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

The difference in thermal in perfomance is - at least in my perfomance tests - negligible, 2 degree celsius. As @nemoris said, the return value compared to the cost is poor. Cleaning of the system is annoying with all the little crumbs.

 

2 degrees is A LOT when you are talking about GPU boost. Every degree counts. But I can agree, it's not "cheap" and average users should be fine with any thermal pads out in the market as long as they are above 1.2w/mk.

Add a 0 to that and that makes up for my yearly thermal pads bill But that's for a room full of machines and servers so it's not a comparison. I discovered Panasonic thermal pads a while back and I've been moving over to those as they stand out in terms of value and consistency among different batches. So far I've bought from at least 5 different batches and they have all performed consistently.

I think you are good with Panasonic ones. They have higher conductivity and aren't that costly either.

 

Presumably the TFX paste is thicker than Kryonaut? Why not Phobya Nanogrease Extreme?

 

Most of these pastes have HORRIBLE quality control which explains such large temperature differences between different batches. I have experienced this personally in case of Kryonaut, however I also found Gelid GC Extreme to be a consistent competitor which explains to me that their QC is much better than Thermal Grizzly's. As far as Phobya NG goes, I will have to try first. It was difficult to source earlier but now that I have it, let's see whether the 40 dollars shipping fee was actually worth it. I have some more "unnamed" 10w/mk thermal putty stuff also on the way to my mailbox which I will happily add to the mix.

 

Cool, please do post your Phobya results.

 

On that i can agree with you. I see myself in a middle spot between average users and enthusiasts. Right now 2 degree celsius doesn´t matter in my case, because the limiting factor is the power limit. I´ll have to remove it.

 

Ok guys, everything was fine until now... I installed 3Dmark and try a lil TimeSpy test just to know the score...

Got a 5k+ score.... Told myself there was a problem...

Looked at the graph in the end... gpu temp not bad... around 78°c... (full speed fans) looked at the clock... 1200mhz...

Ok there's a problem with the clock as it's supposed to be wayy higher....

Launched a Gpu-z, saw PWR and THRM limit....

Launched a diagnostic of Dell / Bios, got this :



Ok.. my PCIe Bus is limited and it seems to be the graphic card :



IMHO this explains the throttling of gpu frequency even with good temps (got PWR THRM limit even with the small test of GPU-Z...)

Guys what should I do ?

I didn't unplug the GPU, yes I know I didn't change the thermal pads under the GPU yeah.. forgot this... but instead it should work as in all the disassembly process, I did nothing to unplug the DGFF card so my system is vanilla on this...

I'll try a power drain first but need your help and advice before calling Dell...

I'm getting tired of all this stuff... I only had a full working laptop for only 2 weeks...

EDIT : power drain did nothing...

 

Isn't this the known problem with the GPU module cable?

 

Did you open the 2 DGFF ribbon connectors that connect the GPU with the motherboard and are held together with screws? If yes, and you didn't notice this error before, there is a chance that you might have damaged the pins on those during the operation. If you didn't, then whoever messed with it before you, ruined those for you. This is a confirmed bent pin problem on those connectors. Mine came this way from HIDevolution as this connector needs soft hands and full attention while taking it apart and putting it back together. A "quick job" can destroy it. By the way, you do NOT need to disconnect those in order to replace the rear thermal pads on the DGFF. They are soft enough that you can bend the card backwards and replace the thermal pads without worrying about anything breaking. All you need to disconnect is the power connector for DGFF. Make sure though that you put it back properly as it has marked connectors for both DGFF and motherboard and you shouldn't flip it around.

 

Quick answer : no I did not opened those as I said I didn't removed the graphic card only changed surface pads... that's why I'm worried

 

No need to worry. Dell should be able to send you the connectors. Here are the details:

Part number: DA300015110
Vendor : UNIMICRON-FPC

Tell them that your connectors are bad (the idiots in support will try to outsmart you but you'll have to be firm in your stance that this is a known problem that is caused by improper installation of DGFF ribbon connectors and you won't be putting up with their shenanigans). Also, when you get your new pair of connectors, gawk at every pin under a zoom lens to make sure none of them is bent or deformed so that you don't get into a similar headache in the future. And try to put them on yourself. The only way to destroy them is to drag them against another surface or installing them when there is dirt or debree on the connection pad on either the GPU board or the motherboard that could interfere with the connection or possibly deform/damage the contact pins.

 

I've asked Dell to change this on site. They offered me to change the graphic card and the cable next Tuesday.. seems fine enough.

I'll ask the technician to change the pads with mine when he'll come.

 

Sounds good. Also, take a look at the back of the DGFF to see the mosfets on both yours and the new one that'll come. Keep the one that has NCP303150 and ditch the one that has NCP303151. If yours has NCP303150 already then I'd suggest that you keep your DGFF and just insist on replacing the connectors. I generally retain the new parts for 14 days and play around with them before returning them back to the parts team. This way I can do a more thorough cross comparison and decide which part I actually want to keep and vice versa.

 

By the way, make sure that they are referring to those 2 ribbon connectors when they say "cable" and are not referring to the LCD cable that connects to the DGFF board. Generally their first approach is to always replace the LCD connection cable which has got nothing to do with this problem.

 

does anyone know if the rtx 2070 will be getting a higher power bios in the future?
mine barely hits 65c in gaming on balanced fan profile with a +195 overclock on core

cheers

 

Mr S.K : "I don't feel so good"...

Ok seriously... I hope this time it's the good one.

I'll have to explain or check with the tech how he have to place the pads...

Tell me : what size do I need under the board... I followed the indications some hundred pages before to change the pads but i can't remember which height is recommanded on the back of the GC : 0.5mm 1mm 1.5mm or 2mm ??

Another question S.K : do Dell and I are on the good way ?

Does it seems legit to you to have lower clock and both PWR and THRM limit on GPUZ with 2x PCIE bandwidth ?... To me it seems that I guessed well ...at least I hope it's only a matter of time and bent pins
... (from Dell ???? It's a swaped unit supposed to be new.... it means that the factory doesn't match minimum requirements to mount this computer without damaging it...)

 

As for the rear thermal pad, you'll need 1.5mm for the mosfets. Here's the guide link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-owners-lounge.826831/page-1111#post-10911767
And I can understand completely where you are coming from on this. I'd be annoyed as heck as well. But this is something that unfortunately neither you nor I can do anything about. The tech who came to my place on at least 4 different occasions, didn't even know how to take the laptop apart. When I asked him why he didn't know about this laptop inside out, his response was that since this is not officially launched in this country, they have not been given a hands on training for this unit. This is why if I were you, I'd collect the parts from the tech, ask him to sit down and watch a movie or something while I'd fix things myself. Can't rely on them these days. These are BIG CORPORATION issues. Dell is HUGE! And when a company is this big, it becomes a nightmare to manage all the departments at 100% efficiency rate all the time.

 

The one I had on site 2 months ago with the Area51m repair was a young guy that took the time to look at the disassembly manual, he did a nice job... but I think it highly depend on the tech that is doing on site repair...

What do you think about my question :

 

Well, I did my first Division 2 session with my i9/2080. Full stock, last bios/vbios, no undervolt, no cooler, back not raised, and ambiant temp around 28c (yep, its summer). And fans on performance mode while gaming (silent mode when not gaming)

I played with all the specs maxed out, with a high framerate all the time, never below 80/90fps, most of the time above 100 or stuck at 144.

From MSI AB the max gpu temp was 75c from 1710mhz to 1590 after throttling. Probably due to the last bios lowering the trotthling limit. I never saw any consequences on the gaming confort. does it make the need for a GPU undervolt pointless (remember my ambiant temp is high)? Considering im not a powergamer, recently just playing Cities Skylines, AC Unity and The Division 2, im not sure a GPU undervolt is really needed with the last bios.

The CPU peaked at 87c with around 40-50% of usage during the session. It was at 4.7ghz all the time. With a higher CPU usage, it would have trothlie a lot I guess, so CPU undervolt remain justified.
Fans dont run highter than 80% with peformance mode (so there is a tempeature improvement margin if I crank them up to 100% with full speed mode). And no smoke

Are these temp average? below? above?

Anyway I'll wait the reply from Dell to know if they replace my unit (Screen panel not centered, fans rumble when at 40%, left output speakers not working, and a crash "no media presence" yesterday).

some screenshots:
IG from the start to the end of the gaming session

 

Wait a minute S.K, Dell did not picked up the old unit that went in smoke... the cable may still be fine...

I'll be cautiously swapping with the one in the old unit and see if it's work better !

 

You could also take a look at other stuff and replace things as necessary. This is good!

As far as your question about limits, that is expected with link degradation. X2 can only handle this much.

 

Ok here iFixit kit ready... here we go again screwdriver...



Wish me good luck..

I'll take some photos of my dead gc unit to compare to the healthy one

 

Good luck!

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Ok i'm in the middle of the process...

I've noticed that my old gpu of the unit that died WASN'T equiped with the mosfet heatsink !!!!!



Is this normal ???? Maybe that's why my old unit died....

Anyway... I attached the old cable on the new laptop clean the gpu with Isopropanol 99.9% and I'll be continuing after as small break... I need to eat and rest before continuing...

Some photos of the fixed setup (I've checked... my GPU is equiped with 303150 Mosfets :

 

Not superstitious or anything but you're on page '13' '13'

 

Actually, Page 1313 for me is Page 1:

My Preferences for "VB 3.1 - Fluid":

"Thread Display Mode" : "Newest Post First".

As always, it is a matter of perspective.

 

2070 or 2080?

 

It's a 2080..

Ok guys... that was hard but it seems that I fixed it !


First try I put the thermal paste... put everything back in place.....

I obtained a PCIe x4... damn !! Still not good...

I unmounted everything.... went to the unmounting of the GC step.... decided to swap one of the GC cable... put the heatsink back... only plug power supply usb and displayport... run supportassist....

Test: passed !....

Finally !!...

Now I need to put everything back.... see ya in a hour...

 

Hi All,

Looking for some advice....

Got my unit only a month ago. After 7 days of use the whole unit failed.

Dell tech replaced the motherboard and GPU - retained the CPU. I observed he had to remove the heatsink from the existing GPU when replacing the GPU as they hadn't send a card with heatsink attached or included.

I'm not certain if before the replacement parts the situation was any better as I'd hardly had a chance to put the unit through it's paces due to working so much, however here's the situation:

- When connected via display port to my acer predator X34A (100Hz - 3440x1440) I experience the most insane frame rate drops - I'm talking down to 5 fps at the worst. I've given up trying to play games on this monitor with the 51m. Even adjusting resolution down the issue remains.
- Connected to this monitor running Valley or Superposition benchmark, the results are incredibly erratic, and I definitely see the abovementioned low frames all the way down to 5fps. I also observer the clock speed dips to 300-450Mhz.
- Using the inbuilt display, 1920 x 1080 framerates are rock solid - even on extreme/ultra settings its a stable 50+ FPS.

I'm on the latest 1.5.4 firmware also...

I have an Alienware 17 R4 with the gtx 1070 and I've never had an issue using this display.

I've been so annoyed I gave up trying to game on this at all.

Any suggestions you can offer would be appreciated.

 

@VoodooChild
Oh god..., mine comes from them this week, hoepfully mine comes in a better condition or ima try to return and just go to the clevo 870 or gt76 sigh...as much as i love this devices aesthetics over the other 2

 

Oooook !!!

Now that's interesting !

Freaking 10512 in 3dMark/Time Spy with 74°c on GPU (no undervolt) & 56°c on CPU (undervolted @-110mv)... ok that was with full fan speed but anyway... sounds very good compared to the 1st repaste/repad.

I think that was a good idea to pickup the core i9 9900k from my previous unit, It's quite the results of a Delidded CPU (did HIDevolution offered me a Delid ? ^^) :



Or maybe it's because of the switch from Gelid to Kryonaut on CPU (only)...

It's amazing... no more THRM or PWR throttling...

39°c GPU on idle, 44°c CPU on idle...

Now I can rest, and... prey to spend the next month without dying laptop or GPU connector screwed

 

Nice Result!! All I can do Is hope I can have same result. You have me excited. So Dell solution team has taken care of me. I got a offer yesterday for an unbeatable price for a 9900k and 2080, Dark Side 144hz gsync, 16gb, 512nvme + 1tb sshd with 4 year premium warranty. I could not turn this down. So I now will be back online to receiving mine.

 

HF GL !!

What's your story with yours, it also died and you're waiting after a swap or this a new order ?

Anyway... I've waited quite 2 months after having used for only 2 weeks, a failed repair and today this problem (quickly solved anyway...) but I can only tell you that the wait is worth !!

What a beast my friend !

 

Hey,what's the socket/clip on the third image there? Is this the pin which connects DGFF to the motherboard? Mine looked different when I opened it up last week... Do you have more images of this clip?

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Does anyone know how to change the "Boot List Option" on the A51M? It seems to stay grayed out even if you disable Secure boot.

 

Yes it is ! It that little piece of #### that had me taking all the parts off, put it back, took it off and put it back again

I'll browse my phone to see if I got any other images

 

I never even received it. They kept delaying my order for almost 3 months. Then they out of no where canceled it no warning or email. Then I tried reordering and they asked if I had received my first order and I was like what? Then that was followed up with very rude support when I gave no reason for it. Then I got a solution at the time, then that person lied about it saying the solution never happen. Unfortunately that was a phone promise so I could not prove it. Then I had a few emails back and forth and wally I had someone offer the same promise as before but now I had proof. Again I had a very impolite person on the phone trying to take care of it. I then got a call from the one that originally took the order with me and was very rude while asking "WHY DID YOU CANCEL" basically yelling and interrogating me. At his point I sent a message to the escalation team. I got a call from the Outstanding issues manager and asked for the email's and such. So at that time they took down everything and apologized for the rude encounters. Then less then 24hrs later I got a call from the outstanding issues manager with the offer. The rest is history haha. Pretty excited now.

 

Wow damn... where are you located ? U.S ?

I don't recall hearing of such a bad behavior with Dell...

 

I am in the US. Yea I have been a customer of Dell for personal and business since 2005. Never really experienced this before. But at least it is taken care of now.

 

Did you ever figure this out? It would be horrible if there is no way to boot into a legacy boot.

 

These laptops don't use manual voltages.
They use VID.
Setting a 'manual' voltage in the BIOS (if that's even possible) or in XTU doesn't set that voltage as the VRM target voltage (which is what a manual voltage is). It simply changes the default VID from whatever the processor is programmed at from the factory, to the "Manual" value you specified. Then the AC Loadline (which affects the default VID) comes into play, which is why you see those spikes. Those spikes only occur at idle and very light load usually. The DC loadline brings down that VID to the value you see at heavy load, but the supply voltage comes from the AC loadline, not the DC loadline.
Without access to the Internal VR Settings, you can't do a thing about it.

 

This might sound like a dumb question but when you plug into the thunderbolt port for a usb c monitor it uses the integrated Intel gpu right? just making sure it function's properly.

 

I think its broken implementation of Insyde BIOS made by Dell. The options for disabling Secure boot or UEFI are scattered all over the place, so I can't say which option does what? Its too confusing for me as well.

 

correct. That's the only place where the Intel GPU works, hence why we still have G-SYNC despite the laptop having an Intel Graphics.

 

Okay, thanks. I thought this might be the case, but wanted to be sure.

Thanks for the information!

 

Been waiting to see this myself... I'm still hopeful. I had been trying to ignore the 1.5.4 bios as well, not sure how that impacts the 2070 as most people on this board are 2080-ers. BUT... stupid windows auto installed the 1.5.4 on me. I can go back later I suppose if it's a problem.. but as you said, my 2070 doesn't really approach the thermal limits anyway that most people are complaining about with 1.5.4. (It runs nice and cool, though my CPU and ambient temps get pretty hot and I'm sure the GPU contributes to the ambient).

Realize this is getting old at this point... but since I'm on 1.5.4 (and have a 2070)... installed 1.5.4, disabled AW OC in AWCC, rebooted, and I still see 87/75/87/87 in GPU-Z advanced tab... not sure what else to say... (and not sure if that means my actual limits are still the same or not.

 

Welp, it finally arrived after over a month of production delay.
I sort of maxed it out -- i9-9900K, RTX 2080, 64 Gb RAM, 2TB RAID0, 1TB Hybrid.
I'm a pretty happy camper.

I'm looking for LED themes though, it is odd that this doesn't seem to have any by default -- will the older R3/4 Alienware themes work?

 

I Live in Italy and i was quite confident on getting my replacement laptop quicker than the previouse one, dell webiste said 9-11 working days. I was reading some of your comments guys and i just got an email by dell, the expected delivery date was moved from 3th of July to 23rd. I am speechless now.

 

As long the owners haven't upgraded to last bios this will just continue. A never ending game. Microsoft only does what Dell has asked for. Neither more nor less.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/...throttling/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

Who will have to pay for possible bricked machines after your warranty have expired? Forced Bios upgrades ain't nice... One thing for sure... Won't be Microsoft
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-area-51m-owners-lounge.826831/page-1103#post-10911536

 

Both XPS and AW are plagued by same issues i.e free smoke, severe PCH throttling, 800MHz CPU freq. bug, SSD boiling, Soldered RAM and possibly SSD etc... A mess which will take 3-5 yrs to cleanup. We might have to use DellClear.exe to remove these mess.