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

See what I replied on in my post # 1934

Always look at the details.

 

Do you have both power adapters plugged in when gaming or just the 330w? Curious if the stock 9700k + 2080 requires more than the 330W to do basic gaming..not overclocking,etc. I don't want it to get throttled either in 330w mode.

 

Thx. I wonder if all the new Clevo 16.1" models are what you were talking about. I'm not positive, but they look like they are in a 15" shell.

 

Both power adapters were plugged in whole time. with only one Adapter the CPU is always 100%.. But GPU with 180W: 450Mhz with 330W: 550Mhz... Tested it with Bf5 Ultra Settings. Memory all the time: 5000Mhz

Fps dropped with each adapter to around 35 - 45 fps

 

That’s exactly what I am seeing with 2070 except I get higher clocks about 1000

 

Yeah me too but on average its around 550Mhz. sometimes its jumping to 1500MHz but immediatly its 550... 650 again.. Hm. That need to be fixed i think or just hope it will...

 

Exactly. Design for 16.1 looks really good. How come Clevo does not have a thin bezel 2080+9900K??? It will come soon for sure, but will definitely have to be MUCH better than Area-51M, which design is simply breathtaking. I mean bezels are not really deal breaking to me, but 2019 model MUST have thin(ner) bezels than tanks from 2017 LOL

As of today, Area-51 is a laptop I would buy, except for the 'bubble' price, 2 PSU's and screen (I am spoiled by OLED). I look at my non-OLED phone and feel like Papusan's avatar spraying pizza graffiti like guys coming to Amsterdam and after a few thousands beers smoke, then lose i-phone and wallet, then go to Police and point at people that their stuff got stolen. FACEPALM LOL

 

Do we know if the 9700K / 2080 sku has the same cooling solution as the 9900K / 2080 sku? I thought I had read that the 9700K didn't have the same as the 9900K.

On Alienware's website they note the following "The highest-end configurations carry 8 total heat pipes."

I'm not sure what that statement means though and what sku's it'd apply to.

 

i have both side exhausts, so its the best cooling solution for a51m. I think it depends on which GPU you pick...

 

@1Schumsta1 Thank you for your enthusiastic input.

9700K uses solder??? (Googled) so delid is not really necessary. Can't wait how LM will slash temps even more. Next time I do LM, I will lap the heat sink plates to mirror-finish . Are you also planning to re-pad?

Have you (please) noted how hot the PCH gets while gaming?

I hope Roman 'de8auer' will get this laptop in his hand and tune it in a video.

 

HOW is there not an unboxing or review up on YouTube yet?!

 

I have just played an hour of bf5 on the 180w adapter. 1080p medium settings gives me 120-150fps and my clocks range from 1000-1300. And the best thing is the fans hardly turn on.

I think I will leave a 180w adapter in my bag as it has plenty of 1080p mobile performance and then the 240+180w in my office where the laptop is hooked up to my 2560x1440 144hz panel and I need higher clocks

 

My guess is everyone is so excited and enthusiastic when their shipment arrives, they forget to hit 'Record'.

 

so i'm guessing there is no power brick holder of any kind?

 

Gonna be some cool 3d printable power brick holders I'm sure. I'd be interested to see if a side by side and stacked holder for the 180+330 would look. I think side by side would fit in most bags better than stacked.

 

I guess i'll have to do measuring and whip up something simple with maybe TPU. But i'm getting the 180w+240w bricks. I have a 330w brick but that has a plug for my old clevo. Might try to switch cord of the 240 over to the 330w if possible.

 

what about 2 x 330W power supplys?

 

I mean I bought this laptop but I keep hearing from dell upgrade current generation cpu GPUs. So what I’m hearing is those of us who bought the 9900 and 2080 it’s about as far as we are going? What’s the chances of us being able to put in next gen hardware. Isn’t the graphics card propieratay to this model? Also the CPU socket gonna change in what 6 months? How many years do you think this will game for on ultra high settings with the 9900 and 2080?

 

2 years because if you think of it, the performance leap from the GTX to the RTX GPU isn't anything staggering and the GTX GPUs are already 3 years old so my guess is 2 more years for the RTX then you'd have to bump down the settings to get decent framerates

 

So if they don’t release a next gen gpu because of the gddf card the amplifier should be able to do the trick I’d imagine to keep going for 5 years or so with the 9900k at ultra high?

 

For what reason? This system will not consume 660W even if firmware limits were removed

As an aside: I do not understand why people care or watch unboxing videos. What is learned form the act of removing packing? Videos of the system running games and benchmarks is far more relevant.

The chipset is very new. If I had to assign a number, probably 70% likely that the next gen LGA will be compatible. I'd say for the GPU, it heavily depends on the success of the laptop. Its in Dell's hands if they want to put R&D into the next gen to fit the format.
Considering that the next gen RTX gpus will likely be the same architecture with some improvements, I'd say Dell will not have a problem if they wish to actually do it...

 

Can I install the QHD 120HZ g-sync screen from the 17 R4/R5 on this laptop?

 

Possible 40 pin connector, but it certainly won't fit in the frame.

 

I have now run 5 full rounds 3DM Firestrike at the same settings in a row.

Highest physics score 21305 and lowest was 21251. This means around 50 points in difference from lowest to highest score. Second lowest physics score was 21289
Edit. Scores 21251, 21305, 21302, 21289, 21291 (0.25% diff on max).

Bro @Mr. Fox can probably confirm the same.

 

correct.

 

And who said his runs were back to back? He could have restarted or done any number of things. You're thinking too hard into it. I'll run some benches for you tomorrow. I think you're just looking for any reason to cast stones at Dell/Alienware.

Here are the results that I already have:

OverPowered 15:
16542, 16558, 16626, 15550 (6.47% diff on max)

X1E:
16558, 16506, 16128 (2.6% diff on max) and those are fairly back to back IIRC

 

All I said is physics scores doesn't change much. And I replied on your text in your reply "If the user ran firestrike 5 times at the same settings there will be changes in physics scores".

I'm one of the happiest guys seeing a change to the much better. Aka upgradeable hardware coming back to notebooks. The more the better.

Edit... Add in this post
Why the unique Alienware Area-51m will be a gamble for Dell ...

 

why? It's the same screen size, 17.3 inch

 

Yeah I still stand by the change in physics scores. I added my results above for the runs I have already done but am happy to do more.

 

I think both of you are correct. It depends on the circumstances. If you are in a controlled environment, @Papusan is correct. If you are not and operating conditions vary, then @custom90gt is correct.

If you control the work environment there is hardly any difference between runs. Unless you use AC cooling or bench outside in below freezing weather most laptops will degrade both physics and graphics performance with each run. The is especially true with graphics scores since Pascal and Turing both have the idiotic GeFarts room temperature throttling cancer. (No extra charge for that, by the way.) Same goes for gaming... the longer you play on a laptop, or a desktop with lackluster cooling, the worse the system performs because it loses efficiency. Whether you run them back-to-back or on different days there should be minimal variance as long as there is no meaningful environmental variance.

I ran these back-to-back on my water chiller. Run #1 was when I first turned the chiller on, so run #1 was a tiny bit better than run #2 (because it increased a few degrees on run #2 but then the chiller caught up and started lowering the temps on runs 3 through 5). The rest have differences that are totally irrelevant. Actually, the variance between all of them is irrelevant unless you are competing based on scores alone.

As you can see from these examples, as the temperatures normalized with the chiller, the variance became smaller on runs 3 through 5. Had I not been using the chiller the variance would have been greater, (with diminishing performance with each run,) but still very insignificant with the water cooling. On a laptop with mediocre or poor cooling probably a lot greater percentage of decline in performance with each subsequent run. Brother @Papusan's P870 has extraordinarily amazing cooling for a laptop, so his would naturally have less variance than a competitor's product.

Run #1 vs Run #2: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/18364397/fs/18364438

Run #1 vs Run #3: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/18364397/fs/18364472

Run #1 vs Run #4: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/18364397/fs/18364512

Run #1 vs Run #5: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/18364397/fs/18364561

 

I agree... 100%. The unboxing videos are kind of silly for most purposes. I do understand the excitement and joy of the person doing the unboxing, but it does not do much for me as the observer. I usually skip ahead in hope of finding something useful once it is out of the box, unwrapped, turned on and actually producing results.

But, some people like watching golf on TV, or watching paint dry.

True that it is a new chipset and Intel will likely support the next CPU. But, Alienware screwed their desktop owners real hard on this and refused to provide a simple BIOS update, (even though 100% of their competitors did,) for the next desktop CPU. I am sure that Brother @Cass-Olé remembers the drama that surrounded their recent acts of customer betrayal. So, I don't expect Alienware to support it, but I hope the amount of hatred they experienced from their past deplorable behavior will cause them to turn a new leaf. Just don't have a surprised look on your face if they refuse to support a CPU (or GPU) that did not ship with the original product. I haven't seen a skunk change its stripes... yet. There's a first time for everything... cross your fingers and hope for the best.

If they didn't block flashing of firmware mods it wouldn't matter if they supported it or not. Someone would mod it and make it work without their help, just like we always did in the good old days... before everything got ruined by the stupid Nazi firmware signing bull dung.

 

Well IMA film an unboxing when mine comes in and I best not catch any of y'all "unboxing videos are boring!" suckas riding on my hype train! Lol

 

I talk about the Firestrike physics score and as well not maxed out Cpu overclock (aka there should be no thermal problem that can affect cpu scores). There shouldn't be a big variances between the physics scores if running same clocks settings + running at a lot lower temp than throttling temp.

Graphics aka Pascal and Turing is another matter animal. They start throttle at low temp. See you'll get lower scores. Cpu should be more stable due it won't run at maxed temp (normally maxed out at 50-75C).

From the beginning. Cpu who drop 1200 points in physics due oc'd Gpu.

 

Thin bezels vs normal bezels

 

That is correct. The CPU should run the same, or very close, as long as it stays under the throttling temperatures. If you see any major changes, either the firmware/EC has it's own special OEM strain of throttling cancer, or Windoze OS X running/stopping/starting background processes and "maintenance" cancer is causing the CPU performance variance. You and I optimize our systems to achieve consistent and predictable results, but most people let Windoze OS X run wild and free to create havoc, willy-nilly.

 

Please do, but don't stop with the unboxing. Maybe do a run-down on performance (benchmarks) and thermals, maybe a bit of overclocking and perhaps a short teardown exploration. Then it will be extra awesome and everyone will get a lot of useful info from watching it.

 

Confirmed. Currently, three desktops still can not upgrade from older chip to newest chip due to no Bios update:

• Aurora 8700k no for 9900k
• Area-51 R4 7980XE no for 9980XE
• Area-51 R3 / R6 (AMD) 1950x no for 2950x

Aurora owners have always been sissy's who won't complain, but 'where is our Bios update???' already exists in the desktop forums; I'd say so, since example AsRock TaiChi got its update way back on 10/28/18, ~4months have gone by since the mainstream got their firmware & the writing's been on the wall that one, two, all three alien desktops may, may go down in the Hall of Shame as needlessly dead-ended products :/

Azor doesn't dare, I don't think, to burn his new 51m customers should Intel pump out one last socket 1151 chip (the rumored 10core 14nm+++++++ Z470); though neither is he supposed to be burning his 51 flagship desktop owners as we speak *shrug*. I may have to tweet @LisaSu how she feels about all this ... ... ...

 

Well the problem is this laptop is a desktop replacement so of Should be able to performs to the level off a desktop chip.

But the fact that this cannot be tuned like a Clevo to outperform than rather trail other machines makes the money not worth it IMHO. It means you're paying to justify the bragging rights, not the performance level.

But at least you do get a nice system with some good customer support (if you speak with the right person) and probably upgradability but with a quite hefty price tag.

If these machines where not castrated I would run 5+ Ghz all day already on my 8950HK but due AW not having enough courage in their heatsink solutions they started capping the damn things so there where less RMA'd 15's and 17's coming back.

@Papusan uses an three or four year old chassis that's still holding up and outperforming newer machines. It's probably an clevo in base but heavily modified by the reseller then again tuned by @Papusan himself making it an machine that not only crosses desktop score's but also decimates them sometimes. That due firmware not holding him back and air to roam around in his chassis.

Would be awesome if the 51m could come to the levels off desktop counterparts or destroy them. else it's just a Dell precision machine (socketed) with just an AW flavour.
But I don't think AW would treat their new flagship model like that. This thing should be overengineerd and be capable of running 5.2/5.3 Ghz without breaking a sweat (cause that's how Azor tried to make it look like)

All my opinion (and some facts about papusan and he helped me alot.)

 

This morning I decided to cancel my order, but when I logged in to my Dell account the order has shipped. Figures. ;-)

Might as well try it out now then.

As for power brick holder, I did this with my Clevo power bricks. Quote from the thread back when I made it:

 

View attachment 170033

Great solution!

 

I'll have most of this done in a few weeks hopefully

This is very interesting, did not know this.

Looks like the current Aurora can be configured with i7-8700 or i9-9900K so was there a recent BIOS update or a new motherboard revision?

Same case with the Area-51 desktop....7XXX and 9XXX series offered so same question with that one.

 

eBay

 

I think it is a desktop-replacement. I have almost the same score (Physics) in 3DMark like all the others with 9700K CPU (DESKTOP). The 2080RTX from A51 is a little bit behind the Desktop Score (1000-3000 Points) because of the 180W limit. The machine is very quiet too while gaming and dont forget, it is much smaller and looks much better than the clevo laptops (my opinion). So what else do you want from this laptop? It is and remains a Laptop. Like i said before, if you want to benchmark everyday, go get a real Desktop. I played with the idea to get a clevo Laptop, but do i really need that 5-10% more Power with a 2-3 year old chassis?

Its just my opinion and everybody can do what he wants to do. But for me, i love it silent, powerful and a nice design. So i picked the A51m. If you want to get the most powerful machine in the world, which everyone "needs and uses to 100%", go get a Clevo.

 

SJ! How is college brother

Aurora, two different mthrbrds (R7 IPCFL-SC 8700k | R8 IPCFL-SC/R 9900k), R7 has no Bios update to run 9900k, November was its logical due date, firmware MIA for months. (Aurora R5 6700k, no joy, no Bios update for 7700k)

A51 Intel has two mthrbrd part #'s (R4 HJFY7 | R5 N4R4N), R5 buyers do have Gen9 support because those chips are shipping in N4R4N, older R4 buyers have no Bios update for Gen9, firmware MIA / past due for weeks

51 R7 ships with 2950x, older R3 R6 buyers do not have Bios update for 1950x to 2950x, firmware MIA for months

I'm waiting like everyone else to see if it's 'better-late-than-never', or, never. Who lives, who dies; in the past, if u didn't get your Bios upd8 w/ in 2months of CPU making 1st debut on sales menu, u did not get one, all of these boards are on a 'suicide watch'. The substantial time delay is gravest for past Aurora & AMD buyers, clock is ticking on R4 Intel

 

It's intense, hoping to finish by September lol.

Wow, that really sucks. You'd expect them to at least do an easy BIOS update to add support.

I've only owned one AW desktop , the Area-51 (5820k) if you remember and it was only because I got it cheaper than it would have been to build a system and I wanted to try out AW desktops.

It performed well but BIOS wasn't very filling (lots of missing options).

For desktops, I have always and always will, build my own. I understand for people who don't want to build their own but this compatibility thing is BS.

Has no one been able to flash their motherboards? You'd think they're just rebranded boards.

 

What was your reason for wanting to cancel? Is there any chance you'll change your mind now that it's gonna be in your ownership for a bit?

And that's a really nice and simple solution to carrying two power supplies around. Definitely gonna go that route.

 

One big reason was that I finally found a decent fan profile for my Clevo just the other day, so now I can actually use it in my small living room.

Since the AW is in transit I may keep it. We’ll see. I may end up keeping it anyway.

 

SJ, you sold me your Area-51, of course I remember it (=

Spoiler

I hand-made it a white sleeved case harness ... not long afterward I sold the case & put the mthrbrd in my R1 (but it still needs a CPU & some DDR4). Yes, alienboard was made by MSI (MS-7862), the Bios options are pathetic next to my Godlike X99 (MS-7883) which has a PremaMod Bios by comparison; alienboard's very much picked clean of options

No one has the guts to try? Bios downloads are kept & maintained in their respective Rx categories, & don't appear in the DellFTP Historical pages where they'd be dropped at for download as compatible; I'd think an incompatibility block if attempted? I'm not Bios fluent & haven't suggested someone try it, lest they brick theirs; no brave soul's attempted it yet

When N4R4N board drops to $200 I've got an empty R1 case here & will consider buying it with a 9800x to start an OK alien-centric system with

Stay busy & crack the books (=

 

The Area 51-M is on XoticPC now.

Do believe I am going to have to go with them this time around. I have bought from HID in the past.

Here is the config I built on Xotic's website:


ALIENWARE AREA-51M 2080 $4,179.60
SKU: 51M2080
Thermal Cooling
1 x Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads on heat sensitive surfaces for Superior Cooling Performance $49.00
1 x Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Thermal Paste- GPU & CPU (XPC Service) $36.75
Laptop Chassis
1 x Darkside of the Moon Chassis $80.00
Shipping Warranties / Packaging
1 x Custom Formed & Injected Foam Premium White Glove Packaging $39.00
1 x Custom Fabricated Laptop Wood Crate $179.00
Display Options
1 x 30 Day "No Dead Pixel" Guarantee $35.00
1 x Professional Monitor Color Calibration (Operating System is required | Eases eye strain) $49.00
1 x Yes, quality check and give me panel with minimal backlight bleed. (We will handpick the top 20% panels available for your model that exhibit the least amount of backlight bleed) $99.00
System Test Records & Certificate of Ownership
1 x Custom Binder & Certificate of Ownership – take pride in your system with a hand-signed personalized certificate & Benchmarks $19.00
Processor
1 x 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-9900K Processor (16MB Cache, 3.60-5.00GHz, 8 core | 16 thread) 95W $199.00
SO-DIMM MEMORY
1 x 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2666MHz Dual Channel SO-DIMM Memory $269.00
M.2 SATA / PCIe / NVMe SSD Drive Slot 1
1 x 256GB Certified M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Seq. Read 2000MB/s, Seq. Write 1750MB/s) $53.10
PCIe / NVMe SSD Drive Slot 2
1 x 256GB Certified M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Seq. Read 2000MB/s, Seq. Write 1750MB/s) $53.10
2.5" Bay 1
1 x 2TB SSHD Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hybrid Drive $79.00
Wireless Networking / Bluetooth
1 x Intel® 5th Generation Dual Band Wireless-AC 9260 802.11ac, 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth⁺ 5 $41.65


Same laptop from HIDevolution (differences are in what thermal paste is used and HID doesn't offer any custom box shipping. Could also be a difference in panels. Have an email in to Xotic to see which 144Hz panel is included; G-sync or no G-sync):


Custom Built Alienware Area-51M - 17.3" FHD 60Hz / FHD 144Hz - i7-8700 / i7-9700K / i9-9900K - RTX 2070 / 2080 $4,719.00
Chassis Color
Black - Dark Side of the Moon
Free Game Bundles
GET BOTH Anthem + Battlefield V for laptops with RTX 2080, GET YOUR CHOICE of Anthem OR Battlefield V for laptops with RTX 2060 or 2070
Processor
Intel 9th Gen Core i9-9900K 8 Core, 16 Thread, 16MB Cache, Processor, 3.6 - 5.0 GHz - $450.00
Video Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2080 w/ 8GB GDDR6 - $450.00

Thermal Interface Materials
Gelid GC Extreme on CPU + GPU, and Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads on heat sensitive surfaces – installed by HIDevolution - $65.00
LCD Panel
17.3" FHD (1920 x 1080) 144Hz Anti-Glare IPS Display w/ NVIDIA G-SYNC + Tobii eyetracking technology - $200.00
Display Calibration
Yes, display professionally calibrated w/ profile saved to USB drive - $50.00 ...
Minimize LCD Backlight Bleed
Yes, quality check and give me a panel with minimal backlight bleed. - $100.00
Display Warranty
30 Days Zero Defective Pixel Warranty (perfect panel guarantee) - $35.00
System Memory (RAM)
HIDevolution Approved Standard 32GB Dual Channel DDR4/2666MHz (2 x 16GB) - installed by HIDevolution - $280.00
RAID Options
RAID 0 (striping) - Must select 2x identical drives in M.2 SSD Slots 1 and 2
M.2 PCIe / SATA Slot 1
HIDevolution Approved 256GB M.2 PCIe3.0 x4 NVMe SSD - installed by HIDevolution - $110.00
M.2 PCIe / SATA Slot 2
HIDevolution Approved 256GB M.2 PCIe3.0 x4 NVMe SSD - installed by HIDevolution - $110.00
2.5" Drive Bay
2TB Seagate FireCuda Gaming 7mm SSHD (ST2000LX001) - installed by HIDevolution - $90.00
Keyboard
Alienware TactX keyboard with per-key RGB LED AlienFX lighting, anti-ghosting, N-Key US Eng
Wireless Cards
Intel® Wireless-AC 9260 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n 2x2 NGFF w/ Bluetooth 5.0 - $30.00
Operating System
Windows 10 Home, 64bit, English, with Multi Language Support
Warranty and Service
1 Year Standard Support + 1 Year HIDevolution US Warranty + LIFETIME HIDevolution Technical Support


The Xotic PC even with all the upgrades and extra shipping costs is less than the standard 9900K, 2080, 32GB RAM option on Dell's website with no upgrades.

ETA: Cost will go up some with added warranty. When doing this comparison I just went with both website's standard warranty included in the price.

 

I've never had the pleasure of using a modded Clevo DTR. So from my experience when you get a laptop you're sacrificing power for form factor. So I never would expect 100% performance from one just due to thermal limitations of such a small chassis.

That being said the tests that some of our fellow members have done so far are impressing me. I'm coming from a 1080 Ti with 5820K. And I'm hoping to side grade and not notice much of a difference. So far it looks like that shouldn't be a problem.

Now when the clevo laptops starting popping up I was interested. For the same price I can get the 17" Clevo DTR with the 9900K instead of the 9700K. But I know from benchmarks that the 9700k and 9900k are neck and neck when it comes to gaming. So I'm ok with the 9700k. Plus it's hard not to argue the 51m looks alot better.

So build quality ultimately win me over.