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

Excellent! We should get ours around the same time I guess. Did you get Lunar White or Dark Side of the Moon?

I am excited to see what SSD models are Dell using for my config ( 2TB (2x 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD) RAID 0 [Boot] + 2TB (2x 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD) Non-Raid [Storage] ) Those SK Hnyix drives are horrible, I have an SK Hynix 512GB PC401 SSD in my R1 and it's one of the slowest SSDs I've ever used.

 

Heh, back in the day they would use reasonable OEM Samsungs, like the 951. Good old Alienware of yore.

 

Why on earth yet another Alienware mouse You have the time for troubleshooting? This is your old thread Area-51m randomly starts typing 111111 You have forgot it?

 

Oh I forgot to update it, it was my previous motherboard that was doing this, probably that dot of Liquid Metal that was sitting under the RAM chip because I've been using the mouse after the motherboard swap and it's been perfect.

 

Mine is also due to ship 20th of July

 

color?

 

Same as you ahaha
The white is so much better

 

Nice hope everything works out. Kinda looking forward to your review/write-up.

 

Mine is white too! BTW anyone know if the WD Black SSD heatsink fits?

 

Thank you, and yes, certainly. Stay tuned!

 

I expect to see some AC benching action!

 

I knew this was the case so went with the 3 nvme drives for this exact purpose so i can replace with what i want or even just add 1 additional drive down the line.

 

Interesting response back from Dell. They confirmed the board does indeed vary, however the 2 additional m.2 slots are limited in speed to the 6GBps SATA interface! That would mean ofc that anyone purchasing a decent drive will only really benefit from the second dedicated m.2 slot or the first if replacing the stock OS drive (or technically both if originally buying a RAID 0 config). Also means anyone purchasing a double RAID 0 config actually has a significantly slower second RAID 0 pair. Is it just me or is this mis-advertising?

 

It's not really mis-advertising since they never advertise speeds. Also i don't think there are enough spare pcie lanes for 4 drives to run at full pcie 3.0 speeds.

 

Fair point, however it would be helpful if there was a little more detail such as the speeds. Anyway at least it means I'm not missing out so much by having the 2.5 inch adapter. I'll likely just keep the standard drive for storage and buy a second m.2. Planning on the Samsung Evo Plus with a basic thin heatsink from Amazon.

 

2x M.2 w/ x2 lanes + 2x M.2 w/ x4 lanes. 2 lanes cuts the theoretical speed in half.

 

Ahhh dang, I was hoping that wasn’t the case but obviously the little interposer board is simply an “adapter” to connect to the SATA port... so of course it was going to be capped.

Anyway... better go for the 2 “real” m.2 slots and a 4TB regular SSD if you’re there... larger disc, less expensive, and probably will feel just as fast thanks to the interface limit that the m.2's there would have.

 

Don’t bother with the interposer/daughter board. You said it yourself. Get the lowest config that includes the SATA cable/hardware so you can put in a REAL and large SSD in the disc space since it will be capped to SATA, and 2 good M.2 NVMe drives in the “real” M.2 slots.

 

i dont think that 2 extra ssds are simply sata 3, because sata and nvme are completely 2 different things.
For example, there isn’t any “adapter” to connect a nvme into a sata (or m2 sata) port. I guess that if you plug all 4 nvme ssd, they will gonna all share the same bandwidth, like (x2 pcie) *4 or sth like that

 

https://www.dell.com/support/articl...ish-the-differences-between-m-2-cards?lang=en

M key support both standards. Area-52M have 2 M Key slots for the combo space/slot.

 

Careful with the 4tb m.2 drives they require more power than a lot of m.2 motherboard provides especially in laptops.

 

Idk...looks like there's two connectors not just the SATA one. Perhaps it's 1x M.2 NVMe on x2 lane and other one is SATA M.2?

 

Sorry, to have to mention this: SSD drives don't contain discs.

I suppose if the choice is a single 4TB SSD in 2.5 inch form factor vs 2 2TB M. 2 SATA SSDs, the former would weigh more but benefit from lower energy consumption, whereas the 2 M. 2s could be put in RAID0 for double performance. 51M users don't care about battery life anyway.

Are there any M. 2 SATA 4TB drives?

 

Not confused with Overclocking CPU voltages - clock speed , I cant imagine ram running @ 1.3 V can damage components, what I can imagine (very far fetch) the motherboard wasn't designed to handle 4 sticks running @ 1.3 V or to handle the dissipated heat I know the heat is very less for ram stick, but somehow can blow a component or worse damage a trace and burn it. To be frank, I stand corrected and I believe dell disabled high speeds to avoid RMA calls or complains when it comes to BSOD. I don't know whats different in R1 mobo (low ram speed) to R2 mobo that enables high ram speed.
The real Alienware machines Pre-2015 were made to last generations and almost fully upgradable, even the chassis design didn't change much I reckon you could stick another motherboard and new upgrade path is available providing you modify the chassis.
The Area51m is begging for a custom bios and a better heatsink, someone on youtube (Chinese fella) showed higher ram speed on Area51m.
Thanks for your post!

Area51m has an external PCI port, you can try to hook external PCI HDD

 

There are m.2 NVMe

 

Right, but the discussion is more about SATA 2.5 inch vs M.2 SSDs.

The NVMe SSDs won't work in a SATA M.2 slot.

 

Does R1/R2 have memory temp sensors shown in hwinfo64? I'm at 1.45v daily, and haven't had any problems with 4 sticks getting hot. But if you have zero airflow, be it by under or over-pressure, the memory sticks might get toasty.

 

ok, pretty sure good info for some to know....

 

Hi all - I am in Australia - which has limited R2 options for sale at the moment. The question I have is whether - as a newbie and someone who's not going to overclock, etc - does it matter whether I have the i7 10700 with 32GB of 2933MHz RAM (currently available) or i7 10700K and 3200MHz RAM (currently not available). Will the additional 'K' and RAM speed be noticeable to me when playing games?

 

yes if you use hwinfo with msi afterburner there is memory temps you can turn on OSD option in the HWINFO settings.

 

Can anyone confirm with a R2 on hand if the video card is still limited to PCI-e X8 instead of X16 because of the graphics amplifier port blocking 8 lanes. With the R1 this is the case, as can be seen with gpu-z. According to linked yt video (sorry, in german) this is a problem with potent video cards like the 2080S and the reason AMD mobile CPUs are not available with higher end nvidia cards due to the cpu limitation to x8 in any case.

 

Wow. Why is it the case though? Don't desktop motherboards support multiple x16 video cards?
@Papusan

 

The AGA Port eat half of the lanes. 8X it will be

 

OK, so if I have 2 2080 cards in a desktop, are you saying they will be limited to 8 lanes each?

Edit: seems like the case, for example Asus ROG MAXI MUS hero iii:

PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU)2 x PCIe 3.0 (x16, x8/x8) PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH)1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 3 x PCIe 3.0 x1Onboard SATASix, RAID 0/1/5/10 (Z490)

 

This is the case with all Alienware notebooks because of AGA. If you check the ones in your signature with gpu-z, it will probably show x8.

I don´t understand the support of AGA in desktop replacements like the 51M. I imagine a 2080 ti in the AGA will not significantly outperform the 2080s 200W inside the notbook. Even Ampere will not make much sense in the AGA due to the low pcie bandwidth. Seems the x8 in Alienware notebooks will become an increasing problem the faster the video cards get and the higher the screen refresh rate.

 

HEDT chipset if you want more lanes.

 

Yes.

Maybe the x8 limitation is also an explanation why the m17 R3 with a 150W rtx 2080s cannot outperform the razer blade pro with a 2080 max-q 100W (110W?) in real world games, but this gest off topic I guess.

 

OK, I guess there is the question of the impact of halving PCIe bandwidth. Certainly use case dependent. Also, it's not great that the 8x/8x limitation would apply even if AGA is disconnected. It should assign all 16 lanes to dGPU. Also with AGA there should be an option to have 8x/8x or 16x AGA disable internal dGPU. OK, I'm waking up now lol

 

Similar topic https://wccftech.com/amd-renoir-mob...ttleneck-gpus-above-an-nvidia-rtx-2060-super/

 

what type of GPU connector on Area51m motherboards? Are they compatible with MXM cards?

 

Yes! I knew it was possible to have more than one x16!

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-RAMPAGE-VI-EXTREME-OMEGA/

 

Nope. Dell’s proprietary graphics design (DGFF).

 

DGFF. Of course not.

 

HEDT chipset.

 

Prof Papusan introduces another helpful acronym

 

I´m on this platfrom right now with a X299 Dark from EVGA. However, I only use one shunt modded RTX Titan under water. In this scenario with only one video card the consumer platform (Z390/Z490) will be faster in gaming/graphics heavy benchmarks due to much lower latency. And the good old days of SLI are gone for most new games/applications

 

Nice setup how much difference vs consumer platform are we talking?

 

Maybe in the one digit range.

E.g. 3dmark, port rayale, one video card: https://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/port+royal+3dmark+score+performance+preset/version+1.0/1+gpu

The top spots are all done with the consumer platform.

 

Well, the #2 Titan score uses a different CPU too: 9900KF, so it's hard to tell if it's the chipset or the CPU? 9900KF @5.2 vs your XE at 4.7. He also OCed the memory a bit higher. Anyway, point taken - consumer platform rules for the single CPU/single GPU setup.

 

Yes, but these are all consumer cpus. The first HEDT system comes in at rank 17. I´m at 34 btw. I guess with the consumer chips I could have moved a couple of ranks upwards, even without a chiller or liquid nitrogen. The problem is the higher latency of the HEDT CPUs.