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

Yes I sent a few pictures to him on my discord. The thunderbolt controller is here (towards the thunderbolt port side of the motherboard, quite close to the keyboard and sound card cable. That's the CPU fan on the bottom btw). Part number could be a bit different because this picture is from my old motherboard and my new one is covered with a heat sink already now. However, the part tag UT4 should be the same:

 

Does anybody know about Dell UK store discount strategies? Now they have 14% off on laptops and PC, but I saw somewhere on forums, they change between 14 and 17%. Not sure which country.
I wanna get 51m with 9700k, 2080 and cheapest storage options, which I would upgrade later for cheaper. Should I get it now or wait for better deal? I have 14 hrs till it runs out.

 

So I did eventually get this thing to zip but nust barely. I'm concerned that I'll end up scratching the laptop with the backside of the zipper making contact on the corners. Also the stitching of this case is now exposed so while it may stretch to fit I'm concerned that it will come apart sooner rather than later.

Thanks again for the suggestion. I may take some pictures later to show what is going on. I'll probably just go back to using the 18.4 inch sleeve that I already have.

 

Here are some pictures:

Better quality uploads:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9wlsgEgXpoYfkb8VB_AriBEyqPcp55z/view?usp=drivesdk

Video here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ic7ajCIarFN1O34KIaVLm_1CfjERieC1/view?usp=drivesdk


As you can see, it's the perfect fit!

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

So guys, I finally received the screen and put it in fairly easily. Something to remember @Khenglish is pretty much always right! It doesn’t matter if the lcd is g sync or not it will work. I received a Innolux panel, I was praying for it as the auo one caused ‘inverse ghosting’ and has a worse contrast ratio. Of course it doesn’t have g-sync but that doesn’t matter at 144hz lol.

Another thing to remember is that LG displays are superior, if you need to change the screen do it through dell!

A guide is going to be put up so people know how to remove their screens without completely shattering them like I did

 

You sure you linked me the right size. Mine fits nowhere near like that one. I can just barely pull the zipper over the corners and it is stretched beyond belief. I seems as if your case is about another .5 to 1 inch "deeper"
OneDrive Link to Images

 

I'm sure this was the link I bought it from and shared with you:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079HYKPCW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4hrnDbN1GV7GZ?tag=tapainc-20

This bag fits even huge Asus replacement that my friend has and also fits in the AW 17R5 perfectly. There's is a "one finger" gap after I zip it up with my 51m...

I'm sorry if yours was slightly different model but I use mine regularly and it's worked flawlessly until now..

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

No need to apologize I appreciate the help. I'll play with this a bit tonight and see if I can figure out what is going on. When I zip it up there is literally no gap lol.

 

Well I called up Dell Support and apparently my laptop was meant to be delivered directly to the dell depot due to it being a defective unit, hence no warranty or support. The customer support guy seemed pissed that I got it working....

The system has been wiped from the servers. Basically the seller sold the laptop to me instead LOL (is this illegal in anyway!). I honestly don't care to be fair as I did only spend a total of £1,500 on it and if it has any problems I have my own personal technicians who can fix it up

Which is why I come to my last point, due to me not having a battery cable for the machine (can't flash bios without battery) and my BIOS version being 1.2.0 and my RTX 2080 vbios version being old too I was wondering if anyone could extract the bios in (.bin) or (.rom) format and dump it too me.... So I can flash both bios and vbios using a skypro programmer instead. I honestly can't believe that a single wire is not available to purchase. I might jerryrig my own if I can't find any on aliexpress!

 

Get in touch with Mad Dragon on AliExpress. They have almost all parts for this laptop. They will hook you up.

 

that’s exactly what I was going to do, you read my mind!

 

Ok folks I think im ready to buy from HID this afternoon. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Im going for the 9900k and 2080 spec. I'd like to have HID do the thermal upgrades but I've seen talk that it's a waste of money? Im a hardware guy by trade so getting inside of things doesn't bother me. I'd just rather not mess with repasting and pads if I don't absolutely have to...

 

Sounds like that seller got a new 51-M and sold his other one for a tidy sum tut tut !!

 

I don’t mind, £1.5k I’d take it without warranty, as what could go wrong? Ok maybe the gpu, I can get it fixed through @IllusiveMan, motherboard through @IllusiveMan basically everything through him

Not a bad deal for a technician, for a normal user it is

right now I’m looking to break some gpu benchmark records, if the vrms don’t fail

 

Yes this is illegal and this laptop then is still the property/asset of Dell. Even if you paid money for it, the laptop is now considered stolen and part of a fraud situation. Did you pay with cash?
Regarding the BIOS. Isn't it easier to just buy a battery?

 

I’ve seen this before. Depending on how bad Dell wants their money back I have seen them take action in a similar situation. It will also depend on the country the people are in as well.

 

Alright here are somethings I like and don't like about the new alienware:

Pros:

The silky smooth 144hz display panel - its the first time I'm witnessing it in a laptop and it looks DAMN impressive

Tobii eye tracking - I see a lot of people hating on this, personally I love the new screen dimming feature as it does save energy and its actually a really good eye tracker, I'm glad to say it's more than a gimmick.

Build quality, RGB locations - I can finally see myself using this laptop in public, it doesn't scream INTENSE GAMER when I'll be using it at uni, on top of that that ring rgb at the back of the laptop looks amazing. It doesn't weigh that much and I can gladly say that it can take a few accidental knocks here and there.

Fans - I've heard a lot of people say that's it's too loud or sounds like a hoover, you haven't heard a clevo p870tm or a gt83 then, they sound like jet engines in comparison. Moreover, the fan curvature is reasonable, on my device at least, since it does have liquid metal applied and I have spent 30 minutes lapping the heatsinks... The only thing I slightly hate is the 'kick in noise', my old clevo p650sg used to do this and it started driving me mad.

Cons:

Speakers - what year is it? 2019 why do the speakers sound bad, who knows? My GT83VR and my past p870km absolutely destroyed this laptop in comparison, having way more low end (bass) and more clarity on the high end, mids and surround is solid though if I must say. It seems that MSI will always remain unbeatable in this department, sigh.

Two power adapters - I'm sorry but why did dell not copy clevo or msi on this, use one port and have an extender, having two charging ports on a laptop can lead to more failure points, why dell why?

That's all

The dell employee said it's my choice, I can keep using it without warranty and have it potentially fail in the future or I can ask for a refund from the seller I bought it from. He didn't say anything about bringing it back asap to dell. Why would they care? They make millions from customers like us, one laptop won't harm them.

 

Speakers - This is because they didn't use a subwoofer. My M18x sounds much better thanks to the bass. Clevo P870DM sounds better thanks to bass, MSI GT73VR sounds best in terms of bass.

I honestly don't know what they were thinking with this decision.

Two power adapters - I am GLAD they did this. MSI & Clevo have those stupid adapters you have to carry around. This is much better as it's internal. Also, you can use one adapter if you don't need full GPU performance. CPU performs fine with 1 psu.

 

I guess for some it would be a personal morality issue knowing they bought something essentially stolen.

 

Well, one could say that thousands of times which would equal quite a loss. You are not the only situation like this, so they cannot just ignore these thousand of times.
There are teams that it's their job to mitigate the asset losses. Like @pathfindercod said, I too have seen them take action and request the product back.
In your case, if I were you, I would make sure they email you the information stating you could keep it. That way you have it in writing.
With that said, if they said you could keep it, then it is not listed as lost or stolen, you probably can buy a warranty for it.

 

Yeah it wasn't listed as lost or stolen lol, I think I overly exaggerated what the seller did, he is a authorized dell reseller and has the option to do this freely, he has many laptops in the same condition up for sale, plus he has 10k + seller feedback 100% positive, he wouldn't be selling illegal stuff if he wasn't allowed, otherwise he would have lost his a job a long time ago. Technically yes, I can buy a warranty for it.

Oh trust me I would have sent it back a long time ago if I knew in the slightest it was stolen, luckily this isn't the case.

 

Go read this thread, it has posts about those "upgrades". Long story short, just like @S.K said - don't pay for someone else's questionable work, do repaste yourself. You should also look at posts where Dell said that HID are not authorized reseller of Alienware and that they sell refurbished items. If you want to avoid those issues - you should buy directly from Dell.

 

@Saryon1 If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't get it anywhere BUT from HIDevolution. I've bought 4 laptops from them for the past 5 years that were all perfect and never had one issue. With the Alienware Area-51m, I couldn't wait till HIDevolution had the laptop in stock so I bought it locally and whilst I was able to repaste it myself with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, it's a pain in the butt. Also I have no idea about how to install those thermal pads and even if I did, I am person with 0 patience so I can't find myself doing it. Plus, you'd then get the Dell Warranty and HIDevolution's lifetime tech support who can also help you when you aren't getting satisfying answers from Dell's customer service or tech support.

 

Thanks @Ultra Male! I've been following your posts in this thread and you seem to have quite a bit of knowledge on the HID subject. I think this puts my mind at ease!

 

The advantage of buying through Dell direct is that you can wait for a decent coupon to come around, and also usually chat with a sales rep to get a few percent off on top of that as well. If you are worried about buyers remorse then it may be better to buy direct as well because Dell will issue a full refund while HID has a restocking fee unless DOA.

 

That's it when Dell or any other company has awfull/missing services... do everything yourself, don't trust your machine to them, especially when they throw an entire motherboard because of a failed MOSFET and controller on VDD RAM.
Are they just "copying" Apple service, those guys who have the tools and schematics but they don't use these to fix anything?. Louis Rossmann says this over and over, it could be a good text scenario for a stand up comedy lol...

Here are some offtop pictures of a small repair process...

Use some liquid nitrogen there for cooling VRMS!

Only 2 power adapters? That is a good decision, but they could do even better: use 8x90W adapters, really... imagine you dispatch and beginning plugging this in a wall somewhere not home, the next minute you see a bunch of guys with guns saying: drop the "boms" down you terrorist!.
Isn't this cool? They even could make a marketing video out of this.

I understand when you don't place a subwoofer in a thin 13 inch machine but this is a 17 inch one, really, is there literally no way to fit it inside somehow or what?
In same terms Dell engineers might just remove the rest of the speakers and the 3.5mm jacks also, why the hell you would need any sound? And yes, they will still ask 5000$ for it, totally worth it...

 

Did you just remove the IC without reflowing the board ? Can you teach me your magic ?! I'd like to be able to remove IC, VRM's, MOSFETS etc without reflowing. I saw that some people used ovens that people use to bake in them. But i won't trust an 1000 dollar mobo to that... buying reflowing machines is a pita

 

None is forced to use 2 adapers for the Clevo. Work with single 330 or the slightly bigger plug an play 780w psu. And you won’t get same power cap from the 330w psu. Capped at isn’t it 250w from 330w psu who easily can pull 400w from the wall?

 

What do you mean by reflow? Preheat with a proper preheater to around 130-150C saves you from motherboard not to bend or something else during the process, so it's easier to remove small bga's , qfn or whatever, same way with large bga's, like gpu/cpu. But not in oven, it tends to burn the PCB and all the components if you are not careful enough.
And yes, dry air and motherboard has to be ~99% dry.

It's not very professional to have more parallel power adapters. If exceeding 330W then design a 780W adapter or how many watts the machine uses.
This dual psu seems to me like a solution with "less effort" done, and asking high price... But it's just my opinion, maybe I am wrong after all...

 

Bro I fully agree but the reason it’s done is because 330w is the limit for each adapter in some countries when flying etc. If it could be upped to 500w that would be amazing!

 

The main problem... Big companies sell a lot of different configurations of machines. They will always go fo what will benefit themselves. If they buy in millions of one specific psu which can be used all over (many models) then why should they spend more money than necessary? Validation of specs + less amount machines sold will cost them too much. Everything is about lowering cost as much as possible. One size fits all is a disgusting idea.

 

Hey guys, Im looking to buy the Area 51 and was just n the site. Theyre offering 10% off the i9-9900 with the RTX 2080. So its $3723 down from $4149.

Now, I was planning on the i9-9900 with the RTX 2070 but that ends up being $3600. So for the extra $100+ I can get the 2080. Is it worth the upgrade to the 2080? Are there any benefits of staying with the 2070? (Especially any thermal issues with the 2080?)

 

Get the RTX 2080. It's a no brainer for a 100 bucks

 

Did you actually use a soldering iron alone without solder flux and hot air gun? That reworked area looks AWFUL and seems like you didn't give it an ultrasonic cleaning afterwards either. I'd say, take those apart again and solder them using a hot air gun (especially the chip below 7506). That will give you a lot neater and more durable joints. This could fall apart on it's own in the near future.

 

My point is about the adapter. On Clevo you have to use a 2 to 1 adapter. I prefer AW implementation on having it internal.

Yes, THIS is one of the reasons we are stuck with a 330w ac adapter. It has to do with airline limitations. It's also the reason 99Whr batteries are the highest capacity.

 

Those stick on heat sinks are really small. You must intend to use multiple sinks per location, yes? And they seem a little light duty for that thunderbolt chip.

 

Well, too bad that even airlines do limit you about a laptop PSU...

One MOSFET and the controller were badly burned, I did a picture in the middle of the process of how bad it was. I used hot air gun with a good soldering flux, and repaired the burned tracks, especially that darker place under the MOSFET is actually repaired with this green PCB mask varnish if this is what you mean by "reworked area looks AWFUL"


I cleaned it very well manually, I don't have a ultrasonic thing. And no, it can't fell apart, laptop works several weeks with no issues, using 2666mhz RAMs, intending to flash these with XMP profile settings as default ones.

 

They are exactly the same size as the mosfets and the TB chip. You can use one per chip as it covers it entirely. And, they are better than plain ambient air cooling (more metal with fins to dissipate heat is always better).

Good to know that. The pictures were ordered without labelling so it was difficult to guess what's what. How hot are they running now? I'd suggest using these tiny heat sinks on all of the power components and any other chip susceptible to getting heated up just to ensure more overall longevity.

 

http://www.surfacemountprocess.com/reflow-soldering-process.html

 

It's hard to measure real temps on each MOSFET and controller on the board especially when it's on top (under keyboard).

Never seen such tiny heatsinks, but anyway these are almost twice bigger than the SMDs.

I will try to measure it today with a laser thermometer, my new battery arrived so it will be a good moment to see the temps.
This part of the board gets very hot for some reason, maybe because the audio chip is under stress always, no sound is played at the output but speakers have a constant vibration of ~10Hz (and this is several watts), and I do not understand why it does not cut off power at the output speakers amp when no playback sound... driver or bad BIOS firmware or both?

 

Were you able to modify bios to allow 2666? If so, can you hook a brother up!

 

Actually windows reports as 2400 Mhz, hwinfo64 tells it is 2666 Mhz.
No mods in BIOS done.

 

Ohh okay. I assume it's actually running at 2400 then, as they haven't released 2666 support as of yet.

 

I find this odd to limit RAM to 2400.
I'll double check the timings.

 

Still haven’t release 2666 support?

I was expecting 3000+.

What a disappointment! It has been several months after launch.

 

Is there any news for 51m with 4k screen?

Thanks!

 

not yet, the reason being that dell has to source a panel which first of all has no brackets and a edge to edge lcd profile, it has to have the lcd connector on the right side instead of the left. Alienware did this on purpose I’m guessing for the users who have the tobii eye tracking feature

 

I bought Area 51m for 4k gaming and now I always go out with a portable 4k monitor in 17.3 inches.

If GT76 wasn’t that bad in gpu cooling, I might have switched to GT76 already.

Now I can only hope that Dell will eventually release a 4k model.

 

They have to, the rtx 2080 is overkill for 1080p 144hz and will stay that way for another 5 years or so. Especially when dell have fitted a full blown desktop rtx 2080 inside lol

 

17" 4k gaming makes no sense to me personally. The resolution is to high for such a small screen. A good 1440p or even maybe 3k lcd would be ok. External larger monitor would be great and would help the 2080 shine. I know not everyone has room for an external monitor which is why they may have gone notebook instead. I like the 1080p its great for my old eyes and i can run triple A titles maxed out with excellent rates.