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

Will you discover something which was not known up front ? Did Dell lie or mislead in their operating or specification manuals? Only then you'd have a case for returning it after the 15-day (or was it 30-day) no fuss, full return period.

 

Yes I cannot see the engineering justification for selling very AW51m with two PSUs, maybe they will make a single 550W in the future and send it to everyone for free

 

I don't mind having 2, it's the artificial downclock imposed when not using them, or using one. I would @ Frank azor but I only have a company Twitter account Haha

 

There is a difference between being locked down and being a design choice.

2 PSU's might be a design choice.
2400mhz RAM limit - should be changed, I admit that. I don't see why that shouldn't be fixed. Same with XMP support. That seems simple.
Windows Hello not supported - I haven't looked into this. Is this also a hardware limitation/choice? Did they decide to not include the hardware to support Windows Hello?

What's the problem with your Thunderbolt display? I'm using Thunderbolt, but not a Thunderbolt display. I'm using a Belkin thunderbolt dock, and I've even hooked up my Thunderbolt eGPU through the dock. It worked, even though it was mad because it wasn't the first device in the chain. Haven't had any Thunderbolt issues yet.

You sound rather upset with your purchase. Hopefully you are still within your timeframe to return your notebook if you are not satisfied with it.

Good luck.

 

Your post doesn't make sense to me. In that case why not just carry the one 330W. Two 180W will take up just as much room in a bag if not more and weight will be about the same if not more as well.

 

There are other ssd brands who offer own NVMe drivers.
Recommended AHCI / RAID and NVMe Drivers. An alternative is to try out OFA NVMe drivers. But be sure you backup your data if you try it.

There is nothing in their specification documents that says you will not be able to utilize maximum capacity from the single 330w psu. I mean even Acer who used dual connectors for the *curved* Worlds fastest laptop had similar power delivery flaws.


Edit. https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/alienware-17-area51m-laptop_setup-guide_en-us.pdf

 

Hehe

I meant, they don't even needed to cut into their profits, many people would had paid extra for the option to buy one seperate when you config your laptop on dells homepage.

Lets say they save 2 bricks and charge extra 50 for the premium brick.

 

,,operating normaly,, - that may be somewhat unhappy
for me that means -> in daily workload (office, light gaming, webbrowsing, music) 1 of the adapters is enough -> Full CPU performance is given.

other usecases like heavy rendering, 4k or high refresh rate gaming etc i need both. I (!) can live with that.

->
I think that's a bit funny ... I order a notebook with 2! PSUs and then I wonder that with one PSU the power is limited...

 

I hope this can help you. This appears on the Dell website although I still do not have my a51m:


https://imgur.com/a/9y8CJiw

 

Tweeted Frank about some of the issues, most of which COULD be improved with a bios

 

Actually they're listening...somewhat. They respond on twitter to most of what I've asked them. I've asked them about 2400mhz limit, XMP support, RAM timings.

It's an Apple Thunderbolt Display. Area-51M either needs a firmware update or setting in BIOS (hidden to us) changed that handles the DDI to TBT. Works fine in a AW 13 R3 and in my old Clevo P870DM/3. I already asked them about this, let's see what they say.

Oh I'm far from upset. I'm just complaining about the things that need complaining. I've been enjoying the laptop. Finally a nice laptop after my M18xR2 from AW.

Windows hello is supported by the Tobii system in the Area-51M as stated in the Tobii website. Issue is, AW chose not to implement it. So we cannot use it.

 

I created a account just to Tweet AW team and frank about these issues. if you guys want a true resolution you have to work as a team to blast them on social media. On my posts i only had 1 maybe 2 others comment so it seems like I was a angry one man warrior. That has to change. @Cass-Olé is also trying to fight this but no one is backing him on twitter. @ssj92 I was fighting with you on twitter to bring these issues to light but we are going to need atleast i would say 100 people constantly tweeting to all members of AW of our issues and complaints or they will simple wash our opinions under the rug as they feel we will eventually stop complaining.

We are asking for the manufacturers part number located on the back of the Screen it self. The part number you listed in the picture is for Dell only. But if you have the # for the manufacturer you can bypass dell's premium and order direct for much less. For my self i would like to know the connector style and such because i do believe a 30 pin can be wired to a 40 pin and vise verse. Also i think i can 3d print a bezel and brackets to hold the AW 17R4 120hz 1440 lcd if we did a pin conversion.

 

No it shows under device manager and disk management. Just not in the BIOS for whatever reason. It only shows as Windows Boot Manager under BIOS..

I assume this is an issue? Does yours say the name of your drive under bios?

 

Guys please remember that we purchased a Laptop that was announced just 2 months ago. We're already getting top 2% performance in benchmark. Every laptop has their flaws, I'm not aware of a single perfect model.

So far they been listening to what we had to say on twitter and they been communicating with us, let's not break the trust by being a bunch of jerk. Umar and Frank are Human being and we need to treat them with respect if we want them to actually listen. Our concern is legit and if it can improve our laptop it will benefits everyone.

I'm doing a lot of Reddit/Google/YouTube search on the Area-51M on a daily basis to get the general feel and so far we haven't been portraying a positive image of the laptop.

I am personally very satisfied by it, The overclocking is working great, my gaming performance are fantastic the upgradability was easy and smooth personally the laptop feel of quality and it's a 10/10 for me.

Of course I've had some driver problem upon doing a Fresh install and I'd like 2666mhz Ram support and other stuff you guys are mentioning. I've been raising our concern to both Umar and Frank and they are both listening so I'm positive for the future.

I see tons of Reddit thread with people reading this topic and having a lot of questions because of all the negativity.
If your a 51M owner and are satisfied don't hesitate on dropping some positive from time to time so other people can see.

This laptop is a beast.

 

If 2x power adapter is a physical restriction as @Papusan hypothesized. That is why 2x 180w would be better than 330w + 180w. (And in most cases probably provide enough power for full system operation)

I still think it is firmware though. Because it down clocks the same no matter the combination it seems

 

Dell website down? Tried to track order but it shows invalid order number and then the page shows runtime error n etc after refreshing it several times.

 

Please add a disclaimer to your post. Power supplies are dangerous to break into.

If you have no experience, you can get yourself seriously injured

 

So I've tried searching and I can't find anything. Does anyone here have benchmarks of how this thing does in ray tracing for BF5, Metro and Quake 2?

 

To sacrificemygoat:
If you can downgrade BIOS to older version (unless its security locked) you might get the drive working. Dell releases good BIOS early and then add limits in new versions.

 

Looks like the power adapter issue won't be going away

 

@Rocktaze I would agree with you under certain circumstances but this is supposed to be a Flagship Desktop replacement. Your not going to break anyone's trust voicing your opinion with comments and concerns. The fact why i say we must come together to voice this and let up is we have already been lied to about the 8 heat pipe design we been charged a hefty premium for purchasing through dell even with a 15% discount. The facts are this laptop as it was marketed and sold to us without all these limitations, Now that users have been digging into the reality of the aw51m finding so many large flaws in QC and software some one has to voice these things. This is stuff that you wouldn't find on any of the competition. See what you wanna overlook which i won't is We all know every year has a Q1-4 well guess what this laptop is announced Q4 of last year then marketed Q1 of this year and now were are very close to Q2. Those of us who bought lets call it the Release candidate #1 will be suffering when all the fixes turn into a hardware change in the release of either a silent Candidate #2 or AW 51mR2. I don't know about you but id rather not being extremely frustrated when all our answers are solved in a laptop we would have to repurchase.
Does that make any sense? I agree professionalism is a must positivity is always nice but reality can kick your butt if you let it. What many of us are saying that comes off quite rude or negative are just our own perspective of the reality we have created making the choice to purchase this laptop with such high expectations. I'll be honest I'm still very excited to get mine in the mail in just a couple of days. I'll be doing an un-boxing first impression video like everyone else with my opinions followed by a bunch of heavy tests if i get a binned laptop that fulfills my needs then great. But seeing how many people with complaints all over the web right now with this laptop isn't a coincidence.

Yes its been down for a few hours lol. I thought i was being banned from refreshing lol. Most company's update the servers on Sunday night or early Monday morning EST in the US so this could be just that.

 

Here is a Great of example of what I'm fighting for not to happen to us with these laptops. You guys can say I'm negative or what ever. Free speech makes butts hurt but this poor guy has been trying to get his issues resolved for months. This could be one of you with issue with eh Alienware 51m you purchased only now your months past you date to return and you cant even get what you paid for as a replacement. Yup Aw 51mR2. If Dell is going to listen and make changes to benefit us it will be coming from us asking as a team.

I can't make this stuff up.

 

Gotcha now!

 

You don't even have the laptop yet ... wait till you get your hands on it ... Can you tell me what limitation is refraining your from being productive or having great fps?

if all your read from my post was ''Don't voice your opinion'' than you certainly need to read it again. I'm all in so we can voice our opinion and get Dell to fix the problem we are facing. But even with it's current flaws and limitation the laptop is great and if we act like a bunch of jerk we may never get update and they may stop communicating with us.
You replied to some of my twitter post and as you can see i was one of the first to ask question about the 51M but we need to do it with respect.

 

Well, it does say "for max performance use two". It ships with two and can use two at the same time, clearly the second is not a spare. It is a very arduous argument to claim that you were misled into thinking that you need only one.

 

It also doesn't say were going to cut your GPU in half on the 4k laptop you own if we don't detect both plugged in. Many may, but dont stand for it.

 

Added my 2 cents on Twitter:

"My question then is, why if running off of just the 330W brick is the performance gimped to be the same as running off just the 180W brick? Running off of either one cuts down the GPU clock by ~50%. I could see maybe ~15-20% on just 330W, but 50% is ridiculous!!!"

 

well the thing is they're talking about "MAX-PEROFRMANCE". If MAX-PERFORMANCE means all the power of the gpu than it's justified. So what one should do is to try to find out what definition Dell has for "MAX-PEROFRMANCE". They're playing with words, and it's working. if they claimed result a can be achieved with only 1 charger, then you could have something legally, but how they're playing it now is that it's a play of words that makes their practice legal. What they're saying is IF you want to achieve A you need to use two adapters. no compromise.

 

You miss understand. Not that you NEED only one. But that you can use the Max capacity of 1.

For example. If I use my AW 13 R3 with a lesser 130W power adapter (it comes with 180W). It uses all 130W of that adapter just fine, and throttles to match the available Watts. It doesn't automatically cut power in half from the GPU.

That is the behavior that I would expect from any Dell system.

@ssj92 or anyone else interested in the system behaviour

Could you run 1 more test? With the single 330W adapter, see how many Watts are pulled from a CPU + GPU stress test?

 

They can play whatever game they want, people will just vote with their wallet/cancel orders.

 

I can understand everyone's complaint

Offcoarse, but this is all our fault. This is countless of years of pre-ordering and buying BGA crap. Now manufacturers have such a power that sometimes it hurts you in the process when they change their products that has created sentiment, and brand value.

Back in the day you could buy something and it's yours. Until Apple became "mainstream" and all manufacturers wanted to create thin and ligt macbook like products

Than tablets came and crashed the desktop market which already was slowing due to smartphone sales having taken off (Apple proved that previous palm and windows phones where not marketed right )

And now it's time for laptops.

 

So i just got off the phone with Eurocom, They said they haven't tested anything past the AW 18R2 that being said no one knows if the signal chip used in the new Psu's in the same as the older ones. Also I'm not certain they use the 7.5mm x 5.0mm on the AW51m some one can chime in and correct me if it is or isn't. I asked if it uses 2 separate inputs or is it a single input with split wires. He answered it uses 2 separate 12v ad ground signal wires. Then i asked him well Ok here's where i'm coming from I explained the situation with the AW51m with the limitations with 2 psu's ect. I then asked if i could buy 1 Dell setup power supply to test if it works with out laptops then buy an additional Dell output cable. He then told me the Dell output cable alone is $200.00!!!! So a PSU Costs 475$ but then 200$ of which is just for a single cable. That sounds like shiz to me but what ever he basically dead ended me with that. "50$ i could see but 200$ Nope!." I was willing to buy the PSU with an extra cable to test out for everyone after splicing a dual output. But i guess not..
If anyone wants to Buy one to try it out or already has a Eurocom 780w unit from there old Alienware try it out let me know I'm very interested to see what happens.

Also He told me if i want to push this up the chain of command through Eurocom to Email [email protected]
Then i would be talking to the shots caller.

But to be honest we could get China to make a custom unit cheaper via Alibaba then Eurocom

@ Papusan @ssj92 @ captn.ko @ lsramair @ Kormi
People I thought might be interested.

 

to be honest... i dont have a problem with 2 bricks...For me its an desktop replacement... for gaming it will sit on my desk all day long. I will only do office stuff when using 1 brick ^^ or maybe ab bit Rocket League... Mine will be delivered in 2 days... then i can give solid feedback.

but yeah:
180w connected -> 180w usable
330w coonected -> 330w usable

That would be the best solution.

 

I'm getting the same thing..now it's not even showing any orders placed even though I have a 51m on order....

 

Same here. My orders are not showing up when I login to my account. However, I am able to search my order by order number and is in confirmed status. Placed order on Friday 03/08 and amount has been debited from my account. Hoping I don't see any issues with the order.

 

same here, first it gives me an error message that I must select the country that I ordered it in from the bottom right order but it was already set to USA! Now when I check nothing happens, just says Loading, please wait

 

Very good advice thank you, yes I already ensured there were no undervolts it was stock image I used for troubleshooting.. But I have good news.... I think I sorted it out.... Corrupt firmware I believe... Just putting it through more rigorous testing to confirm and I will report back. Thank you for your suggestion though, much appreciated

 

Reply from Dell Cares about the order status page:

 

The 780W power supply has its own set of problems, like active cooling and electrical noise. There is a pretty good discussion about it over in MrFox's review thread. Personally if I were getting the Area 51m, I would just get a spare AC Adapter set for traveling so I wouldn't have to hassle with unplugging so much stuff to move it around. If Dell happens to release a firmware fix in a few months then great, if not, its still not that bad for traveling.

 

With the Dell rewards I got that is what I plan to do. You also can get $150 worth of Dell rewards for basically spamming the alienware arena forums too, so I did that in anticipation of the 51m. After the order and arena rewards, I have about $370 I think to spend on accessories. Probably going to get extra power adapters or something to that effect.

 

See

Seems like it's common and being taken care of. But just fyi to ease concerns - I'm in the same boat as you all. Really, really hoping I get lucky and get a delivery this week.

 

So mine just arrived. Second unit but with a i9 now and 32gigs of memory.
Seems fine for now, for some strange reason i had 2 little pecks on the screen. Seemed like stuck pixels. I was furious once again....
But after a few ticks on it recovered. Hopefully for good now but we will have to wait and see.

Temps on this system again, rock solid, not above 90 when stress testing on normal without OC.

 

and what is your thermal settings? performance? Mine is going very hot, I am trying to sort it out with Dell

 

Just FYI for everyone in here - Supposedly Microsoft is warning gaming users about problems with KB4482887 and suggest uninstalling it if you have issues.
I know some people were talking about issues with gsync on external displays and such.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windo...se-performance-in-certain-games.413820.0.html

This KB may be related to issues people are having, and you may want to try uninstalling it to see if it helps, if you have it installed.

 

Thanks a lot! it helps.

 

Excellent, so you got the 9900k, what did you use to stress test? What MHz did the cpu hold to stay under 90?
Congratulations!

 

Its on Balanced profile.

Yep the 9900k last time the 9700k both cpu's with intel extreme utility stress test. Didn't put the GPU and CPU to work both but in my opinion you won't stress both 100% in daily use.
Mhz is 4,7 going for a OC this evening.

 

Well... my original order just arrived even though I canceled it and Dell charged me. In the process of trying to get a return started or asked them to give me a refund similar that I got for my re-order and just cancel that one instead. So tempting to just open the box and take a peak!

 

Got mine today....I'm at work so I had the delivery guy drop off the box @ my parents place.
Delivery was supposed to be this Friday and since the orders page is busted, I was unable to check the status this morning. Funny thing is that the status was still showing confirmed last night.
I really hate the Dell site for this crap. It is so bloody inaccurate.

 

Ok so I'm not sure if this was talked about yet but a warning to anyone thinking about saving money now and getting the 2060 or 2070 and upgrading later is in for a surprize. You will have to upgrade the heat pipes also. Dell is installing 3 different sets. One with 7 pipes, one with 8 pipes and one with 8 pipes and side pipes. Add the price of a new card and a new power brick and this would not be considered upgradable in my book as you will be able to buy a new system for that price. Something to think about.