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

I bought one on Amazon from Deals4GO for $21.50 USD after tax shipped free by Amazon. Also comes with a thermal pad which seems a little iffy to me quality-wise. Have it installed with a 500Gb WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD. Max temp i've seen is 50 degrees C; will continue to monitor for reliability. Noticed HWMonitor does not log the temps for the M.2 drives though only the 2.5" HDD i have installed.

 

I swapped in my HyperX 2666 CL15 kit tonight, and the XMP profile does show up in the bios and can be enabled. My machine was configured with the base 16GB 2933 option so I do not think there is an XMP-only motherboard.

 

Right, but it won't work with 3200 MHz RAM as we've tested (unfortunately), it will max out at 2933 MHz unless that special motherboard is ordered from Dell from the start

Post an AIDA64 screenshot of your motherboard to compare with mine.

 

I thought about trying a 32GB HyperX 3200 CL20 kit. Even if it does not work at 3200 with XMP it should fall back to JEDEC 2933 CL17 which is not bad.

 

Is it not the case like on the Area 51m (og version) where would would have to flash the sticks to look like the dell ones?

 

I do not think so. Any JEDEC 2933mhz profile works from various vendors, and XMP worked fine for another user with Crucial Ballistix 3200 CL16 until randomly failed to boot. I do not think he tried to exchange the memory kit and instead switched back to the stock ram.

 

300hz option is back on Dell's website and 360hz now includes G-Sync

 

I'm a new area 51m owner and bought it with 16gb of ram, I guess I was lucky because it has Samsung 3200 in it. Does that mean I should be able to run any 3200 ram as long as I don't go above 32gb ?

 

Unfortunately not. Its a very specific RAM that Dell sells.

 

Thanks, I just noticed its 3200 but downclocked to 2933

 

The price of the low-end value RAM supplied by Dell shouldn't be very different between 2933 and 3200 modules. Still you don't get to run the 3200 RAM at full speed unless you pay extra for a custom motherboard according to @Spartan@HIDevolution who I trust did his homework on this. You couldn't make all this Dellienware RAM nonsense up! A crooked outfit.

 

Correct, which is exactly why I ordered the RAM/Speed that I want from the start as I was sick and tired of being capped at 2400MHz with my previous Area-51m R1. So I ensured to do it right this time even if would cost more:

 

Right, I wish you got your money's worth though. The barefaced ripoff is due to the fact that you would probably struggle to find a 3200 memory as slow as CL22. It's not really faster than their 2933.

 

Sorry, didn't mean to put you down bro. And when I said it's a barefaced ripoff, well, that's not quite right. The ripoff is not actually obvious to anyone without strong assumptions about AW's integrity especially in the RAM department, or - much better yet - a priori information on the timings of the supplied RAM and the knowledge how to translate those to performance estimates. So it's more like a somewhat clever con most people would fall for.

 

Finally some good luck with my R2!

Ordered in late August through HID, and they finally got a batch without dead pixels seemingly a few days back; I got notification that production has begun with my requested customizations.

Hopefully I will get it by mid-October!

 

But isn't it false advertisement, if you say it's capable of xmp, but not tell people only on more expensive model's of the same model. Given that info people would surely make different choices when it comes to their hard earned money.

 

Well, it all surely got proofed by legal! Not a first time the advertising got on a bit of a looser side. It used to be "the world's most upgradable laptop". Sad.

 

To confirm this people should try flash the memory data from the working "special" 3200 sticks from Dell and try it on those so called MB that don't support 3200 speed. Or just buy a mem kit and try. If it don't work, then it's on them and you should force them to send out their tech support to fix the mess... Refer to their specs sheet for Area-51m R2. Nothing in there say it shouldn't work or you need special MB with Dell's own special ram.

I doubt that Dell will go into the rabbit hole having two differen't SKUs. + it will cost them more than have same MB for all setups.

It used to be? Have never been brother. Neither for the R1 or the refresh. I can only see the performance gap being bigger. And the performance gap going the wrong way for "Worlds most Powerful and upgradable laptop".

 

I was looking in the bios and for some reason they set it to raid even thought I only have one drive, I don't think this is correct but can't change it now without reloading everything, is it ok to leave it that way?

 

Why does Dell set the BIOS to RAID always?

How to switch from RAID to AHCI without formatting:

1. Run MSCONFIG
2. Enable Safe Boot (minimal)
3. Reboot into UEFI/BIOS and change to AHCI
4. Boot up into safe mode
5. Run MSCONFIG and disable Safe Boot.
6. Reboot

 

The context is marketing, not facts It used to be stated on their website. I believe their dropped the particular bit of false advertising in the R2, could be wrong though

 

Still there

 

Am I missing something? Can't see "upgradeable".

Most powerful though? Not really if you need 128GB of RAM. Also the value RAM means the laptop runs 5-10% slower than it could in some cases (nm the - 20% hit in memory benchmarks).

Clevo X170 has the same specs + 128GB support (although to be fair, not sure if cooling is on par )

Most overclockable? I guess they are touting OC support in AWCC which nobody uses.

If they wanted to be closer to the truth, they could say stuff like "lightest in class", "most beautiful" (Apple would sue), "best supported".

 

Hello, I've just ordered my Area-51M who should arrive on 12-21 October.
Here my config:
i7 10700k, 32Gb ddr4 2933, RTX 2070 super, 144Hz Full HD display and standard 256Gb Nvme ssd (I'll install my Corsair 960Gb Nvme drive from previous pc).
I usually play only mmo games (GW2) so I think I can't notice any difference between ddr4 2933 and 3200...... what do you think about? I've made a mistake and should change my order from 32Gb 2933 to 16Gb 3200?

 

My opinion is that it won’t matter.

 

+1

It certainly won't matter with Dell's RAM, and the fastest RAM that's confirmed as compatible, HyperX Impact - should you wish to upgrade, won't be much faster, if at all, at 3200 vs HyperX at 2933 (of course, either is about max 20% faster than Dell RAM at either speed).

 

Honestly it makes little to no difference for gaming.

 

So what I gather is the popular concensus is buy 32gb 3200 hyperx and at best it runs at full speed at worst it defaults to 2933, or should I buy 64gb 2933 hyperx which will still be faster than dell ram?

 

Oh yeah, honestly, what's -10% in FireStrike anyway?

HyperX 2933 will be about as fast as HyperX 3200 because the latter runs at a higher CL.

Given the choice I would just go with 64GB 2933 (assuming you have so.me use cases for > 32 GB).

 

Thank you all. I'm not a pro gamer so 32GB 2933 are ok.
My nex step will be thermal paste (GC extreme) and thermal pad replacement to reduce temperatures and improve reliability, in the next days I'll have to find and read some guides in order to do a good job.

 

Does anyone have install image, for some reason the one spartan put up will not download for me.

 

This doesn't work? Alienware Area-51m R2 Factory Image: Part 1, Part 2

 

The link works but doesn't download, just stays at 0% and 4 days left and Part 2 is blocked

 

Weird I've downloaded from them many times. I will upload it for you tomorrow on 600613 6R!\/3

 

Thanks a lot brother

 

Does someone knows the size of the thermal pads around the CPU and GPU?
I would like to change it with Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8, but I do not know what size to buy.

Also what software to use to overclock my RAM - HyperX 2933. I successfully overclocked it using XTU, but after the first or second reboot the timings are reset again. I would like to overclock it permanently.
Default timings are: 17-19-19-39
Overclocked using XTU: 16-18-18-38

 

Alienware Area-51m R2 Factory Image

Alienware Area-51m R2 Latest Drivers 01-Oct-2020

Make sure to right click on the file(s) you just downloaded, go to Properties, then hit Unblock from the bottom right as it may be blocked since it was downloaded from the internet, if you don't do this before you run the file or extract it, then it may not install correctly.

To prevent this automatic blocking of files in the future so you don't have to go unblocking every file you download to ensure it runs properly, follow the guide in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/are-you-sure-you-want-to-run-this-file-yes-or-no.825668/

Rufus Download





@win32asmguy @MogRules

 

Nice, can't go wrong. Get 2x16GB of 2933 or 3200, whichever is cheaper (last time I looked on Amazon the 3200 was).

Wow, didn't know one can OC RAM using XTU... Anyway, XTU or TS you need to reload the values after each reboot. There is a thread by @ThatOldGuy on how to load particular XTU settings on login, it's a bit painful which is one of a few reasons why I prefer TS.

 

WOW. I am also using TS, but only for CPU. I didn't know that TS can be used for memory timings. I don't see any memory menu in TS. Can you give some guidance about this procedure?

 

Is it safe to enable XMP Profile 2 from BIOS?

Got my HyperX running at 17-19-19-39 @ 2933MHz

Previously it was at 19-22-22-39.

A lot of forums don't really clarify well on how safe it is in the long run. Do I also need to worry about anything else when XMP is enabled? I am running XMP profile 2.

 

If you look at my post again, at no point did I suggest TS can be used memory timings, I just stated the general preference.

 

If it's stable then it's safe. The memory can certainly take it.

 

Even on my laptop which came with the 3200MHz RAM from Dell, if I enable XMP from the BIOS I would have a lot of BSODs but for some reason after installing AWCC it sets the timings right and runs at 3200MHz stable.

 

World's most amazing BIOS and stable RAM.

Do you remember what the timings were before the AWCC installation?

Anyway, multiple users reported HyperX working fine, so this is more of a forensic interest into Dell's shenanigans.

 

Wow. No BSODs yet. Was it anything intensive that was being done before the BSOD or they were just random. New CLs do show up in AWCC after overclock.

 

Random

 

I just plugged mine in, restarted didn't enable XMP profile and it defaulted to 17-19-19-39 @ 2933, are there any other benefits to using XMP profiles?

 

Thanks. Will keep an eye on it. So far no issues with gaming.

Do you have the 2933MHz version or 3200MHz version. I think the 2933 MHz version has the speed as profile 1 (and default) and the 3200MHz version has those speeds as profile 2.