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

Intel XTU to undervolt. MSI Afterburner to undervolt GPU, or overclock GPU.

Look at a guide for undervolting the GPU as it's a lot more complicated than undervolting the CPU.

 

Hey man,

I’ve got a 9900K and 2080 combo too, but I see way higher temps on my CPU running BFV on ultra, DXR off.

GPU is under control (max 75°-80° C or so, can’t remember), and doesn’t throttle, but CPU does reach 100° C and throttles.

I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 12.5 wmk to repaste, and fujipoly 1.5 mm ultra extreme 17 wmk on most parts and 1 mm fujiploy extreme 11 wmk on the thin rectangle on the GPU. I kept the 1 crappy 2 mm pad next to that because I didn’t have pads thick enough. I also repadded the passive bottom heatsink. All pads make good contact and I tested pasting, it looked good.

I undervolted CPU by -85 mV with Throttlestop, maintaining stock clocks. I undervolted the GPU too to 975mV max voltage.

I used thermal grizzly's suggested paste spreading tool, and am suspecting a lot of air gets trapped in it when spreading.

Other than that, wtf?!? My temps are out of control and practically the same as factory stock.

Latest BIOS, 200W VBIOS are installed.

Any thoughts? @iunlock please help?

 

Just thought I would attach a pic of my Intel XTU screen prior to me making any changes. Does this all look correct to you guys? If so, I'm tracking that I just need to move the Core Voltage Offset slider to the left and start with about -100 and go from there stress testing each time.

 

Hi everyone.
So my GPu temps were above my comfort zone. did quite the research on properly undervolting a gpu that is engaging boost frequencies, but not at max frequency essentially downclocking the boost frequency, and also faces power throttling at the same time.
Was a little hectic, but managed. And am really happy with my GPU temps that practially never go above 75 degrees, but is most of the time lower than that.

So now that I have good results with my GPU, do you reckon I should also Undervolt my CPU. Of course here it's much simpler. Basically move the slider and do some testing, of course with reasonable values.
I'm asking this because I already had from the start great CPU temps with this machine. Never reached 80 on the harshest of games. (it's the 9700K by the way). Or should I still do it simply for good measure. After all, even lower temps and lower power consumption is always good right?
So What do you guys reckon I should do?

 

Looks like dell just updated me and it now shows my replacement(with all the free upgrades) should arrive by May 2 instead of May 7. Very fast service, only about a week wait for a new system.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Wonder if you'll get the model with updated VRM's. Care to share pics when it arrives?

 

According to the rep I’m in contact with, the problem was addressed and any new model has the “fixes”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Hey guys.

Is it normal to be invoiced, and not have the system delivered , looking at delivery estimates , it will be around 2 weeks + after invoice .

The part that annoys me, is that the warranty started at invoice date, so will loose 2 weeks at least. Used to apple when I get invoiced and warranty starting at delivery . Day or two is okay, not 2+ weeks ....

 

AW themselves said it was TN on YouTube

 

Anyone with the i7 9700 care to tell me what numbers they have set in the AWCC for the CPU?

I've been playing with mine for 2 days and cannot seem to get the 4.9 GHZ on any core. Mostly stay at 4600 or 4700 on all cores. Very frustrating.

 

AWCC is bugged , use intel XTU


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Config file edit...in game

 

Hi all, I'm thinking of ordering an Area-51m (9700K + RTX 2060) but I remember reading a while back that Dell uses a crappier cooling solution (less heat pipes?) if you configure it with 2060 rather than 2070/2080, has this been confirmed?
Also how well does the CPU maintain boost clocks under long sustained loads? I need it for large RTL synthesis workloads that are heavily multi-threaded and take 10-20hrs per run. My alternative would be getting a P750TM.

 

It comes with a lower end heatsink yes, but the heatsink can be upgraded if you upgrade to a 2070/2080 in the future.

 

I put in two ssd m.2 and they are showing up as SATA drives . Anyone know why?

 

Are they Nvme?

 

No they are not, I had one of them in my Alienware r3 17 and it showed up has ssd m.2

 

Oh okay, I dont think its anything to worry about as long as you're getting close to advertised speeds. It would be another story if they were Nvme drivers though.

Could just be a bug, not really sure, sorry.

Edit: Under BIOS it should say m.2 PCIe ssd 1/2. Did you check the bios?

 

I even redownload the bios to see if it would fix it. Bios says I have 3 hard drives and zero ssds. Just wondering if anyone else has this issue. It takes for ever to boot and install programs. Kinda weird how the r3 17 was so much faster.

 

Does it show them as ssds when you go to optimize them?

Also, is the firmware on them up to date?

 

So came across an odd problem. GPU seems to throttle, but average temps are quite good. Might have to stress test.

 

Well...... now I really have a problem heh. So, I undervolted. I started with -100 offset as per recommended. It worked beautifully at first- in all the same games I ran I was never really getting above 71c on CPU, no more spikes in temps, and my 2080 was even cooler, never getting above 80c. I could even swear my performance was better. I tested different games for about 5 hours with no issues, no heating etc. Then, while playing a game, the laptop shuts down immediately (no bsod, etc).

I think "no worries, must have stressed it enough to do it. I'll back off by 5 and check it again. However, when I pressed the power button, NOTHING. No light, no fans kicking on, not anything. So, I look online and see recommendations to remove battery and hold power for 2 minutes, then try plugging in ac adapters and turning it on.... nothing. I remove battery, remove cmos for about 15 minutes, try putting battery back in and....nothing......

I'm about to go to bed, and I have removed ram, battery and cmos and will let it all sit out for the night (also held power down for 4 minutes before doing that).

I'm pretty concerned. I've already had to have the GPU replaced in this thing and now this. I'm deathly afraid it is component failure like the motherboard or something. No bad smells, no ozone. But not a sign of life when pressing power. I'm hoping someone here can give some hope, bc if I have to send it back from over here (afghanistan), it will be 3 mo this before I see it again.

 

Yikes. Sounds dead to me man, unfortunately.

 

Ok try this now.. remove xtu and throttlestop.. open command center and make a new oc profile.. disable the gpu overclock and under cpu select manual... put cpu to voltage and cache to extreme left...like shown,,and try..

 

It has to do with bios I believe . No matter what bios should be able to see them. I updated my old r3 17 bios for the system to see them.
I might have to downgrade it maybe it’s a bug . My 51m came with the latest bios

 

Might just have to do a reinstall of windows.

 

I hope you do realize that if they are not NVME then they are SATA drives....

 

And it still should show in BIOS m.2 ssd drives

 

Run Crystal Diskmark or some other benchmark tool and see if they are getting the correct speeds. If so, I wouldn't even worry about it.

ETA: Also try pulling the CMOS battery before going through the hassles of reloading BIOS or reinstalling Windows.

 

Thank you I’ll try that and I’m not getting those speeds I should be getting I can tel because how long it takes to boot and install stuff.

 

HIDevolution update: So Ted from HIDevolution contacted me and offered $150 cash back over the hassle that I had to go through which I accepted. He also told me that they'll be taking steps to make sure that this doesn't happen again. However, being a skeptic that I am, I will be careful going forward and even if you are getting your machines from them, take it apart just to take a peek at the thermal job inside. If everything looks OK, just replace the thermal paste and call it a day. A little insurance by double checking things is better than weeks of wait in the form of back and forth commute of dead laptops.

 

May your beast RIP. Before you ship it back to Dell for replacement, take a look at the MOSFETs on the GPU and see if you had a lemon. Take a look here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-922#post-10902592

 

No problem!!

 

4K 120hz will work fine. The DGFF graphics card is hooked up to the internal display using eDP 1.4 which supports such resolution/refresh rate.

 

Has anyone been able to use XTU for voltage control and not have the voltage fluctuate? I assume this is vdroop or something, but not 100% as I've only just started learning about overclocking recently.

What I mean is if I set my multiplier to 50x and set voltage to say, 1.3v, it will still go above and below that.

I'd appreciate any help with getting the voltage to stay at the voltage I set.

 

I'm sort of a newcomer in PC space, didn't even had/saw a PC 20 years ago

 

That's not normal in europe. I got the invoice the moment my system was shipped. After that it took about a week to get to me.

 

But if you're double checking after doing or choosing thermal mods you're better off with stock dell paste because it decreases the price and you can do repaste or repad yourself.

 

Think I remember reading somewhere, may have been the TS guide here, that that is caused by LLC (Load Line Calibration). You can fight it by monitoring how much higher it is going over the static voltage you are trying to set and offset that amount on the voltage you are setting.

Ex. You have 1.25v set, but it is pulling 1.29v. Set your static voltage to 1.21 to achieve the maximum you want to hit of 1.25v. Given that you are stable at 1.21.

Won't be perfect, but will help not to go over the amount you want by much if any.

This is the latest response from UncleWebb on Static Voltage in the Throttlestop Guide Thread. If you do not know who he is; he created TS.

"You can use the FIVR Static voltage adjustment in ThrottleStop to request a fixed voltage but there is no guarantee that the CPU you are using will honor that request. I tried this on an 8550U and the static voltage request was ignored. Very few people in recent memory in this forum are using Static voltage. Lots of people with the 8750H are having great success by using the TS Adaptive voltage setting combined with a negative offset voltage of about -125 mV. What sort of problem are you trying to fix by using Static voltage?"

 

Yikes that would be just *face palm* ... Needless FUD lol...

Samsung drives are NOT affected. I literally own them all..PM, SM 800's, 900's and other brands. EVO's work 1000% perfectly fine.

There are no issues. None. Zero. Samsung's work just fine. New or old firmware it doesn't matter.

As you can see there are many here who also own many systems and use primarily Samsung drives of all sorts. Zero issues.

Great roster...

I think that might have been an isolated issue with that guy, because bios or ssd firmware does not matter. They all work without issue (Samsung Dives) of all models. As you can see spec sheets mean very little.

No, because my Samsung drives all worked just fine and the A51M was shipped with bios 1.2.0. .... Same with @custom90gt and I'm sure many others.

This whole thing about bios 1.3.0 is just FUD (Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt) and misinformation.

The new bios release has nothing to do with addressing an issue that has never existed.

More power to those of us that still hasn't gone up in smoke lol... Both of my systems are running just fine. Heck if there are new VRM's being implanted and if something does happen (which I doubt at this point) at least warranty has it covered.

Same here. My unit shipped with 1.2.0 as well and I was running my EVO's in there just fine.

The firmware versions are different for the retail and consumer line, but that has nothing to do with their compatibility in working in the A51M. They all work regardless of what firmware it is on. 100%. Tested and Proven.

Oh interesting? I find that my 1TB EVO Plus, for example runs cooler in my A51M vs the 17R4. I have it installed in the horizontal bay that lays over the mobo, closet to the left fan.

Going wayyy back in time. Oh how times have changed.

Regarding the OLED panels, I'm a big fan as well. I would honestly take an OLED QHD @ 60Hz with a very low response time of >1ms over a FHD IPS panel @ 144Hz. I think we'll be able to get OLED quality displays here soon, but it'll be from a newer OLED technology. I hope that will give us the refresh rates of 144Hz +

Even though 60Hz OLED is what it is at only 60Hz, I've been saying for a long time that at least to me I've always noticed that it was more pleasant to game on the 60Hz OLED vs even a 60Hz IPS ...

Take for example the screenshot below showing the new Asus portable OLED panel (terrible, don't buy, wannabe OLED attempt-joint venture by 5 different companies trying to be Samsung and LG, epic failed attempt, worst of all with a price tag of $4000 for a 22" panel lol..it's a joke, but anyhow for the purpose of illustration to my point).... where the details are a lot more vibrant and crispier than the IPS on the right at 60Hz. For what it's worth that is lol... but this is to point out that I do enjoy gaming on OLED screens despite their 60Hz refresh rate.



Burn in issues with OLED? That's what screen savers are for lol... right? I'm sure the current issues with burn in will improve as the technology advances ...

Oh and to extinguish the whole argument that exists online about refresh rate is everything, totally not true...

Proof:
Give a PRO Gamer the crappiest monitor and give a really good gamer the BEST monitor to date.... The PRO Gramer would still eat the really good gamer for lunch.

Case closed lol. All riiiseee.... court is dismissed haha...

.

Regarding Silicon Motion controller, there is no way I'd pick that over Samsung's Phoenix Controller, which is far superior. Even from the link you've referenced you can see that the Samsung controllers consume much lower power at idle and active idle. In those charts lower is better.

The article also points out that the idle sleep states are broken on the silicon motion.

Here's another example showing the lower power consumption of Samsung controllers.



Reminder, lower is better as indicated. These are m.2 drives... silicon motion didn't even make it on this chart as it is a lower tier controller / cheap option to serve in the low to mid tier m.2's which is an emerging market for the budget minded, hence we're now seeing QLC drives going crazy in that sector.

When looking at m.2 NVMe's it's important to keep in mind that there are different classes. High End, Mid Tier and Low Tier drives.... they are not created equal.

 

No problem for you doesn't mean the people who have issues with Samsung drives or any other drives are incorrectly using it.
Not All drives are not created equally. Maybe a bad batch of drives were the cause or maybe something else.

 

I was thinking for sheer loudness the P870*** is hard to beat, good to know the 51-m has a decent sound output though, might bite the bullet next year on one when prices settle.

 

60hz without vsync on looks kinda jerky/feels jerky, even on Oled in my opinion. So for gaming I would still prefer the 144hz IPS screens definitely.

Burn-in will always be an issue with oled, simply because the limited lifespan, I have seen multiple LG tv's with burn-in after a year or 2, mostly in house holds where they play games.

But also the change in white balance over time is annoying, I'm just waiting for the non organic self emitting light leds now.

 

I think given the track record of almost 100% of Samsung Drive users here and the almost non existent isolated issues, it's pretty conclusive that the issues you're mentioning are very isolated lol...

As for not all drives being created equal, yes I agree. I've been saying this all along and have just mentioned it in my reply earlier.

Any batch of electronics can contain a bad batch.. it's the nature of the beast.

What I'm making clear here is that there are no compatibility issues with Samsung Drives on AW and as you've seen with many confirmations by Veteran users here, it's just important to not create FUD on an issue that is almost non existent. That's all.

I can say for sure that the sound characteristics are very different between the A51M and P870 in their own unique ways aside to just dB's... The A51M sounds more subtle / white noise like you would experience on sitting in the front section of an airplane for example. The noise of the P870 is more coarse/scratchy/rough, more closely to a hair dryer with a higher whine/pitch.

The A51M is on max fans right now and it doesn't bother me at all. When gaming I've asked my team mates if they can hear any feedback from the fans and the reply was no. Whereas on the P870 and even the P775 that I've owned, due to the pitch of the sound those did register through the mic on max fans.

Hope that helps...

When I go from gaming on the A51M for example to the AW13 with the OLED, I can definitely notice a difference for sure as expected. My reference to choosing the OLED @ 60Hz was more due to just my personal preference of liking the rich contrast that it has to offer, but yea it's not ideal for FPS gaming. - Since I usually hook up the laptop to the external monitor anyway the priorities for me may be a little different than others who use their laptop screens as their primary.

With my OLED TV's I make sure to set the photo album to come on (screen saver) when it's at idle, but I tend to just keep them off if not in use. The Samsung OLED in the game room is one of the first OLED TV's that was released that I bought used a few years ago and still to date there is no burn in, likely due to it being maintained properly by not leaving it on a static image. The LG OLED is only a few years old and the PS4 Pro is hooked up to that so there is gaming going on for sure... no burn in yet... Fingers crossed lol... so far so good, but we'll see... perhaps the proper maintaining (screen saver/turning off when not in use) is paying off... who knows...

 

for those who use xtu for tuning, when u bench, does it say power limit throttling and current limit throttling once in a while while bencmarking ?

 

At home I use an external monitor too, at work I dont. But IPS is even fine for design work luckily.

The burn-in at my friends units is also mainly i think because they are at max brightness because of their fairly bright rooms which accelerates it. Just like my previous Galaxy phones which where at max brightness at all time during the day which also have shown rapid burn-in. But changing my usage pattern because of screen limitation is something I hate to do.

THey use th ebuilt in preservation stuff but the max brightness might be just that deciding factor.

 

If someone is intressted i can do a side by side comparison of the a51m 144hz LG and 1440p R5 TN 120Hz Panel.

 

The tech for 120hz OLED screens is already here and present in TV's for ages, but hasn't been implemented in laptops mainly due to high cost and low demand meaning it wouldn't be worthwhile for a manufacturer to create as it wouldn't sell well enough to warrant the RnD and production costs for them. Samsung was even reluctant to make a 60hz OLED for laptops because of low demand vs production costs.

I have a 14" QHD OLED display in my Lenovo X1 Yoga and it rocks. I get around burn in by turning on auto-hide task bar and moving browser tabs around every now and then etc.

 

Samsung has never produced an OLED tv. LG produces OLED tv's Samsung Uses QLED which is a fancy acronym for LCD. Samsung just now has jumped on the OLED bandwagon (for tv's) cause they had trouble manufacturing big OLED screens, while even the most expansive Bang and Oluffsen screens are all from LG. The reason you see no burn in, is because it's an LCD display, not because of the screensaver.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1540893960

 

The oled panels in the alienware 13 are all Samsung. Which goes back to 2015.