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

That does not sound very well, is it circuit breaker in your house ? if yes it would mean your laptop is creating a short circuit somewhere.

Edit: a circuit breaker should at least be able to handle 20Amp. Is it happening on a single power socket, and aren't there more utensils turned on ? (for example an oven, washing machine or anything that uses alot of power like vacuums and things like that) before your circuit breaker switches to off, your power supply should turn itself off to prevent short circuit. After that in the worst case there is always your circuit breaker which is the last line of defense, and should not be triggered at this point. Check to see if your power supply's lights keep burning green (330W) or blue (240watt) when you insert the power sockets in to your laptop.

 

Nothing is really called notebook ram amymore... https://www.techpowerup.com/239654/corsair-launches-the-worlds-fastest-ddr4-sodimm-32gb-memory-kit

2666MHz is the native memory speed for 8th gen https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i7/i7-8700

If they couldn't add in support for 2666MHz ram, this doesn't mean they had to totally skip XMP support.

It's the same engineers whitc fiddle with XPS line and screwed up! Yet again exactly same engineers which introduced Area's power cap (240w) if only single 330w psu is in use.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-759#post-10895950

What's the differences between handle hardware in Area-51m vs. the $5000 usd Alienware m17 ? That's exactly the same challenges there. I can't understand your reasoning for this post.

 

This is usually a problem with old carboned up circuit breakers (the switch style ones). A quick fix is to take the main fuse out and clean the contact areas of the circuit breaker with electrical contact cleaner spray and letting it air dry for a while before putting it back together. There are some huge capacitors within the PSUs, particularly the 330W PSU and momentarily it draws a LOT of current and that spike is enough to set off a low capacity or worn out circuit breaker. This happens with bigger desktop workstation power supplies as well if you install additional noise cancellation filter circuits on the load line that have huge capacities. I suggest plugging the laptop into a higher load capacity line than the usual tiny ones.

 

IMO the sooner you take it apart and investigate whats wrong (or right) inside, the better. Once it's too late then it will be useless and a lot of time will potentially be wasted in replacement process.

 

I will check them when i get home, thanks

 

Thing is. I don't want to repaste myself. My temps are now good. There is nothing else that I can do nomatter what mosfets I have.
I just don't want to potentially increase the risk for another issue by doing a full teardown, as I never did it on a laptop before. I just wanted to know what type of mosfets I had out of curiosity.
This is after all the most expensive system I bought yet.

 

True that was well. Nobody will ever know why Dell does what they do. Except frank and the engineers and they are always very se te rocky and tight lipped. Wish they were like a political and leak like a water faucet.

 

IMHO, I would just run it. If it burns up then get it replaced or return it. I wouldn't walk on eggshells just to try to prevent anything from happening. I'd rather it die within the 30 day return window (in the US) than in 31 days...

 

Temps don't mean anything as the power circuitry and GPU ram chips don't have any temperature measuring circuitry built in or around them. If there is a lousy thermal pad job in there, you won't see the death coming on your temp monitor for this beast.

That'd be OK with ultra books and stuff but this thing is a desktop replacement and needs some more beefy thermal jobs than traditional laptops. Even if it doesn't fail in 30 days, it could fail sooner than it would otherwise do with a good thermal job because heat weakens the GDDR6 memory as well as the power circuitry, especially mosfets. And I don't know about you but I like to keep my laptops forever and if something is wrong, I'd rather contact Dell right there and then and demand replacement instead of waiting for that moment.

 

People who purchase any laptop, let alone the 51M, shouldn't have to modify their laptop. I'm a huge proponent of repasting/repadding and getting things to run at max, but that's for the people who want to do that. It's certainly not for everyone...

 

Finally somoene said this. It's riddiculous you have to repaste a top-end notebook to make it usable...

This sounds to me like "I'm gonna grab myself a new Ferrari from the showroom but I'll replace the brakes, filters and tyres straight away."

 

Thing is I already had a laptop die, had one of the 1st batches. Got it replaced with this one. Just hoping that it will hold on.
And truly I don't have the confidence that I would do a good thermal padding job, once again I never did it on a laptop.
And issue is on laptops that everything has to be leveled correctly.

 

You forgot that most politicians is huge liars And don't forget that politicians stretch the truth more than most

 

I would HOPE that you have the new variant since it was replaced. My advice is to enjoy the laptop.

Right, but let's not go down the political path... Those things always end poorly.

 

I agree with you, but this is a norm of big corporations. Some of the departments get complacent and ruin the hard work of other departments which in this case is apparently the sales department. But just because they screwed up the otherwise good design and a product that is quite powerful, that doesn't mean that you endorse their mistake and just let them waste your time. Time is worth more than 3-4 grand to me. And I'd rather keep such a powerful machine by investing a few hours of my time instead of wasting several weeks cursing and abusing others for my laziness.

 

Woah! Really?
So, what skills do you need to handle this kind of hardware? A $4000 laptop while under minimal stress is dying left, right and center and here you're blaming "people out there with money"? So, what you're saying is if someone buys a Lamborghini or a Ferrari they need to be a mechanic too? It's not as if the owner was driving 200 miles an hour and crashing on the speedway. It's like trying to park in the garage and the wheels are falling off and the engine is burning out while its parked inside your garage.
You should may be get off your high horse and look at what's on the ground.
It is NOT user's fault that the key caps are falling off, the black screen did not appear because they were mishandled and they laptops did not burn out because they were kept next to the fire. All of this happened because of the way they were designed and because of bad QC on Dell's behalf. Period!
Laptop for "professionals" only. Ya right!

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You gotta do everything for the first time at some point in life. I'd say just go for it. It's simple enough to take apart and with the detailed service manual and loads of online tear down videos available, you can easily do it.

Do you know how people use their machines? Sometimes it is lying on the bed with air vents blocked while the "movie" is playing. Sometimes it's lying on a place where there is a table mat stuck underneath choking the life out of it and when it is dead, people don't have a clue what happened. I have serviced almost 2-300 laptops as I was doing a part time job at a local reseller back in the day. The amount of torment people put their machines through is both unbelievable and painful to imagine. And if you rage quit games by stomping your hands on the keyboard, they will definitely fly out. I think we have a habit here on these forums to blow things out of proportion and create unnecessary drama out of nothing.

 

Does it matter if they have a notebook with i9-8950hk or the Area with 9900k (both same graphics)? How can this be any different?

 

That's true, but as an engineer they should plan for this and it should go into the testing.

Having said that, @VoodooChild and anyone else considering replying to these posts, let's remember to keep this civil. Personal attacks are not allowed and will only result in deleted posts.

 

I agree, but the only possible solution to this potential problem is side or top air intake which is not possible in this form factor and design that uses both a hot cpu and a hot gpu. I have a feeling that the thermally lethal combination of 9900K and RTX2080 has come out for the first time in this form factor and that alone could be enough to kill a lot of these machines.

 

As usual the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Yes we shouldn't have to tinker with a 3-4 grand machine to get it running optimally. Back in the early days of Alienware I bet you had a lot more care into QC'ing each unit before it got shipped out.

Look at the sorry amount of ports we get on this big thing! My m17x R3 had double the ports and I used almost every one! This is cost-cutting plain and simple.

Yes, customers for this machine shouldn't have to be technicians to justify owning one- but it is also true that many people are careless and putting the thing on a thick blanket and choking the airflow.

I do really like this machine though, it really feels like a proper step in the right direction even though us early adopters are suffering with problems. Revision 2 will probably be awesome.

Right now the only thing annoying me about my machine, apart from the warm stock thermals, is the plastic creaking sound I get when gently pressing down on top of the screen lid. I wish the top was made from magnesium alloy too

 

I realize that, but Dell should have taken steps to account for that. As a mechanical engineer I had to "think outside of the box" in terms for seeing what may happen to the components. If Dell didn't foresee people using this in bed while watching Netflix or whatever, they that would be totally silly.

 

I agree, but there is no possible work around. The only way to avoid damage with blocked air vents in this situation is to have a thermal shutdown at relatively safer temps and this baby should roll thermally higher spec components than it did in the first batch. The biggest blunder on behalf of Dell is that despite correcting this flaw by upgrading both motherboard and GPU components, they have still not announced a global recall for the older units and are letting them flow in via warranty and hoping to silently replace as many of them as they can. This tactic can bite them back really hard if proper actions are not taken in a timely manner.

 

I think users of this machine need a basic understanding of the airflow. Maybe dell should include a little card in the box with big blue and red arrows showing how air moves through the laptop, and warn people not to block the underside. I agree with S.K that there is no engineering workaround because trying to relocate the intake, say, only from the sides, would definitely only limit the cooling capacity.

 

There is another factor here as well. Back in the days, this kind of laptops used to be really thick black boxes with super high price tags that mostly people ignored because of the looks. This time though, Area 51m looks better than any similar spec laptop out there and is relatively affordable as well which brought a lot of "ultra book crowd" onto the alienware bandwagon who didn't have any experience with such machines in the past. I showed a Clevo machine and a big black sager beast to my wife and took her opinion. She's a "design first" person as well just like the majority out there. And she picked Area 51m over everything else that I showed her lol. So there are more factors at play here than just the usual scenarios with ultra books and max-q hot garbage.

 

Anyone here got a DGFF 2080 with Micron memory in it? I am looking for the part number for that one.

 

So question for you all:
I've been trying to follow all of this defect / overheat / whatever it is about the A51m. I've had mine since the first week of shipping (9900k / 2080) without issue. I did take mine apart and repaste, and I believe I did a decent job. Is there anything I should be concerned with? Is there a post that summarizes any preventative maintenance I should do?

 

Make sure you don't have these lemon MOSFETs on your DGFF 2080. http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-922#post-10902592
If by chance, you do have the lemon components then you can ask Dell to replace with the upgraded version.

 

Does anyone else have problems while gaming with Gsync and DX12? On DX11 Gsync does work. If i switch to DX12 it stops working. I enabled the Gsync indicator in the control panel to check if Gsync is running. I don't know if it is an issue with the Nvidia driver or the Area51m itself.

 

I had this issue and ended up finding out that it was tobii eye tracking. Try uninstalling the software and trying again. I notified tobii about this issue and they said they will investigate


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Thanks. I will try that when I am back home.

 

I will be stressing my unit for everyday on-the-go use and respond to this thread if anything goes wrong. So far, it is handling my traveling abuse quite well. I will probably detail my usage for a period of 2-3 weeks and hope it does well. Now that custom fan profiles work properly with new BIOS update, I will get to working on my ideal fan curve for GPU since it seems all over the place.

Also, do let me know if there is an option for single PSU that can fully power this unit. That is the current major downfall for the traveling part...

 

Is there any metric that you can point to that says there is a 50% ratio of working/dead machines?

 

Isnt that an old one? New one is 430.39..

Cant install Alienware OC controls. Fatal error 0x80070643. Any thoughts?

 

Lol at meeee - I did just that when I bought my NSX. Within a month I replaced the tyres AND brakes for aftermarket ones. The discs were cross slotted & drilled, but you could still abuse them just the same.... I stepped on the brakes at 150+mph, and surely set them pads on fire....what fun.

 

That's the latest nVIDIA Driver from Dell. I will not install the regular nVIDIA Drivers on my machine, not planning to fry it. Dell drivers ONLY if you want your machine to last.

 

Cheers. Any reason why i cant install the OC controls?

 

Send me your TeamViewer ID/Pass lemme have a look

 

Nvidia screwed up... Nvidia GeForce Driver 430.53 Hotfix

 

Cant start a conversation with you

 

and I still wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. The nVIDIA Drivers team has been on crack for the past 3 years

 

Here you go, I don't see any reasons why these not work. Give them a try! https://mega.nz/#F!vnRmUQ6C!fjCIfAu1351TS9p9eriyzA

Calibrate Alienware Area-51m AUO panel at maximum brightness using https://www.xrite.com/categories/calibration-profiling/i1display-pro

AWA51M_562NF_B173HAN_20190430T3.icm should be your daily drive
AWA51M_562NF_B173HAN_240D50_20190430T3.icm warmer
AWA51M_562NF_B173HAN_260D55_20190430T3.icm warm
AWA51M_562NF_B173HAN_290D65_20190430T3.icm cool
AWA51M_562NF_B173HAN_290D75_20190430T3.icm cooler

I also checked the calibration of @LoganWade in page 729. It seems like a good calibration too. Similiar to my AWA51M_562NF_B173HAN_20190430T3.icm

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ is a good place to visit after apply calibration

 

Nothing at your performance level, but I had my Charger Hellcat up at that speed at one point. Only slotted rotors, and it brought the car to a stop relatively quickly, but the rotors / pads were pretty hot after that.

 

can u start a conversation with me so i can send you my TV details?

 

PM Sent

 

Alienware Area-51m Drivers (updated 30-April-2019) all in one ZIP file with the correct installation order

 

Can i ask why you wouldn't use the nvidia drivers? I know oft the drivers make more problems than it resolves, but i'm curious i you don't use nvidia drivers. Before i used the nvidia drivers on my m17xr4 and without problems until my gpu died last year.


I'm Waiting paciently for my 9700k/2070 and hopefully it will be without any problems.

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Well from my experience, the drivers provided by the manufacturer are tested to work 100% with your laptop and are safe. I have seen numerous posts where people install the latest nVIDIA Driver and have their GPU fried. So I am not taking any chances, unless a game that has to absolutely have the latest driver to run, I'd stick to the OEM Drivers.

Be smart...be like Ultra Male.... and don't be this guy >>>

 

Damn brother, you're a jewel in this community! Keep going strong!

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I have a question i just bought 2 m.2 ssd drives. One 970 pro for boot and the other 960 evo plus. Should i make a image from original ssd to the 970 pro? Or I'm ok with the image provided by Ultra male in case i want to go stock again on the system? I was thinking leaving the stock ssd for eventual backup.

Id there any specific program to make a good image from the system?

Edit: ask for a program to make an image from ssd.

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