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

My machine is suppose to arrive wesnesday if anyone wants me to check or do anything with it.

 

My LED's still work, I didn't have to do anything to enable them after installing the Synaptics drivers.

 

did you first remove the previous drivers and restart or did you load them without uninstalling?

I tried to do either way and Windows would inform me that my Driver is already up to date and thus the installation cannot continue.

Also, in Device manager my touchpad is displayed as HID-compiant mouse. However, the speed of it is great, so there is a difference after following your procedure. I guess I must have done something wrong.

If you could send me a detail step by step guide, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

There is a seperate intel driver for the touchpad from the a51m dell driver page that you need to install to fix the AW FX for touchpad. I did this a while ago to fix touchpad toggling.

Edit: in total 3 drivers. Dell touchpad driver. Alienware Pointer Devices, Intel driver

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

 

check what ram speed you have and report back.

 

I literally followed the video and nothing else. I wouldn't know what else to look for.

 

Are you referring to THESE 3 divers? If yes, aren't they already installed when buying the laptop? My laptop was sent from Dell on 5th of March 2020, so I think they are already installed, so they won't solve the problem. Correct me if I'm wrong. Did you have older drivers than these and installing them solved every touchpad/trackpad issue?

 

Here is how it looks for me:

 

Hello @Everyone,

I'm speaking in the name of a friend who encounters the following issue SINCE the VERY beginning of his Area-51m ownership (6 months).

Whenever he turns his laptop on, after a few minutes at the precise moment when the Alienware Command Center ( AWCC) is finally launched :
- his keyboard suddenly stops responding. Backlighting is still on but pressing any key does not do anything. Caps lock + Num lock little light can't be toggled either.

The only workaround he found so far is to reboot. After the laptop reboots, AWCC launches and the keyboard is not affected.

- He already tried multiple clean installations of Windows 10 but as soon as AWCC related content is installed the issue reappears.
- The problem happened since almost day one so updating/downgrading AWCC does not fix the issue.

There is no doubt, this is linked to AWCC services or the program itself.
The ultimate step will be contacting Dell. But is there anything we can do to fix it ?

 

When he downloaded the drivers, did he ensure to unblock each one of them before installation? I'm sure he hasn't. That could leat to errenous or incomplete installs.

To disable file ublocking, see this thread, let him redownload all the drivers and reinstall them now with their unblocked status and see if it works.

I suggest another clean install followed by installing the new unblocked drivers.

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

 

When I leave my battery almost drain and plug in the two chargers (I charge the laptop before it goes to sleep) I see this error message:



When I instantly reboot, BIOS is displaying this:



While these last, my laptop isn't charging.. After 10 minutes (or so) charging begins.

Battery Bar is saying that my Battery is worn out at 8.5%


I only have my area51m for 25 days.. Do you think it's a hardware issue? Should I request for DOA replacement from Dell?

 

A word of caution everybody: DO NOT DOWNGRADE TO BIOS 1.3.2!!!

Unfortunately can't share more details at the moment.

 

Ok I'll switch to LTSC version on my new laptop.
I didn't know Crucial Executive detected RAID drives. Haha...
Seagate FireCUDA HDD have this issue which @GreatD told me. He had to put APM to max performance to prevent super quick spin-down.

 

This should almost be common sense....1.3.2 was going back a LONG time and through several newer BIOS revisions. It caused what, 4 people on this forum alone to brick their machines?

If you have heavy throttling and need to get around that, go back to 1.5.0, but going back further then that is just silly IMO.

 

Hello Guys,
I'm new on this forum. I have an Area51m from the beginning of March. The original config shipped with non-K i7 9700 + RTX2070. Now I bought an i7 8700K and in the AWCC I don't have the Advanced tab. I reinstalled the win, but nothing changed. I am using the 1.8.1 bios version.
I asked the Dell about this, and they couldn't help me. The only asnwer was: "There is a possibility, that Command centre is reading information from Service Tag which is in original configuration with non overclockable CPU, that might be possible."

Do somebody have any idea?

 

Do you have the AWCC Overclock downloaded? https://www.dell.com/support/home/u...wt64a&productcode=alienware-17-area51m-laptop

It is a separate module from the AWCC. I would uninstall AWCC, Reinstall and then install the OC afterwards.

 

Did you gain access to the Overclocking in the BIOS? It should also be under the performance tab if it's available.

 

At some point my touchpad started stuttering and was no longer operating as it should. I remembered installing synaptics individual touchpad driver and may have caused an issue months ago. Uninstalled the drivers only to find Fn+F11 didnt work. So I reinstalled them in the order I listed in previous post.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

 

Yes, of course I installed it. That was the first suggestion from the Dell specialist too.

Yes, it is available now. I can adjust it in three steps and I have another option which switch on this function and allows me to adjust the multipliers freely. I left the setting in this state with the original multipliers. But in this way I cannot refine the voltages, only the multipliers.

 

Dun dun dun!!! Drumroll...

https://twitter.com/alienware/status/1257731815089090563?s=21

 

Due to mitigations implemented on BIOS 1.5.0, there is a performance loss compared to 1.3.2. This is important if you want to get the top score on a bench. Since my device was manufactured mid 2019, I thought 1.3.2 wasn't a problem, turns out it was.

If turns out to be the UFO with Ryzen, I'm gonna scream.

 

I am on the 1.3.2 bios and i have not had any issues with throttling. If anyone has used any of the latest bios and tried to revert back to 1.3.2. apparently Dell/Alienware has wrote something in the code to hinder performance or BRICK notebooks that try to use that version of bios. As already been shared by Ssj2 bios 1.5.0 is probably the best bios to use on these notebooks. I just wanted to use the the out of the box bios so i can use the notebook the way Dell/Alienware probably intended before an exorbitant amount of GPUs started burning out.

 

Yep 1.5.0 FTW! Pick your poison for VBIOS

 

Area51m R2? Right?

 

No it is not, there is only 1 charging port, hence I would predict that it its a m15/m17 refresh with 10th gen core i and super GPU max-bs

 

could be new Power Supply 550W?

 

Not happening

 

Looks like m17 R3

 

At the very least, whatever it is in that picture, is considerably too thin to house a LGA cpu based on the I/O on the back for proportion. Very likely refresh of hardware.

On the other hand, simple refresh for hardware is hardly a "Big news".

 

To avoid issues I went 1.7.3->1.5.0->1.3.2 . This used to be possible.

I once had 1.8.1 installed, but reverted to 1.7.3. Never installed 1.9.3. Heard about newer A51m's bricking, but didn't hear about the microcode that prevented going back to 1.3.2

 

I hope!!! If they reveal the R2, I’m super interested to see if Dell does good by their promise with DGFF 2080 Supers (and they fit the R1), and fingers crossed for 3080s next year!!!

 

I would love to see 3070's that run cooler and run in the R1, as it is I am not betting on it. This is Dell after all...

 

My gut tells me that along the way, microcode got updated and 1.3.2 clearly has something where it doesn’t handshake nicely with units that went up to 1.8.1 or above.

For reference, I’ve never gone beyond 1.5.4. I downgraded to 1.3.2 with the usb method within minutes of noticing the lowered throttle points, then back up to 1.5.0 a few weeks later just because it’s the latest without throttling and have stayed there since. 1.3.2 and 1.5.0 gave me the same performance pretty much. If you want higher temp points, go 1.5.0 or nothing! 1.3.2 clearly is dangerous territory to try to downgrade to if you’ve been on bios higher than 1.7.3.

 

30X0 Ampere GPUs will be in 7nm architecture, so more efficiency and more cores in the same or smaller die footprint, meaning we should see lower temps.

 

I'll believe it when I see it, I just don't trust any of the makers anymore.

 

Everything lives in the SPI chip. Is no one just flashing that direct when they get "bricked"?

BTW joining your ranks. 51m incoming, M17x R4 1070 outgoing.

 

I am willing to bet most people don't have the required hardware to do so.

 

Thank you very much. Fn + F11 doesn't work for me either.. However, mouse lags have stopped.. I will try to find a stable driver, If I can manage. Thanks for posting back!

 

Welcome mate

 

If I leave my battery almost drain (10 minutes before power sleep) I then plug in the two chargers (I charge the laptop before it goes to sleep) and I see this notification:



When I instantly reboot, BIOS is displaying this:



While these last, my laptop isn't charging.. After 10-12 minutes (or so) charging begins and all messages stop appearing either in BIOS or in Notifications. This started happening a week ago..

Battery Bar is saying that my Battery is worn out at 8.5%. 25 days ago it was on a 2.5% wearing-out..


I only have my area51m for 25 days.. When I first got it Battery Bar stated there was an 2.5% wearing out, but the battery was up and running with no actual errors. Do you think it's a hardware issue? Should I request for DOA replacement from Dell? I have 3 days left.

 

Performance gains going from RTX2080 (2944 CUDA CORES) > RTX2080S (3072 CUDA CORES) are hard to justify by the price.

 

Mine works, I can't remember if I installed anything different or if it just worked.

 

lol obviously not going to a Super... I said what I did as a proxy for hope that Dell do good by their promise and release 2080 Supers that fit our R1 and hopefully 3080s that still fit (because if the 2080 Super fits the R2 and R1, the 3080 would necessarily have to fit it too ... if all goes well and they don’t change things more on the R3)

Supers are a gimmick!!! Nvidia's fake mid-cycle “refresh”.

 

Meh, it's probably the Windows Switch knockoff thing..... They rushed it because of how well the Switch has been selling with everyone stuck at home..... you watch Dell will start s DOWNLOAD store to sell games and such for it..... I can almost feel the cringe from here.

 

why is dell/alienware always late to the party?

 

Seems normal that the battery would wait to cool down before charging. That is a smart method to maintain longer life.

 

That's barely anything, one could achieve those gains by an overclock. So this upgrade isn't really worth it unless someone doesn't own an Area-51m.

 

I want this reveal to be an Area 51m r2 but...don’t think it’s adding up to that.

 

That's the procedure I used. BIOS 1.7.3 started the throttling shenanigans. So I downgraded and stopped the automatic bios and other updates Dell/Alienware was pushing to our notebooks.

 

Will be available the AMD ryzen motherboard for Area51m?