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

When I didn't know this at first and after the machine rebooted. I noticed the driver was installed as you mentioned but I would install it again over the top just because...OCD...

 

Yeah really the only "downside" to these newer panels is lack of older bios support for gsync, but I really don't consider that a major downside to begin with. I have come to the realization that I care exactly 0% for letting my GPU go above 78C anyway, especially since getting a replacement for a DGFF 2080 would be like pulling teeth probably.

 

What i don't understand is that the 2080 super appears to be the the same exact card as the 2080. I think Dell could easely make the 2080 super fit our R1 in case we ever need a replacement.
If i am wrong then they should have replacement 2080 for years to come....but this won't happened.

 

But with needed - intended changes so none can upgrade...

 

Intentionnally make change so no one can upgrade....i believe that too.
Sometimes i believe i did not buy an alienware laptop....i mostly fell like i rented it for 1/2 year. After that....let's degrade the product with updates.

 

can the R2 screw location be relocated? you plan to drill your heat sink? Sadly though this can damage Vapor Chamber.

 

You know I would be tempted to sell my Area 51M at loss, even just to upgrade to an R2 if I trusted Dell not to do the same maneuver twice. People are buying them (for good reason if from a 2080 perspective), but who's to say many of the same shenanigans won't happen like not fully supporting new socket-compatible CPUs, or even following through on GPU upgrades? I can't see them going to the effort to engineer new cards when they are sitting on old stock, there is little incentive. The clear coat on the R2 is worth something, the marginally better CPU/GPU, and a card reader.... and a bit better keyboard. I need something more, like a 120 hz Gsync 1440p OLED to make me want to step up currently. I also need to see they have amended their ways, I bet some flim-flammery happens with the 3000-series.... like "hurrrr we can't do it on the R2".

 

Surely you mean R3 now?

I fully trust Dell to continue their maneuvers. It works, people are still buying this stuff, and the competition is fairly weak.

Not sure what aware consumers can do other than raising alarm over the issues and buying as few of these flawed products as possible.

 

The site lists an R2 so far.... people are presuming an R3 with 3000-series cards, but who knows for certain?

 

Your are welcome
Since you have updated to the latest bios (1.12), can i ask you if it is still possible whit this bios to undervolt the CPU using ThrottleStop or XTU?

 

Dell made so many changes that you most likly need to create a new custom heatsink. See, they tried everything in the book to push you over on the R2 refresh who have almost the same or barely better graphics performance. Everything to out more money from your wallet.

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/13638859/spy/10894529#

 

Well, even though Niels Bohr famously said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future!”, this is not actually rocket science and a fairly safe bet. RTX 2080 was announced at the end of Sep 2080, and 51M with RTX 2080 mobile was available in Jan 2019. Ampere release is actually starting a month early, so end of year for R3 would be a reasonable guess.

 

Yes you can still undervolt on 1.12. I am still using the same UV I have had since the start on the 9900k. Someone on Reddit claims that his 9700k wasn't able to UV anymore but I am assuming he was just doing it wrong, I have seen no one else reporting that the UV is locked out yet. Also it does not make sense that one CPU would have it locked out while the other wouldn't.

 

Thanks for the info.

Now i have ANOTHER issue. Today they cut down electricity in my area. Came back on 10 minutes ago. Laptop won't turn on anymore. NO LIGHTS NOTHING. I disconnected cables and hold power button for a minutes....nothing. Change for a different wall connector....nothing....Dead

Any idea anyone???

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Last few days i noticed battery getting very hot under load. Under the laptop it was almost to hot to touch. Then computer shutdown.

Anyway i am opning it up now to disconnect battery. Then cmos and ram disconnection if no success.


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Nothing works. Dead MBoard (tech support is saying) so they are sendind MB replacement and Dc in.

I asked for a replacement battery. They refused.

This laptop was good for about 5 months....this is the longest period without any failure in the past 4 years for any Alienware laptop that i have own.

I am so happy i took extended warranty (3 more years). I am pretty confident it is not the last time this thing breaks.

And by the way. I live in Quebec,Canada. Our hydro electricity is top of the line. NO OTHER DEVICE in my house broke after this electricity shut down. I am very disapointed.

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That is horrible luck. Out of about 6 AW laptops I have owned since 2010, only one has died after 3+ years, and it had loads of travel time and work time (AW13 R3). That is weird luck man.

Quebec's beautiful btw, I loved Quebec City and the villages around there. Not so fond of Montreal though in comparison.

 

Was it plugged into a surge protector? This is to much of a coincidence to think it had nothing to do with the power outage. Was it on when the power was cut?

Sounds like some really bad luck. I would grab a surge protector to plug this into if it wasn't already.

 

Hello,
It was connected but asleep.

It came back to life 30 min ago but it is defenitly broken. I got a message from support assist saying the laptop cannot run on 410w power supply but needs 510w.
Then it boot but it is not charging the battery.
Something is really broken. I disconnected only one cable then it stutdown and now i cannot reboot.
I do not use an expensive power bar. A cheap one.

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You mean the machine still somewhat works?
Try one of the adapters at time, turn it on and see if it charge (one psu should be enough for light usage - I expect it can charge if not under load). Test both adapters and try out both power inlet on the laptop. Remember run a restart after power up if you use Win fast startup.

 

I was only able to boot one time after i hit the power button at least 1000
times.
I am trying what you suggested. So far i am not able to boot.
For sure the MB ot DC in got broken. Eithet by a defective battery or power outage.
Very difficult go type on a phone now...lol.

Edit: Now spetember 1st laptop is up and running. Everything now seems normal. Same MB, it is detecting 510 watts power adapter and it is recharging the battery (this time). I am afraid to reboot or to reinstall bios.
Dell told me the MB or DC in is either backorer and cannot ship.
Today i opened it up. Remove LM on the CPU. But it is only toningt after pressing power button every 5 minutes all day, thati i finally decided to boot ( ran the diagnostic tool and got lots of errors) I got error code 135.
After a reboot everything is normal.

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New Driver update:

Realtek Audio Driver v6.0.8988.1

Realtek Audio Console Application v1.14.224.0

Note: Remember to unblock the files before you attempt to install them. See:
"Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

 

Yes, I use Throttlestop and no problem undervolting my cpu just like before

 

Hi,

has anyone tried to change the heatsink screws? I think the clamping force on my unit is poor At least on the cpu side, i tried putting LM and the temps on my cpu was way hotter than thermal paste but the gpu was like 15 deg cooler.

 

Anyone know with the new 3000-series cards - is there going to be an adapter of some kind for current PSU's?

 

Ok so i am replying to myself. I decided to update the bios and my laptop is up and running like nothing have ever happened
I just don't undersand what happened. The last week i updated to windows 2004, i updated realtek audio and Nvidia driver (using DDU to unsinstall). I had some weird issue with the battery (it is already 20% worn after 5 months, and it was overheating runnig a stress test on battery power) i decided to completely discharge the battery couple of times and recharge. Plus i had this power outage yesterday.
I feel that my problem is related to the battery but i am not sure.

Anyway thanks @Papusan for your help again.

 

I've seen pictures of a little splitter that takes 2 8pins and makes one 12pin.

I'm really concerned about the size of these things though. AGA will not fit them without some serious modification. Might just order my desktop parts and be done with it.

 

if battery is swollen, better to disconnect it

you need to apply lm on both heatsink and cpu his, problem with lm it needs a polished surface finish, I used coollaboratory ultra on cpu done a test it was actually worse than gelid extreme then I took out the sink only ti find out it left a black mark, I had a grinder to get it off.

LM really not good with copper

RTX 3080 on Area51m R1 (dell card) any hopes

 

Not sure when the mobile chips will come out but I bet for this generation there will be a huge difference between desktop and mobile chips. Were talking about 320W for a 3080 desktop... wow ... I'm curious to see what the max-q version will look like for these super thin "gaming" laptops But even for beasts like the area 51m, it's gonna be a serious challenge to get anywhere close to the desktop performance. I guess we will have to see.

Edit : of course not for the Area 51m r1, but I'm curious to see what a possible r3 would be like.

 

There will be a gap to desktop but it will be a significant improvement over RTX 2xxx mobile due to the 8nm process.

 

I think unless we see a cooling solution increase it's going to be a problem. If they go Ryzen for processors that might help some since the heatpipes are always shared.

Actually just saw the 3070 is 220w so we could see that become the mobile "3080" which would offer big gains.

 

Hi everyone.
I'll be back after a while to update you: yesterday I finally managed to open the laptop and work on it.
I found a lot of dust to clean in the fans and I proceeded to do the repaste CPU and GPU (which, however, as a layman, still seemed in good condition). So I closed it up and did some testing.
The CPU temperature doesn't seem to have changed much: maybe I gained 2-3 °C under heavy gaming conditions, but it didn't give me problems even before.
Where I gain a lot is on the GPU side: in standby conditions the temperature remains around 35 °C (against the previous 40-42 °C), while with heavy games the temperature never reached the limit of 78 °C, but however it remains around 2 °C below. Also, the temperature now drops much faster than before.
I sincerely hope that the notebook now holds up and remains in this excellent condition.
Really satisfied with the work and the advice received from you. Thanks so much.

 

I hope this will make alienware release a new AGA with the legend design, than i'm in.

 

It's way past overdue for a new one - this finally gives them the excuse they need!

 

That'd be great. Add enough space for a triple slot card and maybe an ethernet port on the back or something. And of course... ARR GEE BEE for the truest of gamers.

I needa try to offload this one in the meantime...!

 

nVIDIA Graphics Driver v451.67

 

They are going to have to do this.... no question, the 3000 cards are mammoth sized...

 

Thank you so much! Yes that fixed it, and it's running great.

 

Brilliant, glad thats all you needed! Enjoy it now.

 

The following video:

Can we put the SSD in our R1?

I thought Samsung Pro 1TB is faster than EVO?

Can we put the M2 or the second SSD like in the video in the R1?

Anyone know the ram speed in video?

 

Hey guys, anyone switched to R2 yet with the highest configuration? I am curious to know what kind of performance improvement one can expect (if significant enough).

 

Alienware Area-51m R2 Review by Spartan

 

Thanks. I will stick to my R1 for now I guess. Not worth upgrading.

 

That's right, it's a nice laptop but the "newness" factor just fades away very quickly because it is so similar with a small boost that you won't notice other than in synthetic benchmarks especially for someone like you who knows how to stay on the older BIOS and keep your performance levels like they should. I'd wait for next year's upgrade with a new 3090 GPU that you will feel the difference.

 

You mean 3090 will come for notebooks?

24 vram chips on the DGFF pcb. Where will they put the GPU die ? On own board?

 

I have not a crystal ball

 

How would you compare it against Clevo x170sm-g with the same specs?

 

Clevo X170SM-G has the best speakers in any laptop. 4 loud speakers + 2 subwoofers blow the Area-51m out of the water with its crappy speaker setup and tinny sound which is the exact same as the R1 by the way, they didn't improve a thing.

Cooling wise they are both good but both need CPU delidding and quality thermal paste and pads to not overheat and thermal throttle, that is a must on any high end CPU as you know off-course.

Keyboard, the Alienware wins. Screens are comparable so I'd say that's a tie. Customer service, driver support, warranty, Dell wins.

 

I am particularly interested in the keyboard and the MXM vs DGFF part. Clevo has been continuously supporting the MXM form factor for graphics cards so far and I tend to have a lot more trust in it than Dell at this point in terms of upgradability and the keyboard on clevo seems to be somewhat similar to the MSI steeleseries? The MSI GT75Vr Titan mechanical keyboard was my most favorite keyboard of all time! Not exactly sure as I haven't used the Clevo yet. Nobody has bought a x170sm-g around me so far.

 

Well the keyboard has improved a lot from the older P870X ad P7XX series. I didn't think you would leave the Alienware clan though

 

No brand loyalties here. I have been buying Alienware, MSI, Acer and Clevo in a mixed trend for quite some time depending upon what I want and what I like.

 

Clevo continue support MXM form factor for X170.