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

1.5.0 all day, every day.

 

Wasn't 1.3.2 the one with no throttling and whatnot? How did 1.5.0 make it to be the recommended BIOS now? and how about the VBIOS?

 

The temperature limit at 75 °C on the GPU was introduced by bios 1.5.4, bios 1.3.2 has better CPU performance but also less vulnerability mitigations than bios 1.5.0

Thanks for the updated driver collection!

 

I'm on the 200w vbios. As for the bios 1.3.2 is good too, but they all scale differently among each other. With my tuning I just happen to like 1.5.0...after all it produces the best results for me.

My Fire Strike PR: 26814

 

I see, so I guess 1.5.0 striked the best balance.

Downgrading now.

 

For me it did and it'll vary on the set up, conditions, tuning etc... but definitely give it a shot and see how it compares.

 

I did some tests with 1.8.1 and now I'll do them with 1.5.0 as I have just downgraded but here's how I did it.

I used 1.3.2 as an older BIOS to downgrade then I upgraded to 1.5.0

Reason being, the last time I downgraded to 1.3.2 using that BIOS recovery USB, my system acted kinda funny (I can't remember exactly what) but then reinstalling 1.3.2 over again fixed the issue. Seems like the actual DELL BIOS installation done through the normal method worked better so now that I was on 1.3.2 I upgrade to 1.5.0 since it no longer thought that I was *downgrade* and it worked.
======================================================
So there's no difference between BIOS 1.8.1 and BIOS 1.5.0 in CINEBENCH I think because it is CPU based only. Stupid me I should have run a Fire Strike Benchmark on 1.8.1

BIOS 1.5.0 Stock Clocks -80mV



BIOS 1.8.1 Stock Clocks -80mV

 

Hi guys,

Does anyone also encountered the issue where the keyboard would not work after booting even though it's well backlit.
A friend of mine has this issue pretty much all the time. He needs to reboot in order to fix the issue.
We tried to reinstall Windows on a healthy basis, however the issue came back eventually after a few days.

The issue seems to come from AWCC though, so it's not a physical issue with the keyboard.

Thank you for your help

Envoyé de mon SM-G965F en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Tell your friend to ensure there is no USB drive or anything connected to the Thunderbolt port and see if it works then. Might be related to this: Cannot boot if I have an external drive connected.

 

I've been to his place yesterday, he never plugs anything into his Thunderbolt port.
Furthermore, the issue did not occur at any time when AWCC was not installed.
This issue only happens after Windows booted (which it does well in less than 10 seconds).
Sometimes the keyboard would work for like 5 seconds and then would stop working until he uses his mouse/trackpad to reboot his device.
The caps lock and numpad lock would not light up their diod when pressed too.

Envoyé de mon SM-G965F en utilisant Tapatalk

 

I had the same exact issue on my Clevo P870DM1 before. It was a BIOS issue. What BIOS is he running?

 

He is running the 1.6.2 BIOS downgraded from 1.7.x
He cannot go to 1.5.0 as he's got the newer CM panel that doesn't support G-SYNC on this BIOS.
I must tell you that after we downgraded his BIOS (w/ UEFI capsule updates disabled on BIOS), Windows Update WOULD NOT ALLOW US to stay on this BIOS and always forced the download of 1.7.x BIOS...
I managed to bypass this by tweaking some stuff on automatic drivers updates.

Anyway, the keyboard issue happened in 1.6.2 and in 1.7.x too...

Envoyé de mon SM-G965F en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Wondering the same thing, fitting it in the back is a tight fit. I just took the A51M on a trip this week, teach an IT class and of course, gaming at night. So I had it, an iPad mini, a work laptop (Dell Duo) and my A51M.... through Atlanta's airport and back out through the Jackson, MS airport. You get used to the hassle, but all in all it wasn't that bad, you just have to move quick in the TSA line.

I'd say components on all Motherboards go to hell sooner or later, that's why the wise man always maintains a warranty. Game laptops are like owning a cantankerous sports car, they are not about reliability first.

 

@iunlock @Fire Tiger

I got 1200 more 3DMarks in Fire Strike using the ancient Dell Driver v432.03 for the Area-51m vs nVIDIA's latest driver

 

Hey guys have the 9900k/2080, would like some opinions if you think it is worth using my aw3418dw with a 2080ti in the graphics amplifier as i do have one of those kicking around or would it be a waste of time and i should just wait for the 3080ti?

 

The 2080Ti is very capable card and I have one in my amp. Even with the 3000 series cards, there are still a lot of unknowns so if you're in need of some more gpu power for your gaming, there's no harm in getting a 2080Ti right now. Plus with the bug going around and with everything at a halt, a lot of eta's will be pushed back even more, which makes the current cards even more relevant, while extending their timeline of existence. ie... it'll age well.

Good stuff! On 1.5.0 yea?

 

You need to go into the bios as soon as the system is able to let you and disable capsule updates. This is what is updating you back to 1.7.3. If you flash back to 1.5.0 and get into the bios immediately and disable that, it will leave you on 1.5.0 and won't force the update.

 

Thats some difference. I'm on 1.8.1 at the minute, would imagine that to hold me back a bit. Once I get a decent G-Sync monitor I might roll back for the extra leg room.

 

This is due to regulations and shipping over international lines. They can't ship to many places with a single larger PSU, hence we get two.

It isn't happening anywhere near as often, if at all. It's been quite some time since we have seen a machine go up in smoke, at least that I am aware of. Alienware lowered the TDP on the 2080 to 180w on the newest vBios which presumably helped in that regard. The drop in TDP didn't affect performance all that much, unless your going for the highest score of all time on the charts.

Never found that at all with my R4...the CPU, even today isn't being fully utilized, but it does fall behind compared to the 9900k in my Area51m. The power is lower for sure, but I wouldn't say it struggles at all.

Unless you specifically need the hyper-threading in the 9900k then your better off to stick with the 9700k. For gaming it's almost on par with very little if any difference in most cases. Lower heat generation and easier to cool if you don't absolutely need the 9900k.

Welcome to Intel CPU's in general....Even with this model you will benefit from undervolting with Throttlestop.

Then get the 9700k and the RTX2070 if you want the best thermal / performance combination. The 9900k and RTX2080 warm up, and while they can be controlled ( at least at sock ) easily enough, most people with the 9700k / 2070 combo can see lower temps.

Par for the course, they have to make money somehow. It's been like this since the dawn of time, and it won't change. It's always going to be cheaper to add your own after the fact from pretty much every OEM.

The main concern right now is the thermal limit on the GPU and how hard it throttle if and when you hit a certain temp. I have never seen this happen on my unit, even on the newest vBIOS and system BIOS, but I am also not overclocking of throwing synthetic loads on it, just using it for games.

 

I use a 1080 Ti on an Aurora system with a 8700K to drive my AW3418DW, it works fine, I can only imagine a 2080 Ti would be kicker. For fun I should spin it up this weekend and see how it does...

 

1.5.0 is equivalent to 1.3.2 in my testing and is newer. It is the last BIOS with full performance/no GPU throttling but if you have a newer panel then G-Sync will be lost.

I've been using the 200w vBIOS, I believe mine is the second version maybe 1.0.0..1? idk but any of the 200w vBIOS should be fine.

I've been running this combo and have downgraded twice to 1.5.0 from 1.7.3 and 1.8.1

 

@Fire Tiger @iunlock @Papusan @Mr. Fox

I just removed the heatsink and man, how do these Dell Techs have the heart to do such a crappy thermal paste job on such high end laptops?



I then re-pasteed it with Liquid Ultra on the CPU and PHOBYA Nanogrease on the GPU (I was out of Conductonaut so Liquid Ultra it is). Temps went down 10C

 

Putting LM on cpu ihs like that isn't risky?

Sent from my GM1917 using Tapatalk

 

I think the thermal paste is the waxy pad type. They are applied at the factory in China. They're probably now more worried about the Wuhan virus than how or what thermal paste is applied.

Only if you're really sloppy or careless. Lots of us have been using it for years on laptops and desktops. You can also take extra steps to contain the liquid metal so none can escape if you are paranoid.

 

Pads were OK?

 

Been doing that on every laptop I got since the Alienware 18. Never had a problem and it never degrades in performance. It always served me for the life of the laptop. Thanks to Mr. Fox he taught me how to do it on Skype.

luckily they were sitting nice and tight in their place.

 

Well they’re probably paid a stupidly low wage that barely lets them live. I’ve worked on electronics assembly line style work and it does not pay well. So over seas I can imagine it being even worse. So they probably don’t care.

Kinda surprised you didn’t make this repaste sooner.

 

To be honest, I really wasn't in the mood of dismantling the laptop but after I saw how crappy the temps were I'm like screw it, lemme waste my entire evening doing this.

You know what killed me though? After putting it all back and screwing everything, I noticed the last L8 screw wouldn't go in, that was the one near the fan. So I had to dismantle everything yet again only to find out that I had put one of the fan screws that goes under the panel in place of where that L8 screw had to go.

@Mr. Fox

 

Nah, they don't give a rat's ass at the factory. But, that's not a problem unique to Alienware. Par for the course. Low wage compared to what? The average cost of labor where they live or compared to some other place where the average cost of labor is higher? It's probably safe to say they're not paid substantially different than similar jobs for other employers in the same city/region. Wages usually follow the local market area, although communist dictatorships, socialism and even slavery still exist in a few places. Wages are whatever the despots decide they are when things are not right.

That being said, even if they were overpaid they still wouldn't care. It's the nature of the beast.

And, it's not a new problem.

 

That's the thing, right? Repasting takes time, and things could go wrong - ultimately leading to Dell incurring service costs. Yet it's pretty much a necessary setup task on every Alieneware laptop, unless someone buys a $2k+ laptop to browse the web and game casually, or doesn't care about heat and thermal throttling. Reviewers tend to though, so Dell loses sales because their laptops underperform during testing and incur scathing reviews. How much extra would it cost Dell to use top quality paste and pads? +$10 per unit?

 

Good job bro, I used Phobya Nanogrease on both the CPU and GPU, I haven't got the confidence to use LM yet.

 

Probably less than $10. Probably less than $1. But, they count pennies. I am not joking. I was literally told that once by an Alienware engineer. I made a suggestion for a very minor design enhancement that would make a ton of customers very happy and was told that was already considered but it got shot down because it would increase production cost by around 5 cents per machine and they were not willing to incur that extra cost.

 

LOL Now I'm a bit less surprised my first AW laptop arrived with the wrong GPU, and the second one had a faulty GPU and required mobo replacement on arrival...

BTW it seems we can forget LM in Dell laptops out of the box - reasonably enough, Dell wouldn't want those folks anywhere near a conductive thermal compound

 

Penny-wise, pound-foolish: invariably a sign of terrible management.

 

I know the feeling. This is why I get so upset when I see laptops with flipped motherboards. You make a mistake and have to tear it apart again it just takes forever. And puts you in a bad mood.

By the way didn’t you have a 9900K?

I guess I was just assuming with how little we got paid for doing it and how that company went with overseas assembly because it was cheaper that it would reflect on their pay also. But I guess that’s not entirely true?

I guess. It is boring and tedious work. I’d probably be the same way. Lol

 

I am not sure of the situation over there and I do not have any reason to believe they have anything that resembles free enterprise in China. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. I do suspect that there is plenty of oppression there based on their form of government. But, I also see examples of the North American "news" media making a big deal out of low wages in some countries--China being one of them--and I think this is displaced information without proper context and should be viewed as something that most Americans cannot really understand or relate to. Poverty and government corruption is a problem to one extent or another in every country. Without knowing any details about Chinese factory workers beyond what has been presented with a politically biased American spin on things, I doubt there is a huge discrepancy in wages that are being paid from one factory to the next, especially with an extremely controlling and overbearing government making all of the decisions.

I am sure working on an assembly line is boring and tedious work, and it would come as no surprise to me that many factory workers--at home or at factories in foreign countries--do not care about the products or the end-users that get to "experience" what it is like to buy products that they have slapped together in a careless and haphazard manner.

 

That was the previous laptop bro. Changed many laptops since then and the ugly truth is, as much complaints this laptop may have, it is still the best IMO.

@Mr. Fox

Reply from a muppet from Reddit about me posting the images of the before/after my thermal paste job:

 

Hi. That person is correct. If you buy a new heat sink from Dell, it has that waxy square pad and thermal pads pre-applied from the factory. I'm sure that is exactly the same on the assembly line. It's the only method that really makes good sense for a high volume production even though the thermal paste isn't the best at thermal conductivity. It is durable, but it doesn't do a great job of transferring heat. They use the same thing on all systems (Dell and Alienware, laptops and desktop) so it has proven to be something they can rely on for selling millions of computers to average consumers. I'm pretty sure other OEM/ODM do exactly the same thing since none of them manufacture what they sell. I believe Foxconn makes most of the thermal modules for numerous laptop brands.

 

@Mr. Fox according to the WHO the proper name for the virus is Coronavirus disease COVID-19 or 2019-nCov or 2019 Novel coronavirus, not “Wuhan virus” as you say

 

anyone know of any good links to explain setting fan curve in command center? having issues getting it to do what i expect lol, thanks

 

Correct, I only said it that way because it's not popular among those obsessed with being politically correct and the media are starting to go all emo retard about it.

There is another thread for this discussion in case you are interested.

 

...it’s a matter of being being civil, respectful and following WHO guidelines. We live in an international community no matter where you actually live. I know people who’s family members have died in Wuhan and it’s disrespectful to refer to their sickness in a politically charged manner by the name of “Wuhan virus”. “COVID-19” is even easier to type so there’s no excuse.

 

Off-topic here. See link above.

 

Wccftech claims
“Next-generation laptops featuring Intel 10th Gen and NVIDIA SUPER lineup will launch on 2nd April, availability by 15th April”

I wonder if we’ll hear anything from Alienware? I’d be on board for a 10th gen SUPER 51m as long as it isn’t Max-Q or mobile CPU variants

 

I stopped paying attention after awhile. Lol. Probably was almost a year at this point that I even bothered to check. And honestly you’re right about the area 51m being the best even with it’s flaws. Only other one I got to try was the Aorus 17. I liked the build much more, but it was loud all the time. And the temps were terrible. Think it was the heat sink being defective as I repasted it a few times and never got any good results. Almost got a GT76 Titan. Then rumors of refreshes started poping up. So I stuck it out and am still waiting. . .

 

I hope you didn't forget do a proper job on the heatsink cold plate And I hope the thermal pads on your DGFF graphics is in better shape than mine

Nothing will be better as long as Dell's superiors at the factories do not keep up and have a good enough QC. Everything boils down to cost savings and wrong people on the board. And I'm not talking about the under-trained factory workers. They won't be better than the people from Dell who follow the assembly line from bare metal to finished products.

Imagine what a mess it will become when Dell's outsourced tech team is out fixing machines outside own tech depot. The RMA numbers would explode.

I expect many of their in-hired tech team still use 10" long screwdrivers to remove old paste stamps. Let them handle liquid metal instead for the provided stamps will become a disaster. And not only for the cooling capacity.

 

Thx for your response. I have been in the gaming laptop crowd since Alienware was there own company but its insightful none the less. The only reason I mentioned the power supply thing is because options would be nice. Eurocom has there 740 watt adapter, it would be nice if Alienware could at least offer an option like that but I digress. The Hard drive options from what I have been pricing out on with other companys are at least reasonable, dells prices seem way out of line. Im the first one to buy a decent hard drive from a company and just leave the OS factory so I dont have to mess with reinstalling drivers and running into issues related but I would never in a million years consider the options they are giving. 900$$? for 2x2tb m2 drives and a sshd 1tb...obsurd. All there modestly spec'd models start over 2k, its not like there giving away these laptops. Hard drives have come down in price, why make the customer pay twice the retail when games are gigantic now days. I can fill up even a 2tb harddrive in less then 10 games. I dont complain often but even old calm me gets aggrivated when a company is blatently ripping off the customers of a crucial component that is needed. Were not using these machines for email! Give us some friggin HD space for our friggin games for a reasonable price.

 

Starting? Think it’s been that way for awhile now. Part of the reason I try to avoid mainstream media.

 

Fan settings are useless, don't waste time with them.

Enviado desde mi GM1913 mediante Tapatalk

 

Wait a second. Wait wait wait..


When did you finally finally stop drinking the Apple kookaid?????? And switch back to the 51m??

welcome back!