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

Actually I do have a problem with this newly arrived Alienware Area 51M. The 9900K CPU gets far too hot, and reaches temps of 100 degrees Celcius during gaming on Battlefield V with fans on performance mode, so I’ve requested RMA for a new replacement unit. I tried opening the laptop up hoping to repaste the grease on the CPU with Kryonaut, and get that super hot temp down. Managed to remove the L8 screws, but struggled with removing the back of the casing that covers the back exhaust, separating it was just not possible at all no matter how many times I tugged at it, it felt like it was glued or something, maybe I missed a screw, not sure. Anyway, I gave up, put all the screws back in and decided on returning it for a new unit.

I don’t think the CPU should be reaching 100 C on day one of ownership, that’s taking the piss right there. Also 45 C when idle is a bit fishy too.

The laptop arrived with scratches on the top lid too which is depressing, to say the least. Definitely would like a replacement, the wait for it will be dreadful, but it will be worth it in the long run.

 

The metalpads shouldn't degrade but I wouldn't bother with one if you want lowest temps.
Liquid Extreme has no reviews anywhere. But it can't be worse than how CL completely messed up with their newer Ultra formula, when the old reliable formula was apparently just basic galinstan.
Conductonaut is conductonaut.

Why not just make your own? You can even increase the amount of indium to increase the w/mk a bit (might affect longevity).
https://www.reddit.com/r/watercooli...yd_liquid_metal_thermal_paste_and_so_can_you/
All you need is Gallium, Tin, Indium, a blowtorch and a crucible.
https://imgur.com/a/T6JlP

 

my ordered on March 28th arrived April 23 with bios 1.2.0

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll stick to Conductonaut and no I don't want to make my own, I'd rather pay someone 15 bucks and have it done.

 

and? what's the issue? you can update it yourself!

 

updating the bios to version 1.3.2 was easy, while the update to vbios 200w continues to give me error ... bah

 

Maybe he feels as though there’s an issue with either the System BIOS or VBIOS that needs to be resolved before he takes the dive in updating one or both of them. I’m certain that there are no issues that can pop up from updating those two to the latest versions, but you never know. Those latest versions may be buggy in some way, I’m no Dell hardware developer so can’t say for sure. Those new firmwares seem safe enough to update to though.

 

Make sure the file is not blocked, check this guide:

"Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

 

very interesting, I go immediately to try

 

Yeah, McAfee seems to block a process from running shortly after starting the setup file for the VBIOS update. Disabling real time virus protection, or removing the antivirus altogether should get things running normally. The VBIOS update is also very quick to perform in comparison to the System BIOS process.

 

no way

 

I think concern is first batch laptop, not post fix (hopefully) batch

 

This is my stock curve:


This is the curve I had best results with so far, though have to test more. To make sure:



So essentually it's a downvolt for everything below 1900MHz, But a downclock for everything above 1900MHz.
When gaming the heavier games. I was never able to sustain anything above 1900Mhz, perhaps only like the 1st minute, not even. Or on games that don't load the GPU 100%.
Due to thermals lowering the boost frequency, and also constantly hitting the power throttle. I was always strickly above 925mV with stock settings. So I wanted to make sure to go below 900 to see any temperature differences as I would reach above 80 with 925.

So I picked 875mV. Looked around to see what is the best frequency I could possibly run on that voltage. and took 1875Mhz. And set that as a Maximum cap.

Test on overwatch was great. Maps where I had 100% usage and high temps, now run at like 90% gpu usage at much lower temps.
Though will have to test Metro exodus. Opening it and running it for 5 min, gave me 73 degrees. But will have to play like 20-30 minutes to see what temps it will reach.

You think is is a fine curve? Also I don't mind losing some performance if it directly translates into significantly better temps. as I most definitely want to be below or equal to 75 degrees at all times.

Note: Got really late. will be back tomorrow

 

Any update on eligibility for Nvidia promos buying direct?

 

Everytime I run the OC scanner it gets to the 4th scan or whatever and crashes my machine.

Happened on my old machine and my replacement.

 

Asking this for a friend since his account is yet to be approved by moderator.

His area 51m powers off when both chargers are switched off simulataneously at heavy load like gaming. If chargers are removed 1 by 1 then games run fine. Games can be launched on battery only and would still run alright. Heavy games like metro exodus cause power off with both chargers switched off simultaneously but light games like Battlefield 3 are fine.

Can someone confirm if their area 51m works fine with both power bricks turned off at same time? He was using a adapter to power both plugs from same socket. Spec was i9 9900k with RTX 2080.

 

I feel like an idiot... my mind just doesn't wrap around what this graph is trying to show. And, I mean, I finished quite a few college math courses, lol.

I mimicked your settings exactly (thank you!) and had tremendous luck. My GPU was pretty much insta-climbing to 84c on Performance Fans in Overwatch, and then climbing another degree or so after 30 minutes. With these settings, I insta-climb to about 68, and then climb to about 72-73 after 30 minutes. That's a solid 10+ degree improvement, and a solid ~7-8 degrees under that "80c limit" people were talking about. Hopefully a repaste with TG will drop me another couple degrees, allowing me to stay right around 70c.

All that said, I still don't get what's happening. Your graph for example... I get that for each frequency (Y axis), the X axis is the corresponding amount of voltage that will be used. At 1875hz, you're using 875mv. But then what's all that to the right of your point? Does that not matter? Does any one clock only use the mV most to the left of the X axis?

 

Its not a scatter plot. Its a frequency table. When the Y frequency increases by 0 the X frequency will also not increase. This is how they set it up at least. In reality frequencies are trigonometric functions. The curve should look different, and I think the flat line represents Tangent?

 

Does anyone with the 9700k and 2060 have proof it comes with the upgraded cooling? (picture). Because Umar Khan and alienware forum moderators have been saying to people "2060 comes with base cooling and 2070 and 2080 come the the upgraded cooling". Plus I found a guy on youtube saying his 9700k with 2060 didn't come with side vents, even though others have mentioned theirs have, and it is written that way on the dell website. I just hope it's not a crapshoot whether you get the upgraded cooling or not.

 

It comes with a different heatsink, that's all. The side vent may be blocked, I dont remember. But it doesn't matter as you can unblock it when you get the upgraded heatsink, if you upgrade to the 2070/2080.

 

Yeah I'm asking if the 9700k upgrade will net you the upgraded heatsink even with the 2060.

 

Ohhh. I don't think so. I think its based off of the GPU you choose and not the processor.

 

Try upgrading gpu drivers (do a clean re-install) and try again. It seems that either you are not giving it administrative privileges when running or there is a messed up registry related to driver. Also, could happen because of Microsoft's windows updates. I'd suggest that you fully update your windows first. Then install your dell drivers on top of them by doing clean install for each of the components and then attempt the vbios install again.

 

Hi i am new here and recently got my AW area 51m.. kindly see the video and let me know it someone is facing same issue its very weird

Does anyone has same issue?

 

Had the same problem but don’t know the reason.

 

Its normal to drop fps omg...because you run on battery..

 

I am not bothered for dropping fps... i am worried for this abrupt shutdown.. atleast it should give user time to close and shutdown

 

Hmm. That's strange. I'll try it on mine tomorrow and see if it's meant to be a "feature," or if something is wrong with your machine.

 

1. Open windows power options and enable "high performance",
2. Open geforce experience and disable whisper mode and battery boost...
3. Open nvidia control panel and add specific profile for game and select "prefer maximum performance"
4. open command center and under system profile select "my profile" and thermal to "performance"

All games will run well... and with the same settings with undervolt applied to my CPU via throttlestop -125 both cache and core.. see the performance and temps

 

thnx a lot..will be a big help ..thnx once again

 

Did you try in two diferent sokets in room?

 

Yesterday just tried to further oc my 9700k from 4.8 to 4.9ghz with -80mv downvoltage:



In game temperature was good, around 80 in BFV and around 60s in SoTR.

Only running R20 would get the cores above 90 degrees.

Is it still acceptable if my only purpose of 51m is for gaming?

 

Its a known issue and a feature ripped off from XPS. The battery can provide only max of 65W-75W and beyond that the battery shuts off because temps exceed 60C-65C operating temps. The same issue is present on Echo models from 2014-till date. Never game on battery unless you love an adventure of blowing up your house or office. Battery FW used by Dell is not very great.
Never game on battery. If you still you to game use nvidia battery boost to limit FPS to 30 or your choice to prevent shut-offs.

 

Yes seems like when both adapters are plugged then laptop does not revert to battery during power failure.. where as it should simply downclock as i showed in video with both adaptes unplugged one after another..but definitely not sudden switch off

 

Its not about gaming on battery i never game on it as well.. "ITS ABOUT THE ABRUPT SHUTDOWN INCASE OF POWER FAILURE WHILE GAMING ,INSTEAD OF DOWNCLOCKING IT JUST TURNS OFF INSTANTLY.. THAT MAD DAMAGE MOBO / CPU /RAM OR EVEN SSD"

 

You should read my post again. 65-75W is max the battery can provide(it includes all components). 47x on all cores, RTX 2080 boost clocks, GSYNC display, SSDs and RAM should peak around 100W easily, no wonder it shuts down.
@Falkentyne Can we disable battery reporting to EC on A51M like you did on MSI?

 

How to resolve this..i do not want internals damaged..nor can users carry a UPS for laptop everywhere.. any suggestions battery boost is enabled...but when i unplugged everything.. battery could sustain for sometime at lower clockspeed.. so why is it not doing now instead of just "off"

 

Surprisingly..it does not happen few games like doom, battlefield 3 and xplanes 11..
That time too..cpu is at stock boost 4.7 (-125undervolted) and gpu also at stock 1900-1950 ..in these games it downclocks and let battery take the load.. its strange

Sent from my SM-A505F using Tapatalk

 

They(dell) use a whitelist and blacklist filter in BIOS to achieve that.
There's no way to resolve it and we're at the mercy of Dell. Like I said, it even affects Dell laptops 5 years ago so it won't go away. For now, whilst gaming switch to stock clocks and disable turbo boost on battery using TS. That's the only alternative unless you can buy Pure sine wave UPS with big battery to avoid power-off.
@Papusan When will dell iron out the pending 5 yr issues?

 

Okay let me explain it to you as simple as possible.

So basically indeed that curve shows at what GPU core frequency how much voltages to use. And these are the four base rules:
- Moving the whole graph up is an overclock. (without changing voltages, so forcing the GPU to run at higher clock frequencies at same voltages)
- Moving the whole graph down is a down clock (same as above but lowering the frequencies)
- Moving the whole graph to the right is an increase in voltages. (to make your gpu use higher voltages on same Frequencies)
- Moving the whole graph to the left is a decrease in voltages. Basically Downvolting. (To make your gpu use lower voltages on same frequencies)

Of course it's not possible to move the nodes to left right. But you have to adjust them just like as if you moved the whole graph to the left/right.

Before we get into it. At a given Frequency, the GPU needs a certain amount of voltage to be able to do all calculations at said Frequency correctly, Give it too much voltage, you can physically harm your machine. Lower the voltages too much, it won't have enough voltages to reliable do all calculations correctly at that frequency. How much exactly it needs depends on whole lot of factors, where "silicon lottery" one of the most "famous" one.

Now. Unfortunately downvolting isn't as simple as moving the whole curve to the left in this case. It could work for certain machines but not all. Definitely not on this Alienware Area 51M, if your target is to get lower temps. Because there is the boost frequency that lowers itself the higher the temperature goes. And there is the constant power limit throttling that you get (I didn't try 200 watt vbios, don't want to increase the GPU power limit, essentially allowing more heat).

So there are a few things you should know. changing the frequency without changing the voltages can affect temperatures, However changing voltages affects temperatures significantly. So you have to know that both can affect temperatures where voltages of course the main source of heat.
Besides that. When the GPU is at 100% usage, for the Area51M It CANNOT sustain mv of >= 1000. Due to the power limit I reckon (perhaps also the temps a little but I will get there).
And then there is the behaviour of the Nvidia core clock Boost, So as you can see on the curve. Even though the GPU is rated at 1590 MHz, you can see the maximum frequency is around or above 1950 on that curve, so there is that first, (of course you can also see to sustain those boost frequencies, you have a significantly higher core voltages in use compared to like 1590 MHz). But that is not only it when it comes to boost frequencies. When your temperatures start to get I think above 50-60 degrees, (not sure but I'm pretty positive it's around there), nvidia actually downclocks the whole GPU, And I mean actually move that whole curve down little by little, the higher the temperatures get.

So even though I selected 1875MHz on 875mV. If temps get high enough, you might get results such as 1860MHz or 1845MHz while you are still on 875mv, even though 1860MHz and 1845MHz should run at lower voltages according to my curve.

So knowing all this, let us get to my curve.
So I monitored my gaming, During the heavy games, where gpu usage is 100%, (which is where downvolting matters the most), My GPU was around 1780-1860 MHz, fluctuating roughly within these values. And the votages were fluctuating within roughly these values: 925-975 mV. Especially when reaching 82 degrees, it wouldn't even go higher than 925mv.

So I realized that basically 925mv is still too high for my GPU. And I basically don't want my GPU to reach those mV. So as a starting point for my first real attempt of undervolting after doing tests and looking stuff up myself, instead of mimicking other people their curves.I decided that I want to be at 875mv MAX at any given time.

Now looking at the stock curve of course what you could do is, Flatten out everything to the right of the node which is on 875mV. So on the stock curve you see the node of 875mv on 1725MHz.
So when you flatten out everything after that node. The highest point of your curve is now 1725Mhz. There is no other node that is on a higher frequency, which basically means, that you put a Manual frequency top limit on your GPU. So your GPU should never go above 1725Mhz if configured like that (it can still go a little higher depending on temperatures and behavior of boost frequency. But It should never like reach 1800Mhz anymore)

HOWEVER, there is also this. When there are multiple nodes on the same frequency, only the node with the lowest mV will be used, the rest is ignored as if it doesn't exist. So the node for 1725MHz with the lowest voltage is 875mV, So all my games, even at 100% load, should never go roughly above 875mv (again it might vary a little due to boost behavior, but that should be marginal).

Now doing this means that you lower the performance of your gpu. you simply did put a limit on your gpu. Yeah sure gpu will get lower temps, but it will also get slower. To compensate for that, we are going to overclock what we have. So we now have a curve with a mv limit. which is at 875, as there is no other node that has higher mv with any frequency that is higher than the max frequency.

So I said overclock was moving the curve upwards right. So that's what I did. Moving the whole curve, causing the frequency on 875mV to be higher. In my case 1875MHz. So it's an overclock of 150MHz. This basically compensates for the loss of performance. Now we basically overclocked our GPU. But set a limit to how high the Clock frequency can get, and how high the miliVolts can get.

Now when you change that curve and hit apply, some nodes shift a little, not sure if that's done by the gpu or msi, but yeah it's there. And when you hit apply at higher temperatures like e.g. when above 70 degrees. You see immediately the whole curve jump down, essentially seeing the current state of nvidia boost performing downclock. Don't worry though, what you applied is still roughly correct. Even though you see at that moment a complete different curve, when you save that profile and reselect it, you still see roughly your original curve.

To be quite honest, I didn't do a whole curve increase of 150Mhz, only like 105Mhz, but I increased the 875mv part 150Mhz, although when hitting apply it was changed on its own to 135Mhz. also allowing the gpu to get to 881mV at 1875MHz.

But I haven't tested this enough yet. I will have to do more testing, and see if there is a better max voltage / frequency combination I can use while sustaining low temperate and stable frequencies.

Hope this helps you understand a little more. and sorry for the long post. I wish someone explained it to me like this when I initially asked.

 

Thank you for pointing out OC Scanner, never noticed that, or even heared about it. I ran it and got this result. Though I'm not familiar with what this means. I reckon it means, yous system is stable enough, but not 100%. So glitches and issue may occur?

 

also to me has reported 90% confidence but overclock on the core of + 124MHz

 

if you need 5 degrees less on cpu and gpu without touching anything thermaltake massive 20 rgb does a good job

 

Is it normal that 3dmark says that the drivers are not approved? my gpu drivers are stock, does it have something to do with the problem that I can't update the vbios?

 

I don't think it will show over 90% confidence level.

 

After using Alienware M17xR3 for 8 years without any major issues whatsoever, just placed an order for Area 51m. Was quoted for £4300 on the website. Got it at a stellar price of £3500(I am in the UK).

Configuration and add ons -
i9-9900
NVIDIA 2080 8GB
17.3 FHD 144Hz screen with G-sync and Tobii eye tech
512 M2 SSD (will add another 512 M2 and a 1 tb 2.5 Samsung Evo/Pro)
8gb RAM (lowest since upgrading to 64gb is half as expensive from Amazon compared to Dell)
Mcafee for 36 months
Windows Pro
Elite Gaming mouse
Large Alienware mouse mat
4 years of Premium support plus with onsite service
4 years accidental damage protection
- the last 2 was alone was quoted for 738 quid.

Can I ask what make of the SSD does the system come with? Is the heat spreader included(for the occupied and empty M2 slots)? Any thoughts?

For the 2.5 1tb SSD I am leaning towards Samsung EVO as I cant justify the higher pricepoint of the PRO.

 

RESOLVED THE CASE FINALLY .... FOR INFO OF THOSE WHO FACE SAME ISSUE HERE IS THE SOLUTION
​

ISSUE WAS MAINLY EXCESS VOLTAGE WHICH WAS NOT GETTING CONTROLLED EITHER VIA THROTTLE STOP OR INTEL XTU

FOR THOSE WHO MAY FACE THE SAME ISSUE ..ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO BE DONE IS TO MAKE AN OVERCLOCK PROFILE IN COMMAND CENTER AND FIX THE VOLTAGE TO 1.2 AT 5GHZ

SEE THE ATTACHED SCREENSHOTS AND BEFORE AND AFTER 3D MARK RESULTS ...

FINALLY NO MORE SHUTTING DOWN DURING POWER FAILURE








​

 

Did you guys know there are quad speakers in the front of this thing? That's a first and pretty darn rad.

 

Does anyone know of any site that I can leave company claims? in the case I will leave a complaint from HIDEvolution

 

Read... Approved Drivers for UL Benchmarks

You mean only the Dells proprietary app will works properly for voltage tuning on Area-51m? From what I remember... You can't get all cores at 5.0GHz with that app.