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

Any idea how to add vapor chamber to the area51m?

 

80+ years of business schools take their toll...

 

Hey everyone!

running into HDCP errors with the Vive Index I just got. Googling, and it seems this is a huge issue with the Area51m, but most the posts are more than a month or two old... but with no follow up or solution :-(

is there an obvious fix, or have we all just accepted our brand new, VR-ready, $3,000 computers are incompatible with the premier VR headset in the marketplace?

I have the Club3D adapater everyone has confirmed works... and I run into no issues for the first 30 seconds like everyone else. No issues on my older 1080-based tower.

realy hoping I’ve missed a simple
Solution

 

You’re kidding! Just when I’m thinking about getting a Valve Index!!! Pleeease let us know if you find a solution!

 

You already have a 2080 so the 2080 Ti won't provide a massive leap. Not waiting for the 3000 series would be a mistake.

 

This is what I need in 51m:

 

I wonder how many people would buy a $10K Laptop....I mean, I know someone would.

 

I've been using my Index with this laptop for months and have never gotten that error, so I've never read anything about it. I only play driving and flight sims with VR though. I'm assuming you are getting the error when watching movies?

 

I would if it packed legit power without compromise, but probably very few high end pros would buy. This is already 10K though:
https://www.excaliberpc.com/723462/asus-proart-studiobook-pro-one.html

 

Which miniDP adapter are you using?

I get it for ANYTHING - won't even start up half the time in Steam VR.

Fortunately, someone pointed out a trick in forcing it to 144hz helps - and at least now I know the hardware is good. But like 3 out of every 4 tries I have to do a funny song and dance to get things working/no error.

 

Shipping is free! What a bargain!

 

You risk a $10K brick after a year if you spent all your money on this Jokebook. This MB won't be cheap to replace (soldered on components means 3 times the risk for a awful bad experience). If you at all is able to find it for sale used on new on the web after a cople of years. This Joke will get Minus 10 of 10 in my book.

 

Yes I agree but there a few useful things one can do. For one because it's not 17", hard pass for me. But if it was 17, and I knew it wasn't throttling, I would buy. I doubt though given its thickness and power supply. Also I need 64GB min, to 128GB which their pro version offers but this laptop is supposed to be above their pro one.

But if it delivered without compromise there is still an upside with the machine breaking down. Some credit cards in Canada offer plus 2 years extended warranty including electronics, so if this laptop breaks down after a year, there is a good chance you might even get the 10K back.

 

Hey guys! This is a crosspost (sorta) from the "What Notebook Should I Buy?" forum, where I was sort of deliberating over whether to go for the A51M directly from Dell, or possibly saving a few hundred bucks and configuring some Clevo P775TM with more or less the same overall specs on a site like xoticpc (but probably not that specific site..). Or getting whatever comparable laptop is being made by MSI, Asus, HP, Acer, Gigabyte... That's just off the top of my head from what I've kinda been checking out in the last couple weeks. Kinda shocking how many laptops there are that (essentially) replicate the same hardware spec options, like basically they all have a 17.3" display panel, big chassis w/ advanced cooling vents/fans, desktop-class processor, uses the full version of the (2060/2070/2080) NVIDIA GPU - etc

Anyway, I went with Alienware, mostly for reasons detailed below - primarily that the one Sager/Clevo I got like 8 or 9 years ago (memorialized in my ancient sig) was just revoltingly awful and had endless build problems and GPU problems and was ultimately a horrible terrible awful expenditure and caused way more frustration and annoyance and anxiety and anger and more frustration/annoyance. I have a deep, DEEP aversion to ever ordering them again, but goddamn things can't be as bad as they were back then. I should add, not only is the M11x R3 still going strong 9 years later and fulfilling it's adorably cute purpose as a classroom companion mostly, but the Alienware 15 that I got 5+ years ago is also still going fairly strong, in spite of running on like high fan mode for practically all of those 5 years xD But it's truly been a great machine and I'm almost sorry to say goodbye to it.

I'm just gonna end up restating myself, so I'll just repost, sorry for uh... all the words >_<



Welp, I went ahead and bought it! I hope I uh.... Made a good purchase. I really hope the coronavirus doesn't like, mess up the delivery of my laptop. I'm not at all worried about germs in the box or anything (hopefully we all know that coronavirus cannot live in or on or even around a box at this point as transmission is person-person) but I am worried about whether it gets here on time (April 1st - I hate that due date so much, the joke better not be on me).

Well, anyway, I would *REALLY* appreciate it if you guys could look over the specifications of the laptop I bought, and what I paid for it, and tell me whether or not like... this was a GOOD BUY. or something I might regret.

For reference, I spec'd and purchased this from the Dell site which I... hope was not stupid. I had a good experience last time I purchased from them, and I'm kind of distrustful of xoticpc and similar websites, I had a horrendously awful purchasing experience with them and the laptop they sold me was pretty ****ed and didn't last nearly as long as it ought to have. It's often cheaper to order from those sites, but it feels risky to me frankly - not that I have ANY fondness for Dell, or any huge corporation for that matter.

So anyway, I've had my eye on purchasing an Area-51m for quite a while, and kept an eye on the Alienware site, seeing if any new discounts were popping up. Last week, they started a sale offering a formidable 17% discount code for most of their computers, including AW, which was more or less exactly the kind of discount I was looking for! That's in addition to another $100 off they give you for no particular reason, so that's pretty neat. In essence, those discounts bring the cost of this Area-51m to something pretty goddamn reasonable, considering.

Well, I think it's a pretty good deal, at least... I sincerely hope it was. The truth is, I'm really not sure, and I don't want to be ripped off, or overpay for no particularly good reason. So I'm just gonna lay it all out, and bring up any and all niggling concerns I have. Oh, I truly pray that they are largely unfounded.

Oh, I also wanted to add that my current laptop is an Alienware 15 R1, which I bought directly from Dell on the very week when they first came out with the new Intel 9th generation processors back in.... 2015 I think? It had a GTX 970m; fabulous 5 years ago and OKAY now, but getting outdated. Honestly, it's been the best laptop (or computer, full stop) that I have ever owned. I've used it each and every day since then, going on 6 years now. Sometimes I'd have to running practically hot enough to cook a damn egg on it, but it always kept chugging along, with minimal stress for me.

I've never had to replace a single component in it, either, unless you count thermal paste. It's got a typical

Recently it's been pretty rough, and the GPU is starting to fail and seems to blue-screen, uh, several times a day now. I always keep my drivers updated, and I do proper laptop maintenance and take care of mine (I don't think it'd have lasted 6 years otherwise) Games don't even seem to run quite so well, though only certain ones will just crash. It's a little scuffed but not badly at all. I have had a little issue with the caps lock key not going back into its place and breaking, so that sucks but is ultimately fairly inconsequential.

The truth is, ultimately, that I cannot run AAA games at max settings (not even at medium sometimes) even on this 1080p monitor. By itself it's not enough to spur me into getting a new laptop, but combined with the GPU issues.... oof. I need to be able to run all these goddamn games to keep up with work, sadly. I really have some high hopes for how upgradeable it could end up being! But even as it is currently spec'd (plus a couple little additions to the RAM and storage maybe) I think it could easily last 5 years running top games at top settings on its own (in 1080p I certainly hope so).

The other big factor is VR. My current machine is either just *barely* able to support it or just *barely* unable to support it - either way, that's not satisfactory. It's very important to me that I have the option to use this to run VR in a high enough quality so as to be properly immersive... well, ideally, anyway! I think this machine ought to be handle VR if it can handle 4K at reasonable high settings, which it very much should be able to do.

AREA 51m
MY SPECS

COLOR: Dark side of the Moon (black)
WIFI: Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.0
PANEL: 17.3" FHD (1920 x 1080) 144Hz, IPS, NVIDIA G-SYNC, Eyesafe(R) Display Tech + Tobii Eyetracking
STORAGE: 512GB PCIe M.2 SSD (brand not specified(
RAM: 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4 at 2400MHz
GPU: NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX(TM) 2070 8GB GDDR6 (OC Ready)
CPU: 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9700K (8-Core, 12MB Cache, up to 4.9GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
WARRANTY: 1 Year of: Accidental Damage | Remote Diagnosis + Onsite Service | Limited Hardware Warranty

PRICE BEFORE DISCOUNTS: $3,208.99
TOTAL DISCOUNTS: $-628.53
SUBTOTAL: $2,580.46
TAX(CA): $231.56

FINAL TOTAL AFTER TAX: $ 2,812.02
-------------------------------------------​

​

So, that's my machine.... And NOTE that I can still return this if need be, I got special dispensation from the salesman on the phone because I was very iffy about the purchase, and refused to go through with the purchase unless I had recourse to return it in those first 30 days with the restocking fee waived - I am NOT gonna put up with that kinda shenanigans, no ma'am..

I have a couple specific questions for you folks that have actually used the thing and know precisely what is and is not important...


#1 - The i7-9700k. When I spec'd this, I honestly thought that it would be... well... like pretty much all the other processors Intel makes. I thought it'd have multi-threading, and I was looking at the specs for this processor against the i9-9900k and thinking "Damn, the clock speeds are practically identical, why pay more?" Yeah, I figured it out later. I am hoping it is more than enough, still...

#2 - Will I need more RAM? Should I buy more? What type?

#3 - In terms of the SSD, anyone know what one I'll be getting?

 

@Mr. Fox @Papusan

Do you think that Cinebench R20 is overkill in testing a laptop's cooling? As in overkill like how Furmark is creating workloads that don't represent a typical or power user's normal usage scenarios?

Reason I ask is every single laptop that I have tried recently like XPS 15 7590, Alienware m15, with these 9980HK or 8950HK CPUs tend to reach 99C instantly the moment CINEBENCH runs. T'he only laptops which survived these tests are the MSI GT75/76 and Alienware Area-51m but all these thin and light laptops that I tried instantly overheat and thermal throttle so I was thinking to myself, I can't be the only one complaining? Are these cooling solutions that bad? Surely others would have complained and returned 100s of laptops if they thought their laptops overheat but it seems like I'm the only one refunding laptops here for overheating. Virgin Electronics in Dubai probably know me very well by now and avoid selling me laptops because of how many I have returned the past month.

 

Unlikely to happen, but perhaps it would fit in the AGA, after PSU upgrade?

CB20 allows you to measure system performance under basically the upper bound on the CPU load. Whether it's relevant depends on your application: gamers can fairly safely ignore it because most games are GPU-bound, so it's more relevant to CPU-intensive (more precisely AVX-intensive) scientific/professional applications (numerical computing, rendering, etc.).

Because of this interesting property, and my applications, it's the only CPU benchmark I use. If I manage to tweak my laptop to reasonable performance under CB20, I'm guaranteed it will work at least as well in any other circumstances. I think Dell should adopt the same approach internally - there would be pretty much no more complaints/returns/service costs due to heat and throttling if they did that properly.

#1 What are your use cases? Unless it's super heavy computing then no worries. Even in that case. You are only loosing around 30% performance with the 9700K. On the upside, the CPU will run cooler which is great news.

#2 Only you can answer that question. If you notice you start reaching max physical RAM utilisation, you will know it's time to upgrade. The 51M is awesome in that it has 4 SODIMMs supporting up to 128GB of RAM. Hyper X Impact brand has the lowest latency and is pretty much guaranteed to work. At the moment the laptop only supports memory running at 2400Mhz but the community is still hoping for an upgrade to 2666Mhz and beyond, so you may want to put your upgrade away if you don't immediately need it. If you need 128GB, then I think Samsung is the only game in town ( @Spartan used that in his previous 51M). The downside of the 32GB Samsung modules is higher latency (but the practical impact of that is very minor in most cases).

#3 Might be an OEM Samsung? You can look through SSD drivers on the 51M support page to get an idea of what drives could be supplied.

 

My current Area-51m has Micron 16ATF2G64HZ-2G6E1

Is that low latency?

 

Hi All

If anyone is going to participate in the Q&A on Wednesday (I think it was then?) I'd be incredibly appreciative if someone can bring up the BIOS fixes for the GPU that I still haven't been able to rollback.

As mentioned in my previous post, I started using my HTPC shipped from Spain/UK to China however the stuttering issues I had when using the AGA may actually be a result of the external GPU itself and not the AGA like I thought... I need to run some more tests but if so then it leaves me with 2x RTX 2080s that don't work which would be pretty ****.

With the AGA I had the stock cooler for the card but with an AX1200 PSU, Noctua fan upgrade and liquid metal. The temps were about as good as you could get them without butchering the entire AGA which I didn't want to do due to materials and cost.

In the HTPC the thermals are great for the card, the stock cooler is off and I watercooled it with the Noctua fan on the PCB, NZXT x52 with push/pull fans and liquid metal. It's sitting at 30-33 degrees idle and around 50-55 under load which is easily driving my capped 250fps in Overwatch on a 240hz monitor. The rest of the case has a ton of fans too so the thermals are never an issue even during the stutters, even on the rest of the circuitry, thermals are always well under any alarming temps so it pretty much seems to be the card as 2 different coolers have the same stutters.

The computer was well packaged, especially around the GPU, but I guess it didn't survive properly. 1 of the fan's lights seems to be broken, 1 of the lighting controllers is broken and the glass has been scratched in multiple areas. If you're ever going to ship anything to China, don't count on it arriving there well if it isn't in a sealed box directly from the supplier, they open everything, toss it around and mix it up with everything else. Boxes were crushed with items from other boxes packed in randomly and differently to how we did it which ended up damaging multiple items.

Whilst not a paperweight, I suppose I at least have 2 nice looking computers to flood my deskspace. I was planning on upgrading at some point after the 3000 series launch but I didn't want to be stuck with issues until then!

 

Yeah, it's the RAM supplied by Dell, isn't it? Best case scenario at 2666MHz is CL19
At 2400MHz CL goes down to 17, but HyperX Impact 2400MHz runs at 14 (I have that in my old 15 R2).

Don't have AIDA but, for reference, this is what HWINFO is showing for Hyper X Impact 2666:

 

Correct

Here's mine:

 

I have 16GB HyperX in mine at the minute.

 

Looks like @Spartan 's RAM is the same that ships with the m15. We benchmarked this: HyperX has straight up 20% higher bandwidth, as per the CL ratio.

 

Yes and no. Is Cinebech R20 a good representation of something most users are going to see in normal use? No. It is overkill.

Is Cinebench R20 a good tool that exposes the abject incompetence of laptop manufacturers and their unwillingness to produce quality products that function correctly? Yes. Absolutely. Their incompetence is only half the problem. The other half is consumer stupidity.

People should return poorly designed broken trash for a refund. The people selling broken trash should stop selling it. They would stop if nobody bought it.

 

the very sad truth is, your average Joe goes to a computer store and speaks to the muppet salesman who asks, what do you want to do? Gaming or Professional work, then they tell him "oh this laptop has the latest 9th gen processor" that's all they know! But no one tells customer oh and by the way, if you opt for the more expensive laptop with the faster CPU (ie 9980HK) you are wasting your money because it will thermal throttle and run at half the speed. But hey, I make my sale!

 

LOL. Come to think of it, the salesman guy could turn this sad state of affairs into a business opportunity by saying: "BTW In order to use this amazing 9the gen processor laptop to its full potential, you will have to repaste, repad and undervolt it. You can do it yourself - in that case the components required will be $100, or we can perform the work in store for you for $200". Kind of what HIDevolution have been doing I guess

 

Can you imagine how much money they would make doing this man? Holy moly!! multiply all their sales figures by 200!

 

Hehe, you got me - it's just that I'd rather have those salespeople sit in the corner busy repasting than pester me with silly questions. BTW I think you need to rotate that x by 45 degress

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HNF0KF0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Just works for me. I don't have to do anything special, but before I bought the Index, I did do some research on the adapter I would need to get it to work on this laptop. I've not had any issues at all.

 

It's a great idea. But, they'd have to find and hire someone competent enough to do it. Otherwise, they'd just mess things up even more.

 

True. Failing that, they could still sell their Essential Laptop Performance Tuning Kits, at a healthy markup. Every little helps these days if you are not Amazon. This would also provide visibility into the issue, and perhaps provide some incentive for manufacturers to avoid the embarrassment involved in sales people going on about how poor the performance of the given laptop is, unless repasted/repadded using the Kit.

 

Do any of you guys have or follow a guide for the best performance settings for the Nvidia control panel?

 

Intel have implemented AVX Negative offset option in all their newer chips. Cinebench R20 is AVX load and rarly used in normal daily usage. I expect the laptops you bougt lack this feature in bios. Aka even more broken firmware than it has to be. Not following Intel's specs is only a fast way to save on costs (more known as cost cutting).

More broken trash is coming...

System Temperature Tracking (Version 2)
SmartShift is also part of a new System Temperature Tracking paradigm that AMD is implementing in its new APUs. Even if there is power headroom, a system can’t turbo if there isn’t thermal headroom. Smart Temperature Tracing v2 (or STTv2) is designed to help a system boost for longer by knowing more about the thermal profile of the device.

By placing additional thermal probes inside the system, such as on hot controllers or discrete GPUs, the readings of these can be passed through the Infinity Fabric to an embedded management controller. Through learning how the system thermals interact when different elements are loaded, the controller can determine if the system still has headroom to stay in turbo for longer than the current methodology (AMD’s Skin Temperature Aware Power Management).

Currently, many gaming notebooks come with powerful GPUs and CPUs that share the same unified cooling solution, such as a 45W GPU and 80W GPU housed under the same cooler. However, the cooler may only be able to dissipate 90W of heat in aggregate, which leads to constraints on either the CPU or GPU during heavy use. See... Implement 125W hardware, but only give it cooling for 90w. This is a flawed design!


https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/amd-ryzen-mobile-Renoir-4000-series-9-4900h-hs-series

 

To be fair this Negative AVX Offset is fairly useless. Gamers won't ever need to care about it, and people for whom AVX is "normal use" wouldn't want to cripple AVX performance by enabling it.

 

None say you have to put negative offset at -5. And neither do you have to follow -3 offset as oc’er Der8auer recommendations.

 

I have not the ability to understand j00. Can you explain this in Mr. Layman's terms?

 

AVX instructions will push an extra strain on power delivery and the CPU itself. Just follow the voltage curve when running AVX workload as P95/Aida64 FPU stress test or a simple CBR-20 bench run. AVX is much heavier and will require additional voltage. Increased voltage = Increased power consumption = Higher heat.

5.2GHz near 300W load.





Introduction to Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions | Intel ...
Jun 21, 2011 - Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) is a set of instructions for doing Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) operations on Intel® architecture CPUs. ... The 128-bit SIMD registers have been expanded to 256 bits. Intel® AVX is designed to support 512 or 1024 bits in the future.

 

With Nvidia delaying the big news they were set to announce, I have officially given up on an Area 51m refresh for the time being. I can see this virus has effected markets in unprecedented ways and now is clearly no time for Alienware to announce new laptops. If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen. I will no longer scout the internet first thing every morning regarding news about this. Might make the wait more bearable if I’m not actively looking every day.

 

Thanks, so this allows people who have unlocked CPUs in enabled systems, and care about BOTH AVX and non-AVX loads, to tweak multipliers for each mode separately. I guess it would make sense if people were trying to tweak things so the CPU stays below certain temp threshold and not run at 100C in AVX mode. In absence of this negative offset the CPU would faster in AVX mode but at higher temps and potentially thermally throttle at 100C, which can be distressing

Well, with this push for working remotely and social distancing, who knows? Perhaps they will go against the grain and launch a big marketing campaign: "Beat the virus with the new Alienware Area 51M R2!"

I understand that (with the exception of the power setting) this is essentially cheating because you would be achieving higher performance by forcing lower than intended image quality.

 

Don't kid yourself! One can never escape your own tech-OCD... ;-)

 

For me I just ensure I set the Power mode from Optimal (which is horrible) to Adaptive and let GeForce Experience handle all the settings for each game.

 

I think you are looking at this from a technical point of view rather than from my 'uneducated but learning' point of view. I just want to ensure I have the best settings for image and performance if that makes sense, such as settings like 'Anit Aliasing', what even is that and what should it be set to?

That's pretty much how I'm setup at the minute.

 

I mean everything turned down except maybe power and a few others is best "performance"...

https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-control-panel-a-beginners-guide/ <--- see this

 

Its probably my wording thats wrong, I'm looking for optimal settings. Not solely focussing on performance. But the best overall for graphics and performance. I'll have a look at the url provided though, thank you.

I was using the settings provided on an earlier Alienware video but there seems to be more settings now that they don't have.

 

I mean that kind of comes down to the game and personal preference. I cannot tolerate jaggies, so I go for best picture usually, but you might be different. There is no "optimal" for all cases or everyone. Middle settings when they exist is close to it I suppose...

So curious what you folks think:

I have a 9700K at 5.1 Ghz, with a 2070 (not OC'd).

One option would be to upgrade just the GPU to a 2080, or 30xx when and if Dell makes a DGFF that will work with it.

Another option would be to upgrade just he CPU to a 9900K and maintain the 2070 for now... and _maybe_ later upgrade to a 30xx DGFF if Dell does it...

Would the temps be worse with a 9700K+2080, or a 9900K+2070....? Any thoughts?

 

@Fire Tiger

I wouldn't use High Performance for the power management other than for benchmarking and even that in my test didn't give any difference. Reason being, High Performance sets the GPU clock speeds at higher speeds at all times. It doesn't make sense to me to put such stress on the GPU and create unnecessary heat while I am doing regular stuff like watching YouTube or browsing the forum.

@Papusan Please correct me if I'm wrong. @Mr. Fox

 

I leave my systems on high performance 24/7 in both the Windows power profile and NVIDIA Control Panel, and my GPU downclocks to idle speeds when no 3D processes are running in the background. Sometimes there are 3D processes running that are not apparent. If you use GPU Shark that can help identify them. Windows 10 more frequently than Windows 7 has some kind of worthless trash running in the background as a 3D process.

If I use hardware acceleration in the browser the GPU uses boost clocks when there is no legitimate reason to, but I disable that option in my web browsers.

 

Since all the Area 51M is gone from the outlet, think R2 is about to be released soon into the wild.

I would say upgrade the CPU and wait for the GPU upgrade.

 

Are there any concrete benefits of this strategy?

One downside is apparent: unable to reasonably use browser acceleration.

 

I deeply respect and frankly admire the force of will required to draft this. 2 rep points. Wish I could give u more!!

 

I don't think that it does to be honest, it still down clocks when not needed. I'll confirm though, I just honestly don't think it makes any difference in the long run, its like the OC'ing question. Sure you might take two years off the life of a ten year processor; do you really care though?