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

Need to accept it? I'm not so sure about that. And none should blame the Cpu or Gpu.
The main problem...The notebooks lacks adequate cooling. The notebook manufacturers have data sheet over thermals from both Intel, AMD and nvidia. Even get proper support from their engineers. But they still prefer design over functionality. All know that you can't fill up a 1 liter bag with 4 liter water

We can also milk on it further... You design the notebook to handle 180w graphics and then over night swap in vBios to provide 200w due other ODMs offer it. This without major changes in design. All know how this will fare.

 

I am thinking of maybe going back to the stock image and not updating AWCC or OC Controls

 

Found a solution:
Reinstall OC Controls and then set write protection for the following file before restarting
C:\Program Files\Alienware\Alienware Command Center\OCControlService\Profiles.zip

 

Could just be my searching skills but I am not finding anything online of anyone OUTSIDE of this forum with this issue?

 

100% this forum cause the issue!

i think most owners are here, and the problem exist since around 2 days.

 

Just tried that, didn't work! How did you come up with this genius idea?

Can anyone comprehend what this guy said?

 

it was a joke because no one outside of this forum is complaining about the problem

I tested it with two area 51m
I reinstalled OC Controls, the timestamp of the profiles.zip is 26.03.2020 03:42
then I open properties and check read-only
After the restart AWCC asks with the windows popup to change some files, click yes
The timestamp is still the same and no 75°C limit

 

It's strange because while gaming, GPU would hit 80-85°C max and even with the slider stuck at 75°C, I don't see any throttling.

I'm still on 1.5.0

 

I think my point is that these chips all run now very _hot_.... I mean, unless there is a significant improvement in cooling (vapor chambers, etc), outside of very bulky laptops (which I am not opposed to), what can effectively be done? Intel, AMD and Nvidia make coolness a lesser priority in their race for power... and then leave the design issues to Dell, etc. to deal with instead of addressing it at the source.

 

@Spartan
Videoproof of my method:


edit: video was low quality, new video should be online the next 5 minutes

 

This is correct. Intel, NVIDIA and AMD are not to blame for laptop ODMs cutting corners, poor engineering, and sloppy quality control. These processors are only "too hot" when they are installed in a platform that wasn't engineered and built to handle them gracefully. The same issues exist with slower and less powerful CPUs and GPUs. The people that build them don't know what they are doing and/or don't care how it turns out. They just want it to be cute looking, thin, light and have fancy things like RGB to make the kiddos smile.

 

The Alienware command center acc temp slider was stuck at 75, I installed the latest version (after uninstalling the existing one) and its back to normal now.
I’m on bios 1.9.1 and latest bios

Edit, the slider is stuck after restarting.

:[

 

@devilhunter
try a second restart and it get stuck again, try my solution from the page before

 

So what does Alienware figure, we are going to game for 10 minutes and then be happy with Commodore 64 frame rates for the rest of the gaming session? Having to block inbound outbound traffic, and other ways to combat the manufacturer from turning your $5000 cad gaming rig into the $2500 model you should have bought in the first place is frustrating. Shouldn't these assholes be working with us, and making effort to fix the thing to give us what we pay for, instead of taking the extra money from us, then just borking the thing down to $2500 performance. Also is it just me or is the fan control just not work as intended at all, maybe its just me but seems like all i can get is between 100 and 80% or 0% on my custom fan profile ,and as far as i can tell cool, and balanced are borked.

 

same for me with the fan control

 

And what do you think the notebook manufacturers will do when we get more power efficient chips?

Shrinking the chassis further in size(with cooling that follows the slimmer chassis). Nothing will change! Or just add in fan speed profiles for less noise. The Apple way 100C and throttling instead for increasing fan speed which will provide more noise!

 

Thanks, working like a charm now.

 

i know if they cannot figure out how to code a fan program, they should open hwinfo fan support so we can control these fans ourself. unless there is a program out there that will that i am unaware of.

 

On a certain level, they could do more about heat I believe. The fault is not just with the designs though, these chips are _hot_. There is a blame on all sides, but the source of the heat puts the least emphasis on the question.

 

Dell's own engineering team suggested that we all should use Hwinfo fan control in the older day instead for creating something that worked. From what I know, no other tools out there will work http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-15-bios-s-information.775039/page-2#post-10004377

We got zero help from the engineering team. Was stuck with fans who started spin up after the CPU reached 95C and the cpu started throttle down speed.

This is nothing new. Have been like this the last 8 years.

 

I think it falls squarely on the ODM to do whatever is required to support the hardware they plan to sell. It makes no difference whether we are talking about low TDP mobile processors or using desktop processors in a laptop chassis. We have seen examples of poor execution across the full spectrum of performance capabilities. The excuse can't be, Intel, NVIDIA or AMD make chips that run too hot. If they don't already know that then they're not paying attention. Based on what we have seen, seems like they are not paying attention.

They need to make some quality executive decisions and take the steps needed to be certain what they sell works correctly. If they do their homework and know that chip A puts out more heat than chip B does if they want to sell laptops with chip A, they need to build it to support chip A and have it function correctly with no gimping or corner-cutting. No passing the buck allowed. They can't control Intel, NVIDIA and AMD. But, they can control what they do based upon what they know.

Yes, and that is a major contributing factor. Just because something new runs cooler doesn't mean they should view that as a green light to make something smaller and lighter if it ultimately runs too hot just like the older product. They should view it as an opportunity to use what they already have (which was not engineered well enough) more effectively and make it a better product than it used to be instead of shrinking it more to hold status quo tolerance for their threshold on malfunction.

 

Everyone's entitled to an opinion I believe the chip makers have long taken heat as a just a given issue and a reality. No one's excusing it; I am blaming Intel, AMD and Nvidia in large part though, they all need to work on a product that allows for performance but can be put in a reasonable package that an OEM can design for a decent cost and meets design parameters that the consumer wants. Literally, since I purchased my first laptop in 2010, heat and throttling are _always_ consistent problems, and there has been no radical change or effort in cooling, its barely kept up. That's my point, but the heat issue traces back to the chip makers to start. This as if an engine maker made engines that say car builders use, but literally gave little to no thought to the kind of vehicle the consumer wants that the builder is under pressure to make for a cost and within reasonable engineering tolerances. Now, I am not in any way excusing OEMs but the Original Sin if you will lies with the chip makers.

 

To some extent that is definitely true, but it still ignores the obligation to build the product as needed to support the components utilized. The Area 51M and Clevo laptops with desktop CPUs are an extreme example of that. It is Clevo and Alienware choosing what CPU to use and Clevo and Alienware need to rise to the occasion to provide a thoughtful implementation using desktop parts in a mobile form factor. That means making it bigger, thicker and heavier are a given. Using things like a unified heat sink to facilitate making it smaller and lighter demonstrates ignorance and a lack of research on what the product needs to be its best. If it is too big and heavy for some folks' preference, then maybe it's not the right machine for them to buy.

It also leaves them with no legitimate excuses when using mobile components in a mobile form factor, but that's a discussion for a different thread.

 

And to a large extent, I agree. The engineering faults and compromises in laptop thermals etc are the OEM's fault; the original levels of heat though are not. You know I support larger laptops, that is never an issue for me personally. I would prefer them to take a more segmented approach, but in this day and age where the PC is well, perhaps in its final evolution to a mobile device then ultimately, will disappear altogether into the Cloud, I doubt there will be any change ever sadly. I will miss the PC one day in the next 20 years : /

 

Don't know if it's related but after update suddenly my temperatures are spiking 5ﾟi games. . Seems odd....I have 30 hours in on some of these games and suddenly I'm seeing a marked temperature increase. Hit 85ﾟ CPU playing mech Warrior 5 last night and 77ﾟ on the GPU.

Previous high was 80 and 72

 

Cheers man, much appreciated...
When using the Bios 1.5.0 did you find any substantial difference from newer versions? apart from the tdp 87 on the GPU? and I believe no Gsync for the laptop screen...
Just considering if going into 1.5.0 or not, as I am normally happy with the GPU at 77 (as it was before) or if I want higher using HWINFO64 as Helifax19 was showing in this video...


At present my AWCC is working good here for 2 days...
I also disable in the Bios firmware updates
remove dell update for windows 10, dell support assist
did Spartan regedit and also read only on Profiles.zip as Tim92 proposed.

Opinions about all of this situation happening with the updates are very understandable as owners.
I believe some of us were expecting increase of performance with new bios, possibility of higher memory clocks, rise in gpu TDP... so getting the opposite with this update, without any warning, and blocking non pro users from downgrading Bios, or AWCC, or OC controls... well it is not nice to say at least ... from a brand and a device we bought for its peak top performance..

Nevertheless I believe we will find ways around as we are doing....
Even with those unexpected issues, this is still a beast of machine, and yes we could go to a MSI GT76 to get this thermals out of the way... but... I still prefer this Alienware ... even still owning a msi ge62, and having sold an amazing thermal performance MSI GT73 Titan Pro... more thermals with higher fan noise (db), yes is better thermals but for me at least this machine does it best on maintaining a balance between noise/performance/comfort/portability...

Let's see what happens, may be I have to change in the end what I am saying in the future, but not yet!

 

You are a savier!!!

It worked for me.....Thanks a lot.

I did not found a profife folder like in you video but i saw a zip file name profile. I unzipped it in the same folder and applied read only for both files just to be sure and it worked. After 5 reboot i can still set temperatures. Great work!

 

Timmy, your trick worked!! What I was doing differently before was installing Command Center then OC Controls then rebooting, then I was setting my overclocking profile which is a -60mV undervolt and raising the thermal limit of the GPU to 86C, saving it, then I was setting the profiles.zip file to read only.

After watching your video I noticed you are setting to Read-Only before you reboot so I tried that and now it worked and I am using the latest AWCC and it still works!! How did you discover this man you are a genius!

By the way, I noticed you get this error with a yellow exclamation mark every reboot. If you are on the Dell Factory Image, then uninstall Intel Pinning Extensions from the control panel and that error will go away.

@IXVIXXII @Lopt

Don't forget guys, after you set your thermal limit, save the profile and name it anything you want (ie. 4.9 GHz for my CPU) then do your undervolt in the CPU section and save it to the same profile (hit SAVE not SAVE AS) and finally you need to select that profile in the home screen to make it active:



@MogRules

 

Hello @Spartan, today i was bored i decided to test different themal paste for the CPU only. I am telling you because i know you had LM before and switch to Phobya nanogrease not so long ago.

LM condoctonaut gave me 7C average less then Kryonaut.
Kryonaut gave 3C better temps compare to phobya nanogrease extreme and better core differential. I still beleve that phobya nanogrease is a good paste but it is very difficult to apply (spread) the good amount. I kept Phobya nanogrease on my GPU.

So now i will keep LM conductonaut but i find it doesn't make a big difference in terms of performance. I still cannot benchmard 4.9Ghz constant in loop and cannot benchmark 5.0GHZ. The best it can do is 4.8GHz constant in loop but it is very close to thermal throttle at 93C.

 

I am happy with Phobya NanoGrease, it is not any harder to apply than IC Diamond. Yes they are thick but with the right tool:



It is very easy.

I appreciate your feedback about Kryonaut but I've had bad results with it. It started out great, then after 3 days, every day my temps were rising slowly till I reached a point where I can't use my laptop (back then when I had a Clevo P870DM3) so I don't wanna try it again. But whatever works for you.

 

Do you recommend removing this or only if we have an error?

 

I always remove it because it gets installed automatically when you install IRST since last year when Optane Drivers introduced but guess what? Our machines have no Optane drives so it is useless. After uninstalling it from Control Panel/Programs & Features, you will also find it in device manager under Software components so uninstall it from there too and choose (also delete driver) if that was an option.

 

I just accidentally saw this video from Alienware in Youtube, published 28 feb 2020.
Max area51m RTX 2080 GPU temp can be seen as 80C.

Publicly marketing the area51m power, but with a max GPU temp of 80C without problems or drops...

Just pissed me off a bit,...
just showing this to the general public/potential buyers as a reference of the performance of this machine, when it was not possible at that time using their Bios/Software/Drivers (or now without tweaking, bios downgrade, etc...) to reach this GPU temperature hence performance ......... not nice....

I left a comment asking how... more or less...

 

80C is within the official thermal limit as of 1.9.1 , 180 W vbios.

79C to be specific ( probably rounded up)

 

ups, then my whole mistake... as I am using the 200w vbios... I thought the Bios was the one setting the thermal limit, not the vBios...

 

Alienware Area-51m Drivers 27-Apr-2020

After you download the ZIP file and before you unzip it, make sure it is not blocked by right clicking on it, go to Properties, then see at the bottom if it says "this file came from another computer and might be blocked..." click the UNBLOCK button then hit APPLY followed by OK! To prevent Windows from blocking downloaded files automatically, make sure you read this guide:

"Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

This ZIP file contains the latest official drivers from Dell but with newer LAN/WLAN/Bluetooth Drivers from Intel.

They are organized in numbered folders with the correct installation order.

Please restart after every driver install even if you were not prompted because some drivers will fail to install if there are any other pending operations (ie. had the Intel HID Event Filter Driver failed to install once because I didn't reboot, the driver package was installed but the actual device in Device Manager was not updated)

 

Thanks as always for these brother its appreciated!

 

So you don't encounter an hard thermal throttles before reaching 79° on 1.9.1 ?
I'm on 1.6.x and ~76° triggers instant throttling of the GPU (downclocked to 300 MHz). I have to change my thermal profile in order to recover the FPS and GPU clock

 

Quick question guys, is the 2nd m.2 slot on our motherboard slower than the primary one? Reason I ask is I'm getting some very strange write speeds on my 2nd NVME SSD and the problem is not present in the one in slot 1.



edit: nvm, fixed it. windows messing with me again

 

First question: are they the same drive? E.g Samsung 970 EVO Plus, or whatever? Or different?

 

Yeah they're both 4TB Sabrent Rockets, problem was a rogue windows feature that got installed by the latest insider preview (please never use insider previews)

 

No Problems for me here on 1.5.0, Gsync is not really missed at all honestly I can't see any difference with it off, I think the machine and refresh rate of the screen are good enough to eliminate any noticeable tearing.

After trying all sorts of things right along with everyone else here, I am settled on 1.5.0 and just using the laptop, I'm pretty burned out on trying to " re engineer " the darn thing lol, it seems to work fine for me on 1.5.0

I have absolutely NO IDEA what these folks are experiencing with the STUCK at 75c in AWCC ( knock on wood ) I have not experienced that here.

Yes it's still a good laptop, to expensive by far especially for it's shortcomings, but I sort of knew what I was getting into, and I chose form over function lol - but fortunately I have been able to tame the beast and make it perform the tricks I bought it for without burning up ( with lots of help from people here on this forum ).

as long as this beast plays CyberPunk 2077 well I will consider it worthwhile

 

That has always been my experience with Gsync. Seems pretty worthless to me if you are running 120Hz or higher screen refresh rate. The only way I can tell it is turned on is that FPS in games are lower and benchmark scores are lower. It's also kind of a pain in the butt having to remember to disable it. It would be more convenient to just not have it.

 

When I had BIOS 1.9.3 installed and I set the Thermal to 78c in AWCC it would drop to 300Mhz right about 5 mins after starting a game right at about 76c

A good way to test for this is load up METRO EXODUS and just sit at the loading screen ( Lady in the train sipping coffee ) on ALL BIOS other than 1.5.0 it will HARD THROTTLE after 5 minutes at about 76C.

With 1.5.0 I can let it sit there for hours and it settles in around 77-78c and NEVER HARD THROTTLES.

Thank you sir, However I think I am done installing anything new from DELL.

My machine is working well now and I think I will just sit back and enjoy it, I'm not installing any more updates of any kind until I see a LOT of you guys try it first and let us know how it went

 

So hopefully my machine will be shipped in the next week, what do I need to do exactly so I can use the thermal slider on AWCC? What Tim showed? Do i need to reinstall OC controls right from the get go?

 

Cheers Lopt for all the explanation, much appreciated!
Cyberpunk 2077 all the way! Yes...I'm waiting for this one too!... I believe we going to have a blast with this game running in this machines...

 

I never experience the hard throttle on 1.7.3 as long as I set Asus GPU Tweak to 77/78c, I did experience it when setting it to anything higher, clocks would drop to between 300-500mhz on the GPU until it hit 50c then it would continue this cycle every 5 mins or so. Now the clocks drop by 200-300mhz as they would normally at their throttle point.

 

You got an answer back They said you can get 24/7 live assistance through Facebook, Twitter and Dell Community Forum (DCF). Good luck.

Area-51m, GPU throttling now up in page 4
Last post with an positive response, but probably not what you hoped for.

 

Not the first time big companies sucker people into drinking the kool aid.

 

Today I tried something came to the following conclusion:
1. the Profile.zip file is reloaded and used every time AWCC is started (also from the Internet)!
2. the profile.zip from January 2019 is not running!
3. the Profile.zip from March 2020 is running and you can change the GPU temp. to adjust.
4. the Profile.zip from May (currently in use) is loaded without GPU temp.

Here is the screenshot. Unfortunately, the AWCC-OC installers from March 2019 / April 2019 / June 2019 refuse to install and I cannot extract any Profile.zip from them
Also some of the installers do not contain a Profile.zip file, so it would be good to create a collection and compare the settings (see screenshot).

BTW: don´t forget to set the file as write-protected