*OFFICIAL* Alienware Area-51M R2 Owner's Lounge

I think some folks had issues with the Area 51m using an aftermarket IHS that is a different height messing up the geometry of the fit with other components. I think any time you have a unified heat sink design changing z-height of any component is going to introduce a host of issues with things not fitting correctly.

Edit:

LOL, looks like we posted the same thing simultaneously.

 

Hivemind! But very solid point(s), I completely forgot that this thing uses a unified heatsink.

 

As a lowly undervolting bottom feeder, I guess I'm not affected by power limits

 

Had this issue first hand with the custom WC heatsink for the P870

 

The trick was and still is to use a 0.5mm copper shin between the gpu die and heatsink. This gives you solid contact and way lower temps

 

Quick question about this: package size for my particular CPU is listed as 42mm x 28mm. I guess it would not make sense to try and fit a 50x50mm shim. What's a good tool for cutting these to size? My hand metal saw seems too crude.

 

Better buy them precut to size, I tried cutting some to size with plate shears only to have the entire copper shim warp.

 

Alienware Area-51m R2 System BIOS v1.2.0

 

I ended up using shims + k5 paste on the VRMS etc etc as i think the copper block was ever so slightly warped, nailed it in the end.
I recall one of the guys on the thread telling me its a 12+degree increase per for every 0.5mm out of sync!

 

Do you think it's best to stay on bios 1.0 or use either 1.1 or 1.2?

 

Getting mine next week already !!!!

 

IMO since the laptop is very new, these BIOS updates are essential to fixing any issues they quickly discovered after launching the product so I'd do them. Especially since we have no reports of throttling or whatnot like the Area-51m R1 had past BIOS 1.5.0

Plus, Dell has no reason to throttle this one like the R1 when it had the initial burned GPU reports.

This is not official news, just my speculation.

 

So used to not updating with dell

 

It's just arrived just getting it set up and ill post some benchmarks.









That screen is soooo nice. The 300hz feels amazing compared to my old 60hz

Also you can undervolt the CPU it's not been disabled.

 

Congrats! what SSD configuration did you order? What brand/model are they?

I heard that they're still using the E3000 not the E3100 LAN can you check device manager and see?

 

Its still the E3000

I ordered 2x 512gb in a 1TB Raid 0 config and a separate 512GB all seem to be Western Digital PC SN730. https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/pc-sn730-ssd

 

Congrats !
Cannot wait for the thermals

 

Timespy results on balanced fan profile. The CPU did hit 100'c during the cpu stress test

GPU hit a max of 78'c

 

Can you try on full fan speed please ?
They really worked on the thermals of the GPU apparently

 

With full speed it still hit 100'c but for only a few seconds.



Score is slightly less as steam was downloading a game in the background and i hadn't realised.

 

You are running stock clock no undervolt nothing ?
It doesn't seem that bad after all

 

Yeah all stock clocks. I've not undervolted yet. Will be doing in a bit.

Also the laptop was on my lap during the test so i imagine on a table the thermals should be slightly better still.

 

Here's a R1 score for comparison:

Stock clocks with GPU undervolt: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/7859526

Slight OC on GPU & CPU: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/7167581


They're old runs, might run some fresh ones

 

100c at stock clocks w/ max fans.. Did it hold 4.8Ghz all core boost during physics? Undervolting should help with temps, but ideally rerun without any background load and post the temperature graphs. Scores should fall inline when it holds steady frequency.

 

The physics scores is way off. Stock 9900K is above 11750. This with lower all core boost and 25% less cores.

Could you post picture of monitoring results? Click Show results and we can see clocks and temps. Thanks

 

yes @ratchetnclank , something like the below image. This is on my Area-51m R1 with a 9700K and an RTX 2080:

PS: I used Open Hardware Monitor because it allows you to easily see the CPU and GPU temps in the same screen without scrolling down without having to have an engineering degree to change the layout

Stock:



slight overclock:

 

Alright, 100C CPU temp in TimeSpy! Standard Dell issue laptop then. They should include Conductonaut, and proper pads in the box for added user convenience

 

I was going to ask him to run Cinebench R20, but I don't want the guy to burn down his house.

 

No need to run Hwinfo to get temp results. Click show details on right side where you see clock speed graph and you‘ll get more info as temps etc.

 

Sorry got caught up gaming.
Fresh run with temps





Cpu looks to have stayed at 4.8ghz the whole time and hit 98'c. Again all stock clocks and voltages.

 

And if you undervolt a bit ?

 

Cinebench hit 100'c and cpu frequency hit 4.8 then dropped slightly to 4.7

 

Not so bad !

Delided watercooled and slight overclock I hit 6500 on my desktop
And you haven't even played with undervolt and etc
What are your first impressions?

 

both with -80mv undervolt.

 

The machine feels really well built, the 300hz display is really smooth and in a different league to anything i've used before. The keyboard is decent but the key travel is fairly short, still feels nice enough to me though.

The machine feels cool on all normal touch points during use despite the high cpu temp with stock voltages. Gaming performance so far has been excellent. I'm really pleased with it and going to keep it.

 

To be fair, when you are upgrading from 60Hz, it's hard to put into words how much smoother 120 and 144Hz displays look

 

Well, it's obvious, isn't? @Spartan@HIDevolution and his sheikh buddies bought HID in order to ensure optimal build and component quality of their laptops

 

urghh, far from it, bought using a credit card that I will pay off slowly. Times have never been any worse (financially) but I'd rather get what I want now (the 300 hz screen) + upgraded storage with a 4 year warranty whilst still being able to sell the R1 because it's value is going to quickly start going down.

 

Awesome matey! My Cinebench is 3557 on my R1 with a 9700K/RTX 2080 so great improvement there!

 

Sorry to hear, you are not alone - let's hope this corona **** show runs its course soon!

A fair mistake, HID looked like clear takeover target after @Donald@zTecpc jumped ship!

TBH, I admire this upgrade agility, I wouldn't have the nerve to sell laptops on ebay!

 

Score looks much better now, and slightly beating a 9900K at 5.1Ghz. But temperatures sitting at 98-100c the whole time are a different topic. Hopefully your games run <85c CPU
Delidding and having LM between die/IHS should drop the temperatures by ~7c, according to testing that der8auer did.

Problem with having 8-10 cores in a laptop is, that you have these very high power densities which have to go through several layers of thermal resistance (silicon, copper, tim etc), before heat can be spread out evenly. But it's interesting, from a problem solving perspective, to see what thermal mods will be implemented to deal with this.

 

@jc_denton your custom title would be my alienware in a few months you bet!

 

It's the 98c at 4.8Ghz that has me concerned, and certain that both X170 and R2 will need to have extensive work done in order to tame the 10900K.
@ratchetnclank how much power did the TimeSpy physics test pull at 4.8Ghz? You can see the wattage by having hwinfo64 running in the background whilst the test runs.

 

Here's a run with the powerdraw and temps with max fan speed and -80mv undervolt.

 

Power draw seems to be much higher with cinebench.

 

Now this is looking much better with the -80mV, in terms of temperatures and frequency at 4.9Ghz. 177W power draw should not be reached in games, only in AVX titles (Warzone, BF:V) might come near that.

 

Have you got liquid metal on the cpu and gpu? The temps in 3dmark actually seem reasonable, damn!

 

This is all stock paste at the moment. I could possibly undervolt to lower than -80mv too, gonna see how far i can take it later. Can't do it yet as im using it for work at the moment.

 

Gotta feed them 10 cores!

For reference,
10900K 4.9Ghx R20 ~238W / TS physics ~177W
9900KF 5.0Ghz R20 ~174W / TS physics ~ 144W

You should be able to reduce the power draw by lowering the temperature, ie. delid & LM and further undervolt. But it does portray the step up needed in cooling for those two extra cores.