everybody gets quiet and listens.

Hi Prema! Good to see you around

 

The 51m pushes only a 1080p screen where as the R4 and 5 had the option for 1440p and QHD.

 

I am curious as to how exactly do you claim your free division 2 game. I’ve been trying everything I can, signed into the tobii app and the tobii hub and I’ve just been trying everything I can, but but on the website it still says not connected with the tobii. Any help would be appreciated?

 

If you’re talking about the Samsung NVMe drives, the hotter temp sensor is the controller, the cooler one is the NAND.

 

If you make an account on there website and register the tracker than you can claim it on the website. If the tracker does not work i would run the internal troubleshoot on the tobii experience app and then send the report to tobii. They helped me up and running within a day.

 

Yes

Maybe. My Aorus X9 had a QHD screen and still PCH temp wasn't an issue.
My opinion is that 1080p is spot on for gaming. Even if I liked my 1440p, I'd rather have a higher framerate than a higher resolution. Especially on a 17".

 

i can understand that. But achieving high FPS on 2560 x 1440 is easy, the heat and gpu utulization it comes with, puts it on a whole nother level compared to 1080p. a laptop that's worth 3/4 grand shouldn't have a low resolution like 1080p for starters but that's my opinion. same with phones, 1080p feels midrange to me.

 

FINALLY. damn Finally

Laptop finally just got status "Shipped".
So Laptop Burned 16th march in the evening>
Called support on Monday 18th of march, laptop was picked up the day after, the 19th of March they came and took the laptop in.
Thursday the 21th I got a call that I will be getting a replacement unit And that it would be ordered the same day. I had to double check and confirm the order the next day 22st of March
Replacement did got into status shipped moments ago.

Now usually 1 to 1 and a half week for the shipment to reach me,
And now hoping my unit arrives without issues.

 

good news bro, my ordered 26/03 has entered into production today with expected shipment tomorrow

 

Guys I plan to delid my 9900K at some point. So all I need is the following two items right?

https://www.amazon.com/Rockit-88-De...5&s=gateway&sprefix=cpu+delidd,aps,325&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Griz...=liquid+metal&qid=1554711220&s=gateway&sr=8-3

 

I used the RockitCool kit with the 89 model (for i9) and solder remover. It worked like a charm.

 

on a laptop, I'd never want more than FHD to see things super sharp at the native resolution without DPI scaling; and higher frame rates!

 

Sweet, thanks!

 

How do you set your cpu at .950v? I cant lower mine more than 1.1v. Do you use an external program or do you use AWCC? Same with the voltage of the GPU?

 

So is this the reason those 2080s were frying?

Yes, do you happen to know what is the acceptable temperature range for each one?

 

Brought my Area 51m and 4K monitor in my business trip to Beijing

Around 11 pounds in backpack, excluding the power bricks

Btw, anyone knows any updates on the limitation of ram speed at 2400mhz?