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

Its been almost one year since i have the Area 51M and my warranty is about to expire, so i just emailed dell to
extend it.


So they came up with these prices

Alienware DKT (Area 51):
1 year = 166,43 USD
2 year = 271,54 USD
3 year = 332,88 USD

Should i extend or not ?

 

The question on paying for more warranty is always if you can afford to repair it if it break down. If you can, then you could take a chance on it not breaking and save the money. If not, extend and be happy.

 

Given how unreliable laptops are its a must in my opinion if you depend upon it. Having one in place makes it easier to sell as well in my experience. I've often had mine used for business as well and with traveling, so I get the accidental damage coverage as well. I have actually had Dell do work in my home probably three times over the years, and have had them do a motherboard replacement for an AW13 R3 literally in a hotel lobby about 6 months ago while on a business trip.

 

So I have been having less than a connection with this wifi card, can I just pop in an old card from another laptop?

I have uninstalled all killer app garbage and I STILL disconnect randomly while in the middle of games or even YouTube. This is definitely not acceptable.

 

Ofcoarse, you're right it can Throttle. But in this case, the poster was asking it from a standpoint in which the 2070 would also be limited as the 2080.

In this case, they're only limiting TPD, not temperatures. The 2080 is limited by voltage, TDP and Temperature ((voltage, and TDP is quite normal, that can be overcome with a cross flash of a different vendor bios on PC cards, don't know about laptop but with the 1000 series you could crossflash mobile) Also Dell set the Temperature target for the mobile cards due to bad engineering/R&D/Q&A. Standard there should not be an temperature limit except for TjMax)

 

I'm a developer. What you need to do with a Json file, is it autogenerated should it be autogenerated. I was busy with someone to extract all the AWCC components, but it seems that they encrypted some of their source code. It's al written in .NET framework (C#, VB) which is quite easy to debug. If i could get a complete source code it would be easier to debug. It's probably a setting/flag which has the supported CPU names embedded within the setting/flag

it should be as easy as extending that setting/flag by adding the CPU name and rebuild (create a new build/exe) the project.

 

That would be nice to see!

I suspected it was protected when I saw signature files, my late attempts to circumvent it failed miserably lol


Thank you for taking a look at it




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I'm the first to admit that I don't know the whats and whys of BIOS modding, but are there any reason one of the big modding names eg. Prema hasn't taken a swing at this?

I bet most of us would gladly donate for a custom BIOS with all the bells and whistles Dell is denying us. ;-)

 

There cannot be a universal BIOS for this. Each machine is protected by a firmware boot locker. Nothing short of a physical flash with a known Dell code can override.

 

I've made this video which shows how you can prevent the GPU thermal throttle and go all the way up to 87C on the latest bios (1.7.3/1.8.1 and latest vbios 180W) using HwInfo64.
Kudos to the users who posted the guide.

I split the video in 3 parts:

- No OC, GPU thermal throttle @ 79 Celsius.

- OC profile, no OC, but thermal limit set to 87Celsius in AWCC. GPU thermal throttle @ 79 Celsius. (From minute 4:30 to 9:50)


- OC profile, no OC, but thermal limit set to 87Celsius in AWCC. Using HwInfo64 to control the fans. No GPU thermal throttle. GPU stabilizes at 80 Celsius.
I overclocked the CPU & GPU in the video just to stress it more and reach the higher temps faster.

Hope if helps someone

Cheers,
Helifax

 

They walled themselves in.

 

Change the THUMBNAIL picture for more views..... Use words!

 

Hi guys, let me introduce myself first and sorry if my english isn't good enough. My name is Miguel Rios, im 32 years old, im from Perú and im a big fan of the alien head trademark.

Well, i bought and Alienware Area 51m refurbished from ebay in October 2019, since 2 or 3 weeks ago a problem my problem started:

A black screen issue after started a game and play for 4-5 minutes with the only solution of restart the laptop with RTX 2070 and 9700k. Just the screen shut down, the pc was on, light in keyboard and also some sound of windows.

The only way to solve my problem was before playing open the AW Command Center and activate the thermal perfomance option, then the fans started to spin and just after that i tried a game and play with no problems.

My question is that is normal, the idea is that the fans have to start working when you entered a game right?

By the way, i have my drivers and bios up to date, also i obtained good results in heaven benchmark, the AW benchmark, when playing i have good temps also.

Then what do you think can be the problem?

Thanks in advance.

If you need any detail pls ask to me.

 

Does this work with the 200W vBIOS?

 

i just extended mine. it was 240 USD for one year of premium.

 

I will try this this afternoon at any rate, can’t deal with internet connection cutting out all the time.

I managed to get 4 years included free in my deal with the rep, maybe try arguing down the price. Make a point that dell has already had so many issues with the machine and link a few YouTube videos and or articles. Just need to convince the rep that dell messed up big enough to warrant the discount. (Worked when I bought mine anyways.)

 

pretty sure you meant to quote trulyfatal instead of me. i've had my A51m over a year and already extended my coverage. i'm not the type to try to argue prices down or get something for free anyways.

 

Indeed, apologies for the misquote. I would have gotten it either way as well. 3000 dollar machine, silly to not invest in a warranty for it. Trulyfatal seemed worried about the cost is why I suggested negotiating. Main point at any rate definitely get the extended coverage one way or another.

 

So i emailed them back telling them i want a email in Dutch or English not french.

Now suddenly they came up with these mental prices !

Thank you for contacting us regarding your service contract prolongation.
Our department is located in Dell European Business Centre outside of Netherlands, that’s the reason why we communicate just in English.
Please choose from the following service contract possibilities:
Premium Support with Onsite Service – Alienware NB
(accidental damage protection service not included, as it cannot be extended after device has been purchased)
1 Year Contract for the price 408.04 EUR incl. VAT
2 Years Contract for the price 620.21 EUR incl. VAT
3 Years Contract for the price 775.26 EUR incl. VAT
4 Years Contract for the price 1,264.22 EUR incl. VAT

This is just mind blowing !

 

LOL

Two weeks ago I paid 315 CHF (322 USD) here in Switzerland for 3 Years extension of Premium Support with Onsite Service.

 

@Helifax another great post! Would you recommend this new setup or the way you had it setup previously with the limit set at 75/76c?

 

That cannot be right. What I often do is run it 1 year at a time, and dicker with them a bit, at least in the US that brings the price down a bit. I am overdue to establish it on my current rig, I will call them today and see what they tell me.

 

I paid 775 for the 3 year extension. I'm also from holland. They would not lower it in any case and don't send e-mails in dutch. I had a german person talking english to me.

 

So I tested this and the problem is that HWinfo64 won't boost the fans to full speed (nor close to it). I have mixed feelings about this hack because depending on the use case it might be useful or not.

 

Are the max limits in HWInfo similar to that of the performance fans then? I'd definitely prefer the ability to run max fans as well.

 

Have you guys seen this?
https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk...nvidia-quadro-rtx-6000-into-15-inch-notebook/

They claim:

"Asus claims that the laptop is both quiet and cool, with no performance throttling even at max load – and a total volume below 39dB at that point."

How would this be possible? It packs a lot of power, especially for its size. Is it BS?

 

Interesting design putting all the guts in the LID behind the display, I just have to wonder what the long term effects of heat up against the LCD will be.

But A for effort, it's good to see big companies like Asus taking chances on new designs who knows maybe this will catch on and will be the new way to build them.

 

Actually this is something that really surprised me. I mean all this time engineers are building laptops the same way and it took them so long to come up with this idea? It's like the asus zephyrus that rises up when you open the lid. And they were shocked at the cooling results. All this time me and I am sure many people raise their laptop to get more air inside which I saw better cooling performance.

So for me it wasn't surprising to do something like this, because when the fans are at the bottom and you choke them on the standing surface, it's no wonder the cooling will degrade.

Anyway it just surprises me that it takes top engineers to come up with this.

But beyond that I support the idea of course.

As for the effects on the display, I remember reading the display itself is isolated away by some plate of some kind? And other things like how they balance the laptop by putting the battery at the base, etc.

Also this is what studiobook one does, pro x laptop shown there is the same laptop design as any other if I am not wrong.

From what I know studiobook one is the same design as mothership which is already out so should be good to see the reviews but this One mode is still not out for more than a year so maybe it just doesn't perform since it's so thin.

If they had a 17 inch version of this with better CPU like 9900k, and prove that it doesn't throttle I would buy it instantly. This is amazing device on paper. Also look at how small the power brick of this thing:



I don't think it will be full power full speed no throttle and quiet at the same time.

 

It’s a completely different focus design for creators / graphics designers modelers

Not an enthusiast Gaming laptop.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Quadro don’t heat up .. so yeah ....


on a side note, does anyone have a part number for the heat sink that is used with the RTX 2080?

I am collecting some info for future upgrades.

 

No. It's about 70% for the CPU fan and 80% for the GPU fan. For gaming at lower noise this is Ok, but I would still set a limit on AWCC to 83°C for the GPU since otherwise the surface of the laptop gets uncomfortably hot for me over time.

 

go to aliexpress and search for "area51m"

you will find it, also check taobao and ebuy7

 

Speaking of that asus design, and the asus ROG mothership design, i wonder if some company would be brave enough to have say the CPU and its cooling components etc on the bottom of a laptop where the keyboard is, and then have the GPU with its cooling system up on the screen, that way you can have two huge cooling systems to independently cool the hottest components in a laptop

Something like that would probably weigh a tonne and cost a heckload of money

 

So quick update on my attempts at changing the SPD data on my RAM.... Unfortunately both my Hyper X and stock modules are all write protected, so I can't do jack with them. It looks fairly straight forward to do if they aren't locked, but at this point I've run into a wall and I'm not finding much info on getting around it.

If anyone with some experience using Thaiphoon Burner wants to chime in on how to remove RSWP from the memory, I'm up to keep messing around with this. Otherwise, I'm going to stay hopeful that Dell addresses this.

 

The max fan speed is based on the fan profile you select in AWCC.
If you select max fan speed, then in HWInfo you can set them up to 3500RPM (if I recall correctly).
In practice, I found little difference in temperatures between performance and full speed. The only thing that differed for me was the sound of the fans.

Also, is not a hack as it bypasses the EC support for the fans (Embedded Controller), thus no more thermal throttling, but you loose the ability to specify the fan curves (which I don't think it matters).

Hope this helps.

 

I don't believe that its that they don't have the ideas, these are engineers with lots of ideas. The problem is getting it past business wonks who only see costs - in the past any deviance would surely be met with "oh noes", it will cost $20 more how can we cope? I'm guessing competition and costs of manufacturing are down enough they are more willing to take chances....

 

Is hard to say.
It does give the same benefits of Bios 1.5.0 without loosing G-Sync (and why I use it).

Now in practice, I do love to keep my CPU/GPU cool. As a result I set the thermal limit on the GPU to 75 Celsius and I downclocked the CPU to 4.6Ghz on all cores with a -125mV (in my case), PL2 limit to 210W (max measured draw is 150W) and PL1 limit to 120W (roughly 4.45Ghz at this voltage). As a result I can Cinebench R20 for 1 hour with max temp reaching 92 Celsius in PL2 and 84 Celsius in PL1.
(Obviously no thermal throttle. Using these setting my Cinebench score is around 4670 mark - little below the 4900-ish mark. I can now play BF5 for example for one hour straight with an avg temp of 72-75 Celsius - FPS unlocked).

Cooling the damn i9 9900k is really hard (and I know this from my desktop, where I had to use a 360mm radiator to keep it at around 65-70 Celsius when in stress work. It is overclocked to 5.2Ghz, so there is that). I never imagined it would run cool in a laptop, but I prefer 8C/16T cool and stable at a lower clock than hot and downclocking due to temperature problems.

Hope this helps!

Yes, It works with the 200W bios as well.

 

I was wondering the same thing...

 

Why is Dell memory so ridiculously expensive? I might go to 32 GB or even 64 GB for the hell of it, but looking at say Crucial who says they have compatible memory they are literally like half the price of Dell.... I cannot imagine anyone buying beyond 16 GB up front with the costs when you can swap later...

 

by using a bigg ass vapor chamber, and transforming your display in to a heatsink just like how a display on a smartphone is also used for exchanging heat for a lower temperature.



ignore the marketing mumbo-jumbo and focus on: "Titanium Vapor Chamber".
If the vapor chamber alone can dissipate 300 watts of heat, it would be like an laptop with a 9900K and RTX 2070 running full power which is ALOT of performance. Especially when the target formfactor will be ultra thins. Nonetheless i love my DTR's just how i love my women. Thick with alot of headroom for cooling/multitasking and QUIT. a thin laptop like those pro-art won't run on the same speeds for example an RTX card would run.

The work they do is also vastly different, as quadro cards usually has to crunch numbers which are accurate (running simulations, or creation of graphics in 8K, doing post processing work etc) while the GTX/RTX cards can get away with just rendering/drawing a scene quickly.

 

I am using 64GB memory from my MSI Laptop ... 2400mhz speed is good enough for me.

 

Has anyone tried this 4K player Pioneer BDR-XS07UHD? Requires SGX for 4K Blu-Ray playback

 

Thats quite impressive if theyve manaegd to get a 300W heatsink in the thin&lights, i wonder if this technology can upscale to the big fat DTR's and give us say 400w cooling?

 

We already have it

Spoiler: Spoiler/Off-topic alert !!!!!!!!

It's called the CLEVO P870 DM 3 with a vapor chamber heatsink. if you look closely it's running SLI

 

One thing for sure. Once we get Unified Vapor Chamber cooling for DTR, we will see thinner models with not better cooling than before.... Target for cooling capacity will be 100C for Cpu as the thin Alienware’s! Why make it awesome if thin is preferred (the goal)? Only reason ODM/OEMs will use fully fletched VC heatsink is the move to Apple design.

 

Also had a random shower thought, the laptop screen, as in the back cosmetic part where the lid is seems like a gigantic piece of wasted real estate in a laptop, normalyl its just for a screen, if someone found a way to route cooling to use teh entire top lid as a heatsink wouldnt that be able to dissipate a huge amoutn of heat

 

Yup.

 

Yup. About one week before the obligatoryClevo shout out.

 

So that Asus has better coming than 51m?

Also rtx 6000 should smile 2080 no? Is 4k card

 

300-watt power brick for the Asus... and 300W max cooling... No, not as good cooling capacity. But components should draw less power. So it can possibly run cooler.

A desktop RTX 6000 will run faster than a RTX 2080 by by about 50%. But this is at 280W consumption of power. The laptop version will be significantly reduced. Probably about 10% faster than AW a51M's 2080 (if CPU isn't taxed at more than 70% at the same time)

I don't even know why there is a conversation going for these things. The Pre-orders start at $10,000 from retailers. This is nothing but an extremely niche laptop with an even more niche GPU, at an insane price.