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

Thanks for your response, I respect this point of view and don't think it's invalid. However, I am effectively keeping things separate because dual booting is quite similair to just having two different laptops- one work and one personal. My personal installation will have no access to the corporate network, and would only be able to connect to the guest Wifi if anything. So where is the risk for IP theft or security issues?

So what is the alternative here for me? I have a few hundred plugins and software worth a few thousand dollars. I requested 2 HDMI cables, 2 Displayport cables, and a copy of the PluralEyes software in February and March. Guess what procurement have sorted with me so far? That's right, zero.

By following the corporate rules, I will be forced to lug around two DTR's to work. So tell me what you would do in my situation?

 

I'd look for a better job where they don't restrict their employees like this.

 

If the failure rate is big enough they will develop firmware around that. Skip newest firmware update in hope for better later is same as peeing in the pants to stay warm.

And Dell have a good friendship with Microsoft. Just push firmware updates via Windows Update.

 

You're having a conversation with a bot in that thread.. it will not help us in the slightest.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

... Yeah but they could at least release BIOS firmwares that actually provide noticeable fixes and improvements.

Improves thermal stability of the system. Where? Users have yet to see said improvements to thermals.

We can be glad that folks here are wise enough to quickly notice when things are performing badly with their systems whenever a new firmware has been released and been installed, and they post about the problems here, otherwise Dell & Alienware will think that their new firmware is working wonderfully, when in fact it's doing more harm than good.

We can only hope now that Dell & Alienware have seen the mess that this new 1.5.4 BIOS firmware brings, and correct things with a new one soon.

 

The latest BIOS update had me quite angry. I contacted Dell/Alienware about it and if I am not satisfied with the answer, I may ultimately refund the machine out of sheer spite or sell it.

I did not update yet, but further neutering the system when we dont even have access to real BIOS features is maddening.


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See who is quoted in that thread. They matter. I have already muted that bot.

 

This is a convo with the “bot” from earlier.





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It's always the same reply to every issue, isn't it? Their copy-pasted replies have pissed me off since 10 years now.

And Azor is the biggest bot of them all. He might help in escalating things regarding AMA but in every other situation, he just hides and defects the questions. He might have been an "enthusiast" once in his younger days but he has long sold his soul to the corporate devils and their million bucks in profits.

I'm not very happy with the thermals of this machine, and not at all with Hidevolution's "Thermal Upgrades" that they claim. My system reached to 100C on all cores within 2 minutes of AIDA64 test at stock and Hidevolution engineers tell me it's normal for a delidded LM paste CPU to perform like this.

While playing Division 2 at stock with FULL fan speed, the CPU reaches 97C in 5 minutes and GPU hits 86C and downclocks itself to 800Mhz! The frame rates tanks to 30fps and stays like that for the entirety of the time. This is worst than I initially thought. Hidevolution engineers are not believing my claims and they'll test the system remotely tonight and "check it themselves" they said. We'll see how they deflect this one. They also claim that this system is only designed to run at Full Fan Speed profile while doing any graphics intensive tasks.

I cannot, with an honest heart, recommend this system to anyone at this point of time. I will not recommend anyone to take Hidevolution's thermal delidded options as it seems to make the system worst than stock. I'll create another thread in this forum when the fiasco ends.

And add the new BIOS debacle to the mix, not to mention the Russian roulette burning issue, I'm having buyer's remorse since last night.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

9900K is a damn hot CPU. It thermal throttles even with -165mV undervolt when subjected to intense benchmarks like Cinebench or blender! It remains very nice and cool during ALL games though with max temps hovering below 80. And just to tell you something interesting, my MSI GT75 Titan with a GTX 1080 also overheated and shut down if I ran that beast without a GPU undervolt. This is how these full powered mobile GPUs work. If you give it enough juice, it will throttle. This is just laws of physics at play here. Nothing HIDevolution or even Dell for that matter can do about it unless they go bananas and offer a desktop grade mounting cooler for this machine and make this officially a Desktop instead of a portable device. There is nothing "cold and fast" on the market right now until we have 7nm chips available and next generation of GPUs operating on PCIe 4 and above. If I were you, I'd only make my decisions based on performance that I can achieve in realistic scenarios after putting suitable undervolts in place. If not happy with performance, only then I'd use the stock thermals as a reason to get a new machine or component swap.

 

I have the HIDEvolution delid and thermals upgrade with no issues. If you have undervolted and still have issues afterwards, then it would be something to return. I came from a P870DM-G so I knew what I had to do with the new system.

What I dont accept is the changes being made that pretty much treats us as stupid end-users. They should just let those who know what they’re doing go all out. Most people buying into this machine are advanced users for the most part, not some mindless idiots with no knowledge about system potential.


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This particular CPU will not be happy unless there is a full fat desktop cooler sitting on top of it, no matter how much you undervolt it (benchmarks only). For games and other realistic stuff, it stays well within comfort zone with reasonable undervolts. Benchmarks are a completely different story though. The Z-height alone on this dye is enough to raise thermals beyond comfort zone when benching. And regarding the Bios fiasco, I fully agree with you. That's why I have neutered my Windows 10 updates completely and switched to a mechanism where I only get names of updates that are available and it is upto me whether to download or not, separately as KBxxxxxx modules from microsoft update library. No need to allow them automatically do things for you if you are a power user.

 

Anyone know how to set up windows updates in Group Policy editor to either download, and not install until I tell it to, or not download at all until I tell it to?

 

There is a very cool utility available for free download called ShutUp10. Try it out. It will take care of all the basic tasks for you. But you'll have to disable hardware related updates separately + disabling of Delivery Optimization service needs some extra work.

 

Looks guys, just to reiterate my points, I'm NOT expecting a desktop equivalent performance on this form factor by any stretch of imagination. I've had multiple experiences of handling a high powered laptops as you can probably see in my signature and I've been doing this for a long time time mow. I was, in fact, a Dell technical supervisor for their Alienware Branch in India right after I finished my engineering. Thats how I bought my first Alienware too, using an employee discount. So, term "novice" doesn't apply in my case.

I was happy with its performance until 2 days ago. That's until I came across Division 2. No matter what settings I choose, -125mv underclock on CPU at 4.5Ghz and .975mV on the GPU at 1850Mhz, I'm am hitting thermal limits on the chips within 5 minutes max. It's a throttling nightmare. GPU hits 86C and craps out and CPU reaches 97C.

This leads me to believe that there is something wrong with the application of the thermal grease and may be the seating of the heat sinks. I've been advised not to open up the system by Hidevolution until they remotely access my system and test its limits and I completely understand their point of view. But, after having paid premium for their services, I think I may be right feeling a little bit pissed of at this. Don't you think?

What are your settings and temps for Division 2? Can you post it here.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

All ultra with chromatic abberations off (headache purposes). Resolution at 1920x1080. DX12 Enabled.

This is one of the few games that requires Full Fan speed because it is very resource intensive.

Thermals used: Kryonaut, Conductonaut, and Fujipoly extreme pads.

Proof: Video is 2 weeks old and was testing thermals as I played. No notable fps drops or throttling. (this was when I reported odd spikes in performance on bootup)-

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If we go by the AW17R5's motherboard and keyboard flex then this is only normal.

 

-165mV CPU at stock clocks (5GHz is not sustainable in this case), 1950 MHz GPU at 937mV. One more upgrade that I did was to install Panasonic 2mm 13W/mK thermal pads. Way better than thermal grizzly minus 8 ones and that helped with the GPU tremendously. GPU max temps are 77 degrees after 2-3 hours game play in a non-air conditioned room. But ambient temperatures should make a difference of a few C since it's not that hot where I live as compared to your country.

I have to mention here though that using 2mm thermal pads will get rid of this problem in all cases. This only becomes an issue when 1.5mm is used when it is just not a snug enough fit. FujiPoly doesn't make 2mm pads so people need to evaluate other choices as well for this particular project instead of buying "upgrades" from resellers. Sometimes even they can make this mistake.

 

How to use WUB

As well use O&O Shutup and WPD.

Download any patches as standalone an install in offline with Network disabled.

 

Thanks!

 

Dude I literally made my mind and purchased about $70 worth of fujipoly after I saw your recommended thickness earlier... What happened to the tests performed with stress papers?


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Read my above comment in context of the previous few comments. My laptop may or may not be exactly identical to yours. I personally still use 1.5mm pads near the CPU where it is snug enough which fit quite nicely but for those heat sinks where clearance is a little too much, thicker pads might be needed. I wish (and actually thought) that 1 size fits all would be the norm in this laptop but it turns out that this world isn't perfect.

 

My div 2 temps are around 80c for CPU and 76c for GPU oc at 5ghz. Ultra settings 114fps. I have SL binned and thermal upgrade from HIDEVOLUTION

 

Noise is a more important factor to some.

 

I understand there was no way for you to reach to this conclusion. I am referring to your earlier comments about recommending purchase 2 of each of these different thicknesses. Now what I get is that 2mm can be the universal solution in each case. Wouldn’t be nice if you said each one’s case might have different spec for heatsink height. But again I understand you probably wouldn’t know it yourself back then. If Dell’s QC/QA is bad enough to this degree on their flagship machine with a 4000 price tag, then they have learned nothing from the mocking and failures of their previous products. I just saw an smoking 2070 machine with three broken leads on the motherboard... this is madness.



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I actually got a replacement heat sink from Dell and that changed the game for me. I gradually discovered that it wasn't the same as my old heat sink so I upgraded parts bit by bit until I was satisfied. There are 3 thermal pads that I use right now. I have detailed it in one of my posts here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-owners-lounge.826831/page-1111#post-10911767

@the pictures!
Dang! That's what noise can do to the power circuitry. Looks like those 2 resistors got melted from the board. There can be LOTS (and I mean L.O.T.S) of reasons behind it ranging from poor cooling induced circuit noise, bad batch of power components, bad PSU, a bad motherboard, a piece of metal dust that found it's way into the unfortunate system, or a static shock induced failure courtesy a buffoon at the "parts team". Is this your laptop? Mind taking some more pictures of the parts and share with us?

 

Anything I miss? Still catching up on what was released/announced at computex...

Any reason you would want to downgrade from 1.5.0?

 

It’s my friends, what kind of pic are you guys interested. I can ask her to take them

EDIT: More pics




In the last pic the dell engineer was also shocked... he said it’s something he never seen or heard from their internal network...

The machine has been putted back together and the owner is a girl and she is not quite inclined to open it again lol.

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Ok so you might think I'm crazy for suggesting this but try Innovation Graphite Thermal Pads. Did a little research on these and they get rave reviews...but using it in a performance gaming laptop? I had to test it out because I'm tired of thermal paste...these pads install much cleaner pllus they won't ever dry out.

I bought this on amazon and it really reduced my temps in a gl702vs when applied to both gpu and cpu. I've been happily running a system for a month on it and have enjoyed cooler temps and more consistent temps at load. Even idle temps got lower in the 30s at times. Now granted my laptop is only cooling a gtx1070 and a 7700hq but I will never reach close to the 90s like yours and will usually run low 70s to low 80s max when gaming. I found the temps to be more consistent than mx4 paste.

The only issue is with these graphite thermal pads you need to ensure it gets proper contact...so any deformities in the heat sink is going to be bad. I think I was lucky when I installed mine I had zero issues. Actually thinking about buying it for the MacBook Pro to give me peace of mind knowing the thermal pads doesn't wear out like thermal paste.

On another note I think you guys are a bit too optimistic about temps of a desktop 9700k or 9900k and a 2080 in a laptop of all things. Of course you are going to throttle a lot, and temps will be pretty high. I think 90s would be normal actually at load. I mean it's a 2080 and a 9700k or a 9900k...you can't expect great temps. Desktops will probably get around 70c or more with aftermarket cooling so makes sense a laptop would suffer and hit the 90s.

 

No thermal pad on earth can tame the 9900K in this chassis. Those are nice pads though, but more is needed here.

 

Sure, that's why those more powerful cooling pads allow the user to adjust the fan speed to their preferred noise levels, but even at max setting these are just a faint shimmer compared to the noise of laptop fans even at 70-80%.

 

Pictures of power components, especially mosfets and power drivers.

 

This looks interesting and no, you're not crazy for suggesting the thermal pads at all. I didn't know about them and I thank you for the info.

I've ordered Gelid GC Extreme paste and should get here by next week. I've decided to leave the Hidevolution "fixing it" route and get hands on with the computer myself when I have the time to invest on it. I'm now more curious to open her up and see what is causing my temps to go nuts. I will report back here with my findings.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

There’s a Chinese programmer invented a new type of pad that he called “wind pressuring” pad. It has a huge 30w fan on a solid aluminum base with rubber insulations around the fan to “force” all the air from the fan go straight into the bottom intake of the laptop.
Check out a video demo, this fan is insane. Reviewers reported average 10 to 20 C in performance improvement


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Interesting idea. Shouldn't be too difficult to emulate using a normal pad and some thick foam insultion tape around the edges.

 

Been using the bios since UM posted it and zero issues , in all my games

 

Can you do a run on a game of Div2 and see if there is a drop in performance as temps reach 75-80C?

Since you are on 1.5.4 after all...


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Actually I have "only" a 2070 and I wait for the announced TDP-update. But I will understand, how good the 2080 works. Therefore:

Can someone say me (or test for me), how the maximum temperatures from both chips are at playing

- 30-60 min Division 2
or
- 30-60 min Farcry 5
or
- run 30-60 min Heaven Benchmark

(please use a preset, not individual graphic settings)

- when the 2080 is limit to 0,8v (1700-1750 MHz at most chips possible) by afterburner

- and the 9900k is limit to 4,5 GHz on all cores (when 8700 than stock).

- with profile "quiet" (maximum 2500 RPM on CPU and 2200 RPM on GPU).

- and don`t forget to use a GPU-overclock-profile at AWCC, because of the temperature-limit (normally 75 degrees in the quiet-profile, with the overclock-profile 87 degrees).

For both to work simultaneously, you first have to set the overclock-profile at AWCC, than you limit to 0,8v in afterburner. This combination works also at windows-autostart (afterburner must load after AWCC-services).

That would be very nice. Than I can compare.

But I can understand if nobody wants to make that effort.

 

ok will revert

 

Please give us a temp screenshot after 1 hour div2 gameplay at ultra no fps cap, also
make sure the gpu usage above 95% everything
on stock of course

 

This is how my 9700k 2080 died lol

 

CPU clocks question.
I'm using a non SL 9900k (came with the system). And I have throttle stop loaded with a -.125 on cache and core. Fans on Max Speed in AWCC. Laptop is propped up with some coasters, and I'm using an AGA so no built in GPU is really "adding" to the heat load. I have repasted with Kryo.

When I run x264 bench (hardest thing I'll do with the system) temps quickly increase into the 95c range after about 10 minutes. This is on the stock 4.7 all core frequency.

Dropping the all core to 4.6 gets me longer without going into the red, but eventually I hit 93c after about 20-30 minutes. Eventually dropping to 4.5 keeps me out of the red zone for the most part. 4.4 seems to be the complete safety zone.

Did I just get screwed on the chip? Is this is typical of what we are seeing on clocks for this system?

 

No, you're just using the worst thermal paste on the planet! Kryonaut is garbage! Conductonaut is king!

See:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/thermal-grizzly-kryonaut.790919/page-10#post-10261106

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...s-before-i-start.741745/page-65#post-10249996

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...iquid-metal-paste.812596/page-2#post-10660500

 

Yeah, that's pretty normal. I have my i9 9900K clocked at 4.5 GHz on all cores, and the voltage offset set to -110mv. The RTX 2080 undervolted to 925mv at 1960MHz. Very comfortable temperatures during gaming.

 

bravo 4 error from my end at this time, other games like odyssey no issues

 

ICD for the win!

 

for non-metal, IC Diamond FTW. For Metal, Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut FTW. Everything else pales in comparison.

 

I've included the quotes from Voodoo again (with markup to better highlight his questions)...

He was asking about:
a) Transferring the warranty from HIDevolution. Any tips for @VoodooChild?
b) CPU clocks / temps... I don't believe you run the CPU 24x7 at 5GHz on all cores. What are the properties you run within safety margins for temps on the CPU? About 4.5GHz to 4.7GHz (all cores) at about 77C - 82C when taxed?

 

Phobya Nanogrease is a better alternative to ICD. Very viscous and durable just like ICD, better thermal rating and results.

 

I'm not an expert in everything related to overclocking and undervolting, but these are the CPU undervolting settings that seem to be stable in my system:
3.6MHz and disabled turbos x all cores @ -149.4 mv offset (battery profile)
4.3MHz x all cores @ -141.6 mV offset
4.6MHz x all cores @ -161.1 mV offset
4.7MHz x all cores @ -166.0 mV offset
4.8MHz x all cores @ -142.6 mV offset
5.0MHz x all cores @ -72.3 mV offset

It makes no sense that I can undervolt more @ 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 than @ 3.6 and 4.3. But I have been running a lot of benchmarks during some days and it seems to be like that. Whenever I try to set a lower undervolt at 4.3 than -141.6 I get a BSOD, not instantly but when running some benchmarks, while 4.7 @ -166 seems pretty stable for the moment, and I have performed the same tests for all the profiles. One weird thing I have noticed, is that the fan profile seems to affect the stability of the undervolt, as when running the fans @ full or performance I didn't experienced any crashes when I lowered the undervolt value below -141.6 @ 4.3MHz (for example at -166), but it crashed with fans @ balanced and quiet.

As for the GPU:
1710MHz @ 768mV
1830MHz @ 850mV
1910MHz @ 900mV
I haven't tried overclocking the GPU memory.

I have been playing Division 2 for hours and the temperature seems to keep fluctuating between 79-84 for the CPU and 67-72 for the GPU in these two profiles:
Fans: balanced
CPU: 4.6MHz x all cores @ -161.1 mV offset
GPU: 1710MHz @ 768mV

Fans: performance
CPU: 4.7MHz x all cores @ -166.0 mV offset
GPU: 1910MHz @ 900mV

I have to say that the room temperature was warm, around 25. If you are getting those temperatures I suggest you review the paste works, as they seem too high.

When you mention "stock clocks", you mean these?:
1 core @ 5.0
2 cores @ 5.0
3 cores @ 4.9
4 cores @ 4.8
5 cores @ 4.8
6 cores @ 4.7
7 cores @ 4.7
8 cores @ 4.7

Because I have been trying to find a stable undervolt offset for that and I find it really difficult, as there are a lot of combinations and variables here depending on how many cores are active and the frequency of each core... -165mV for those clocks seems really low for me, I haven't yet found an stable offset, but I have tried as high as -120 and it keeps crashing at some random point when running some benchmarks. It's really complicated for me to test properly all the possible scenarios with that configuration.