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

Alienware Area-51m laptops configured with an RTX 2080 will receive power-boosting BIOS in April

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Alien...ve-power-boosting-BIOS-in-April.410680.0.html

 

Are we sure this won't be a "APRILS FOOLS"? ROFL

I think they fooled us and in April when early adapters brought 51m they release 8 real heatpipes, RTX 2080Ti etc

 

Ordered 2/16 still says confirmed but delivery date expected 3/5. I shouldn't be worried right? Still has time to ship... Right? Haha.
Rtx 2080
I7 9700k

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

Lol... My delivery date was February 13th.... I'm still waiting...

 

Will see

 

Lol... part shortage... they’ve got to come up with better excuses than that haha.

 

FedEx moved slow and missed the delivery date Gonna have to wait until at least tomorrow! First world problems.

 

So I need some help. I can't boot this thing from a USB stick. Just skips right past it. I've also tried cloning the drive using Macrium Reflect and it says
0xc0000225 cannot find files. I don't mind doing a fresh install. The BIOS can let me add a UEFI boot item from the settings (point to an EFI file) but I can't get it to use it on boot. I'm at a loss and need some help.

 

Do you plan on doing an unboxing video/tear down, repaste etc?

 

So has anybody managed to find a rep that gives a pretty sweet discount?

 

peep it

 

That's a lot of damage....I think I'll just wait for one to show up on the used market. I paid $1500 for my M18x with factory 3920XM and 7970M crossfire, SSDs, 32gb of ram 2 years after it came out. I'm sure that config was pushing 4K when it was purchased brand new.

 

Well I decided to reorder the area 51m backpack. Should be here Wednesday. If I'm lucky the laptop will be close behind.

 

You're not gonna find an Area-51M with 2080 for $1,500 anywhere anytime soon.

I'm sure the RTX 2060 + i7-8700 with a discount should get you close enough though.

Why not sell all your systems except for the M17xR2 and one M18xR2?

 

I'd go for the 2070 + 8700 for 1500 no contest there.

I don't sell because people pay pennies on the dollar. Some dude said my M18x with 980M SLI, 32GB of RAM, and 2920XM "is worth about $600" lol

 

lol hate to say this but...you might wanna try ebay.

I sold my M18xR2 for $700 shipped:

i7 3630QM, 12GB ram, 680M SLI, Win 7 Ult.

It was awhile ago though.

You should be able to get $1k on ebay. Fees kill ya though. I only got like $550 after everything if I remember correctly.

 

I'd just keep it as a backup laptop at that point or give it to family. 500$ won't buy anything as nice as a M18x if push comes to shove

 

Yeah I'm keeping mine too just the way it is. I gave my 2nd one to my brother.

If only Dell used 4GB 680m instead of 2GB models, I'd still probably be able to game on my M18x lol. I thought about selling them but idk

 

So I must be out of my mind. I can’t get the nvidia control panel to show up. I tried using DDU to clean the drivers and that works fine. But I can’t use the standard driver package from nvidia.com. When I run the installer it gives me two reasons it can’t install. One is that the windows version is incorrect and two is that the hardware is not compatible.

The only way I can get a driver to install is to use Dell’s package, or to use GeForce experience and neither set up the nvidia control panel. I’ve done a fresh load of windows using my own recovery stick and not the dell image. Any thoughts?

 

nVidia Control Panel is now a UWP app that you need to download from the MS store from what I have seen and heard.

Here is a link from nVidia Support saying that it should automatically dl from MS Store dependent up on which build of Windows you are on and what type nVidia driver you are using.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4733/~/nvidia-control-panel-windows-store-app

 

I swear to all that is good and pure. If this is the fix then I’m going to be pissed beyond belief.

 

The weird thing to me is that on my laptops I have now, GE73 Raider and Huawei Matebook X Pro, running a 1070 and MX150 respectively, I am running the Insider Preview of Windows 10 Pro so I am ahead of of the normal windows builds and am running the latest nVidia drivers so I should be on the UWP version of the control panel, but I am still on the one originally provided by nVidia and went to look up the UWP app in the MS store and it doesn't show for me at all.

Might be only on the newer RTX cards that the control panel has changed to the UWP app?

Will find out for sure myself when my Area 51-M arrives in March.

 

I think the battery wear and tear will be too high after the update. Why not release a VBIOS for RTX 2080M just like they did with 1080M.

 

My order has shipped!!!

Quiz Wednesday, Midterm Friday and another midterm Monday...LOL

Looks like they're using UPS Surepost so I probably won't get it this week but next week

 

I've ran across this issue many times. I had to DDU in safe mode, disable the iGPU and at times install the driver in safe mode. Most of the issues I've experienced so far are with the RTX drivers.

Great info, I was just about to mentioned something similar, but you've nailed it about the UWP...

That could be a possibility too for sure, but I think upping the overall wattage will be more desired than just getting a vbios increase. As for the battery wear and tear, the good thing is that it's modular ...and as I've said before, with a gaming / work station beast like this running full blown parts, the battery life is the very last thing on the list of importance. Most people will be plugged in most of the time... and if battery life is of concern, then this is the wrong laptop to even be considering.

Congrats! Cheers to that mate... that's awesome.

 

I think battery faults are ignored by Dell whilst in warranty and often say AW/Dell inspiron gaming laptops aren't meant to run on batteries and all that crap talk. I don't think so, atleast 2 hrs is a minimum on whatever hardware they pack in, that's the reason we all buy portable DTRs to get minimum battery runtime while on the go for completing our work and after work we switch into gaming mode for full blown gaming on Mains/AC power. Using both at the same time is bad for the laptop because heat can destroy the cells and risk blowing up if Dell use power boost tech very frequently. Sadly, there's nothing to take care of that in windows but in Linux I can set temp limit on battery and even reduce the weird battery drain by using tuned-adm package in debian/ubuntu 18. With Luke chadwick's Linux undervolt GUI you can set undervolts to reduce those temps just like windows.
If people are using laptop as a desktop 100% of the time w/o Zero battery usage then they should definitely get a desktop.
I use my laptop 60-70% on AC and rest is on battery most of the times due to power cuts or on the go document editing/type setting.
Windows 10 includes the same feature as in Linux but OEMs never use them.

 

So I had to side load the UWP app but that fixed the issue. That’s a few hours of my life I won’t get back.

 

For 1k USD i would have thought you would really struggle to even get a 980 SLI desktop setup, let alone the beast m18x. keep it dude, for reference i just sold an m18x r2 without any GPU's for £700 English pounds on ebay ( a lot of people will but them without the GPU's, as they simply love the size/looks).

I think you could get near the $2k USD mark with selling both GPU's separate + then the system too.

 

There's truth to that indeed, however, what I'm saying is that if battery life is of concern to someone buying a laptop at this level, then I think this type of laptop is the wrong choice for them... I've used this analogy a lot before, but for someone shopping for a super car isn't going to be looking at the gas mileage to determine what they are going to buy..

I'm just really emphasizing that to me, IMO, battery life is like one of the last things on the list of importance for a laptop like this... where it is not even close to a make it or break it variable ...

Even when I was traveling a lot for work, very rarely was I not plugged in with my clevo's as I was always plugged into an outlet, because there was one almost always available.

Also, not sure if you remember, but with my AW's I've actually kept the battery cable unplugged while plugged into my battery back up UPS unit just because I was always plugged into the wall outlet anyway. (Note: If the power went out, the battery back up UPS has been flawless to instantly provide continuous 'clean sine wave' power to the laptop... so I wasn't worried at all. To be clear, I would never do this and plug right into a regular unprotected wall outlet lol.)

Sigh...imagine if we had all the game support on Linux... then there would be no need for M$.

On the positive, at least you got it to work. Cheers to that... a learning experience is not wasted time.

 

Same thing to me bud, i did this like 5x times i thought something was wrong with my card..

but yeah i had to DL it separately !

 

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/18497476

Not bad i'd say

 

Excellent result!!

This won't go down well with the Clevo lot.

 

I would imagine Clevo would try to release a competitor with desktop RTX-2080 soon.

 

Ah ok, I thought they already had, within a new variant of the P775.

Maybe they won't be too fussed by this yet.

 

Can anyone confirm what Nvme drives come with these? Are they Samsung/Toshiba?

 

You should really use your desktop for gaming, you'll see almost 2x FPS with 2080Ti. BTW, the cable that most OEMs provide are insufficient because the cable that connects the PSU to Mains/AC is really low value and I feel I'm being throttled w/o VSYNC. I switched to my old 10 yr old with 13A/15A cable and saw better gaming and CPU performance.

 

An excellent score indeed, and does show that AW can perform. Very interested in the Tuning results. Why wouldn't it go down well with the Clevo modders ?

I assume you think that it's an battle between Clevo/AW. I think what you probably meant is that it could silence the critics. The Clevo lot you're talking about are old AW users, who just abandoned ship when they saw the company went left, where they wanted a company that would go right.

paying 4/5000 for a machine is pretty hefty, so i think people SHOULD be critical. Hating on the product is something else (and pretty lame), but haven't seen that from the "Clevo lot". Just some critical consumers/tweakers that have had a bad experience with a certain company.

It score's high and right around the corner of a desktop similiar specced so that's a +1 for me !
but i haven't seen the details under which circumstances it performed. But the fact that it can proves that AW has made some improvements

 

Sideload?

 

Nice results, my goal is 28k+ GPU score when I get mine.

For everyone getting 27k+ GPU score on the 2080, did you guys increase just the core/memory offsets or do other things?

 

So wasn't

@aw_umar
Umaw_umar

Supposed to get the email to validate the 7 or 8 heat pipe controversy today ? Any updates?

 

He said they're all traveling this week so expect a delay on the answer. He said by Wednesday.

Here's what he said:

 

Interesting... So engineering decide to make a change and not tell the boss.... Or anybody for that matter...sales, marketing, support, to name a few... And then blame the delay on power supplies...

 

+1 - I can vouch for being an ex Alienware guy to Clevo , and I'm on my first Clevo now (P9870KM-1) with regards to build quality and everything, its on par with my old m18x r2.
It's not a AW Vs Clevo battle, I would say out of the two companies Clevo think about there products more and provide better bang for your buck. This is coming from somebody who has physically owned and stripped down numerous times all Alienwares post 2011 from 15" - 18.4".

Good scores - interested to know the temps on the CPU/GPU?

 

So now we know there is no 8 pipe heatsink at all.
More details to come Wednesday

 

But nobody had this delay who ordered in europe..

 

LOL I've owned many M18xR2 and Clevo P870DM/P870DM3 and I can tell you build quality is not on par with M18x.

The build quality of the P870 series isn't bad, especially considering it's plastic, but it's not on the same level as M18xR2.

I suspect neither is the Area-51M but that one should at least be better built than P870 series.

 

What are the chances the delayed machines start coming out with 8 pipes?

 

None, there is no 8 heatpipe heatsink

 

@Donald@HIDevolution

Do you guys have the Area 51-M in stock? According to your website the system shows as pre-order, however, on Amazon it says you have them in stock and they usually ship within 2-3 days of purchase. I was told by another reseller that none of the resellers would be getting any stock until sometime in March.

 

Well, I would disagree, only the chassis on the m18x r1 / r2 was superior ( same part).

The thermal components on the Clevo- vapour chamber etc, and the thought process behind the design is better in my opinion (access to under keyboard and HD locations etc) and how fast you can access all the internals, and the speakers blow even the m18x out of the water.

So we will agree to disagree on that 1, the m18x is my all-time golden laptop, but overall this is a better machine with 1 exception and that's the chassis itself.

1 Example - to access the GPU's you had to remove the LCD / touchpad etc etc, in terms of accessibility / thermal dissipation the P870 is lightyears ahead ( and it should be its a LOT newer) both my 200+watt 1080's don't break 53 degrees under load, and my 7700k @4.6 doesn't break 64 degrees under load, almost unbelievable in a laptop albeit all thermally modded.

The biggest flaw in the m18x was the trash mobo connectors, in particular, the hard drive connectors, these were on the MB and I have personally seen around 30 damaged mobo's from these clips being broken. the 7970's would overheat, and so did the 6990's and the 580M's / 675M's overheat paradise, only the 680M was a reliable high-performance card. They were overclockable monsters from the CPU point of view, but I am pointing out defects against the m18x too, wasn't exactly perfect.

I also love the look of the new Area 51, however, the GTX 2080 seems to be getting 28k GPU score that's only 20% more than one standard GTX 1080 before doing some overclocking to it.

I am not convinced on the cooling solution either of the 51-M for those with the 9900K, seen temps around 100 degrees under load, so again I would question the heatsinks ability for heat dissipation with high end CPU's.