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

Yes.

 

Even though I am now on 1.5.0 again, I went on OC controls and changed temp limit from 87 to 78, GPUZ sees that and not the true Bios reading as long as OC controls is on.

 

Not really, because either system has access to the other one, or at least to its data.

That's very far fetched.

 

Save your money. Forget bypass Dell's lovely PCH/BootGuard mega-gimp cancer. And if you or other can mod the bios and flash it with an SPI programmer... This won't fix it. Dell use more tricks than Secure Flash to stop you from tamper with their firmware.

Yeah, Dell have deeply integrated their apps with the firmware. Hence possible Memory oc settings will come with their apps. You won't be able to change ram settings in bios. In worst case forced to use their useless oc apps.

Thanks.

 

This is normal for a CPU running on stock clocks. Turbo Attenuation and max Turbo Limit are on if you run stock as the CPU is going by it's turbo bins and idle power saving states that is controlled via turbo boost. Nothing to sweat over.

Mine is maxed out at 87 degrees celcius as it should be. Minimum is 75. I am on Bios 1.5.0 and not ready to update anytime soon.

I have it locally in case somebody wants.

 

I'm a bit lost now. So if someone flashes 1.5.4 and raises the max temp in OC controls, will this override the bios cap and throttle only at the temperature you have set instead of throttling at 74c? Or the bios 74c cap will prevail over everything?

 

No it will not override the bios, It will override the reading of GPUZ but the card will be limited to the BIOS setting.

 

OK, understood. So the only way of knowing is by running an stress test and trying to raise the temperature over the 74 bios cap. @captn.ko could you please ask your mate to perform that test?

 

Weird, as it doesn't allow me to downgrade from 1.5 to 1.3 saying that downgrade is not allowed. I've tried both the direct executable method as well as the bootable USB method. What method did you use to downgrade yours?

 

Run like firestrike demo in window mode and fans on balanced, while GPU-Z is open and under sensors tab watch your core and temps, once 75 hits it will start dropping, Or run another program that is GPU intensive firestrike demo may not reach 75 on some systems?

correct that one they locked I am thinking this one they forgot and will lock it soon.

 

Then I guess it's time to unlock things around here. Is anyone looking into the packer that Dell uses for Bios firmware? I will be taking a quick look and see if there is a simple check that can be removed to allow downgrade to older versions.

 

Did it

He said he reached 81 degree with 1.5.4

 

Just reverted my bios back. Thanks.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

ROMS will surely be signed and anything you touch will break the signature making it not flasheable unless you use a chip flasher. The only way will be obtaining the private key Dell uses for signing the ROMS

 

Not weird at all...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-owners-lounge.826831/page-1190#post-10917097

Even a chip flasher won't help!

 

There are 2 way signing involved one at Dell's end and another at AMI server. You can preserve Dell one but AMI sign server is difficult to get hold off since you might need AMI signing tool. Even if you manage to get into Recovery capsule override the CMOS checksum gets wrecked and you need full SPI flash with full erase and re-flash full 16.8MB BIOS incl. ME.
If you obtain it the BIOS will be bricked anyway. AW BIOS is too locked down. Maybe you can ask Prema or Svet with some donation to your BIOS unlocked but eventually Dell will block it. So, choose your options carefully.

 

Yeah checksum matches is a must. A bios downgrade option within the BIOS itself would have been a really good implementation though.

 

Is it possible to get a refund for the extended warranty as well? My 30 day window is about to close and I am seriously considering the idea of shipping it back to Dell... Thank you.

 

Interesting. If that's true it will mean that only some systems get capped with that BIOS. That's weird. It will only make sense if the BIOS had the ability of checking something internally (MOSFETs part numbers or components serial numbers) that would serve to identify the potentially problematic laptops and cap them selectively.

 

just logged in, saw downgrade, before i finished reading , was back to 50, gracias...... lol

 

I checked the GPU boards, the VRM's are on the bottom with a tiny heatsink on them. I doubt there is airflow at that side so that might be a reason. It doesnt matter if the GPU is idle or when the VRM's are compromised I think. I remembered that EVGA had a couple of these issues with their 10XX FTW boards.

 

Locked or not. I am back to 1.3.2. This is the best BIOS version I have experienced thus far in terms of performance and stability for my system but for some weird reason, Dell has removed it from the website altogether! Luckily I had a local copy lying around. I am not allowing anyone to force drag me onto a version that I don't want to be on.


Edit: Version 1.3.2 is still there on Dell's website. Apparently it has just been removed from the older bios versions list.

 

How did you do that? Did it let you flash the 1.3.0 over the 1.5.0?

 

Here is a brief guide on how to downgrade your BIOS and bypass any version based "locks" that are in place from Dell.

1. Enable file extensions in File Explorer Options on your Windows (Start -> File Explorer Options -> View -> Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types" and hit OK.
2. Download your required Alienware BIOS version from Dell website and rename it to BIOS_IMG.EXE. Now the fun part:
3. Place the BIOS_IMG.EXE file that you just renamed into the root of a drive, say C:\ drive for example.
4. Start -> Run -> CMD (right click and select Run as administrator)
5. Type C:/ and hit Enter. It will take you right to your C drive root where the BIOS_IMG.EXE file is located.
6. Type the following command: BIOS_IMG.EXE /writehdrfile and hit Enter. It will create a file named BIOS_IMG.HDR on your C drive. Rename that to BIOS_IMG.RCV as we'll use this as a recovery image. Both images are essentially the same.
7. Now, you have to create Dell Diagnostic USB stick. For that, use this article and SKIP steps 7-10 in it.
8. Copy BIOS_IMG.RCV from your C:/ drive onto the USB root. Make sure that the following 3 files exist on USB root when you are done: BIOS_IMG.RCV, DELLBIO.BIN and DELLRMK.BIN. DO NOT DELETE THE REMAINING FILES!
   
9. Now turn off your computer and plug the USB stick into the left USB port beside the thunderbolt 3 port.
10. Press and hold CTRL + ESC and press the power button to boot into BIOS recovery mode. Keep holding the two keys after releasing the power button until you reach the recovery screen. Once there, use the recovery option to flash BIOS.
11. Download and store away the files that you think might be needed in the future into a local storage or your email account just in case Dell makes any changes to them in the future.
12. DONE!
13. Do at your own risk. If you screw something up, I will not take any responsibility! This procedure works right now but may or may not work in the future.

 

I downgraded from BIOS 1.5.6 to 1.5.0 easily

 

Hi guys,

Just received my Area-51m back today after it being in the workshop for repairs (since 26/04). My BIOS version is 1.5.0 by default and they replaced mobo and GPU.
If anyone wants some information regarding my repaired unit i can always help. i'm hoping it will last longer than a day this time around. I added images of the temperature limit in GPU-Z (87) and the normal overview (Are these clock numbers default? - 1545 Mhz Clock speed and Memory 1750Mhz with boost at 1725). (also am kinda a noob at forums, i see that my images dont show can anyone help me with that ?

 

Images are not visible. Try uploading them on a different website that allows public viewing.

 

I just made them public, are you able to see them now?

 

Nope. Use imgbb.com. Works great.

 

Thank you very much for this info, I will save it for the future just in case...

Yes you can flash 1.5.0 over 1.5.4 with no problem, but downgrading from 1.5.0 to 1.3.0 is locked as some people reported before.

 

Using this method you can downgrade to any version that you want. I'd recommend 1.3.2 however (even though it has been taken down from Dell website). It should be available with a lot of users who save their drivers offline. I have a copy.

 

Thanks, don't worry about it. I have a copy of all BIOS and VBIOS versions that have been released so far. I think I will stick with 1.5.0 for the moment, but will consider downgrading to 1.3.0 if more people report better performance with it.

 

I tried using imgbb, which link type can i use to make this possible?
https://raven-m.imgbb.com/

 

Everything looks good to me. Congratulations on the purchase.

 

This should be 1.3.2 Download

https://www.dell.com/support/home/de/de/dedhs1/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=tjw82

 

They are MOSFETs. VRMs on the top have sufficient cooling from the main heat sink. That beefy rear heat sink should be more than enough for the MOSFETs, especially if they are NCP-303150 which is a higher spec part compared to old NCP-303151.

 

Vrms arent 1 component, its a name for the whole power delivery section. But yeah i ment the mosfets.

 

iam usually sceptical about your posts regarding temps and clocks.... but for this post i want to say THANK YOU!

 

I need some quick help. I have my a51m apart. I need to apply the Phobya NanoGrease Extreme. For this TIM do you use the supplied spreader and spread manually?

 

Personal preference. You can spread it, if its thin like Kryonaut, you should be fine.

 

Accoring to Alienware, A mistake was made while doing the software (Bios) and they are working on fixing it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

I'm starting to become skeptical about Dell announcements regarding this issue, specially the ones coming from the support bots. Let's hope I'm wrong and things change in the next version, but the fact that they applied the same cap to all the other models makes me think the opposite

 

Classical Dell Sw!$$ Ch33$3

 

maybe someone is interested:

one of my best Bios 1.5.0 FS runs vs. the first run after downgrading... hint: the better one is 1.3.2.
[email protected] and GPU +188

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/19471840/fs/19471796

1.5.0 runs jumped between 23000 and 23800. 1.3.2 on my system is constant above 24k. In the case one of you has eagle eyes: on my 1.3.2 run i missklicked 30mhz ram... but i think that will not result in 1000 GS points more XD

 

Knew it was a bug and not intended.

Really? My best run was on 1.5.0.

Marginal difference as well. I'll post scores later.

 

yeah realy... i wasnt able to get only near 29k GS with 1.5.0... my best 1.5.0 is the one posted... i flashed 1.3.2 and immediatley scored 2880X GS again...

one run i had 28.3k with 1.5.0 but my overall score was lower. The results where very inconsistend.

 

I wont be beta testing it until others give feedback this time.

 

Just tried to flash the new 180W bios, and after the black screen warning it stayed black. I can hear discord sounds but the screen doesn't seem to care. I had an external monitor connected and the laptop one disabled. Plugging in and out the external does nothing. Is it safe to reboot it? how long does the vbios flash usually take?

thanks

everything seems fine after a soft blind reboot. My money would go on the external monitor, maybe don't have one attached during vbios update.

correction, it booted on intel, looked fine, was not.
Only after reapplying the vbios seems to have recovered. Oddly enough there was one more confirm step after the first warning, which I didn't get to see and interact with it before, something made it go black screen before the reboot alert.

anyway, seems completely ok now, just had a small scare

 

It will be very useful to see more tests of 1.3.0 vs 1.5.0. I will downgrade to 1.3.0 it that version turns out as the better one

Good to hear that. I was expecting the worst after reading your former post.
Please, report back with your tests and results on that version. I think I will keep with the 190W stock version forever

I have checked hwinfo and also aida64 but I can't find that info. I'm feeling dumb...

 

In hwinfo in sensors tab under cpu there's a bunch of W entries and the GPU has one too, adding should do the trick.



actually, sorry, I just realized that was not what you asked, I don't know if any of those software tracks the PSU maximum power.

I didn't do any huge tests but my first off the ear impression is that temps and GPU load have gone a tad higher, not monumental, but I wasn't passing 80% load in 100fps capped CODBO4 now I got 90% now and then. Metro Exodus seems to have taken a bigger toll, went down from stable capped 74fps to 60-ish and close to 100% load. I'm trying to get back the 200W one and note down values.