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

What's the highest OC on the 2080 has anyone reached on here?

 

before they could note the overclock values, laptop went up in smoke

 

I begin to believe that there will be no RAM upgrade beyond 2400mhz. should I wait or buy directly HyperX 2666 cas15?

 

I agree, there is a big difference, around 15% better for 303150.

 

Havent checked in for a while. Apparently almost 1K posts since I last got on when 1.5.4 released.

What is new since then? Any (un)exciting new updates I have missed out on? (I think my last post was around when Frank Azor left AW)

My machine purchased since March/April is still running strong.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

All should be able to reach Nvidia’s "clock-block v3" (2100Mhz). Nvidia killed it totally with Turing Turd mobile.

 

Good idea. I will do this the next time it happens. If I were to guess, I'd say it's the undervolt since I don't OC, but then again it's very hard to reproduce. Been a good bunch of months since it happened last time.

EDIT: By chance it actually happened again today when I was at work. What do I look for in the event viewer?

 

How much “undervolt” are you applying?

 

Any error/warning events before the crash. See their details, app IDs etc. That's everything you need to know why it crashed. And if you find nothing, then that could be related to a failing motherboard due to a malfunctioning/non-original psu.

Edit: To check whether your undervolt is stable or not, play nfs payback for a good half hour at max settings. It'll crash the system if the undervolt is unstable even if it survived cinebench.

 

Hey guys, for the past few days, I've been experiencing a slight freeze (1 sec) whenever I'm plugging in my USB headphone (HyperX Cloud 2) to the USB port. It was not the case earlier I am sure, started after the most recent windows update. Have any if you experienced this behavior with your systems? Any ideas on how to troubleshoot it?

By the way, hwininfo tells me my system hasn't seen a reboot for 60 hours straight, during this time, I've downloaded/uploaded 250-300GB worth of torrents, played countless hours of CSGO, Quake Champions. Doom and Witcher 3, watched movies on my protector and the max temps I've reached is 85C on the CPU @ 4.8Ghz on all cores and 73C on the GPU max. I'm very happy with this as the system has been rock solid and no hiccups whatsoever. I'll post the screenshot when I get home tonight.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Have you disabled "fast startup" in the advanced power options?

 

Hi guys!
I have an issue with my Alienware
When i turn it on, fan begin to run just 2sec and after that they shutdown and there is absolutly no signal on the screen. Keyboard and Alienware icon show raimbow infinity style.... After removing battery and clear cmos, nothing seem different. There is just an alternance of 2 red and 4 blue Alienware icon seem to be an RAM issue.
But how it's possible ? I didn't change my original 8go RAM... Can it be an more serious issue?
It's a first Alienware 51m batch, should i Ask for a total replacement ?
Thx a lot

 

Latest Update:
Well, it is as I feared; it seems that my GPU has died on the Replacement Area 51m they sent me. So, I am stuck with this thing until I get home in a couple of months. At least I can still work on it. Dell said they could not make another exception and send me a GPU to replace it myself again. So, that is 3 different failures in a total of 2 different laptops so far (2 GPUs and 1 dead Mobo). At this point, when I send it in when I get home, I think I will purchase another year of warranty. I'm kind of paranoid at this point.

That being the case.... Does anyone know if I can enable the UHD 630? I know it is crap, but it might allow me to play a few things better than Microsoft Basic Display Adapter heh. The BIOS is rather locked down, and I see no option of enabling the 630 this thing has. Any ideas?

 

The UHD630 only outputs to the Thunderbolt 3 port.

 

Looks like you never replaced the factory thermal pad on top of those (does yours even have a heat sink on the rear side? Just wondering).

If every owner whose machine is working fine would also show up and report here, these failure posts would get buried like a few needles in a hay stack. I wouldn't go this far and give such big and bold statements without carrying complete facts and statistics in my hand.

 

This is the exact thing which happened to my system. Its either a GPU failure or a dead motherboard, more likely the GPU. I'm afraid it's time to call Dell brother, they'll replace your system now.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Typically speaking the GPU issues I have seen are 2 red and 7 blue.
What he said is correct that is a RAM error.
I suggest reseating the RAM and see if that helps or in the least bit see if the blink code changes.

 

How Can i reseating the RAM ? Because I have not other RAM to put inside, and i don't want to take the risk to burn a New one if the motherboard have an eletric failure

 

It should be enough to take the rams out and insert them back. Maybe clean the pins with a small cloth with alcohol.

 

I did it (except alcohol cleaning), i changed the ddr4 channel, started with on1 RAM of 4go. Nothing différent, rainbow style on keyboard and logo, for the common, 2 red 3 blue alternance sometimes...

 

It's stuck at POST. Try this. Take out the battery (pull the cable from motherboard). Then pull out the cmos battery plug from the motherboard (that 2 pin connector near nvme slot 2). Then let it sit for 5 minutes while holding the power button (this will drain all current within motherboard circuitry). Then put them both back on and try again. This could also be caused by an aftermarket hdd that's failing (although the code would be different and sometimes that doesn't bother POST but at times it does), or something as petty as a cable not plugged in properly (either DGFF pin connector or the screen cable). It depends upon when and how it started doing this. If you detail it out a little bit more (The whole scenario how it started), may be it'll be easier to identify the problem.

 

Hi,
In order to explain exactly how its begun:
- Last week i have turned on my pc on battery mode, i didn't manage to access windows, there was lots of bug like bluescreen or alienware bios scanning about memory ram potentially failure whithout succeess. But after that i start it on charger mode and it start whithout problem and i played during 3 hour at Anno whithout any crash.
- Yesterday i wanted to turn on my pc for the first time since the last week, and it didn't start at all, only raimbow style on keyboard & AW logo and fans during 2 sec before they crashed. Even if battery mode or charger mode.
BUT after few minute, i started it again, and miraculously the pc started well, during only 10min. After that, the screen litteraly freezing and i had to turn off it manually.
- After that thing, i have decided to pulled out the cmos battery plug from the motherboard with battery out. I waited for 1min30sec, but without holding the power button. I restarted the PC, but it didn't change nothing. The only change I can saw was the alternation of 2 red and 3 blue form the AW logo. I have decided to change Ram order, Ram configuration or just start with only one RAM Slot, and like i said, pc didn't start, only raimbow style on keyboard, and for the better case i saw the AW logo alternance.

I only changed the SSD inside the AW. I never opened it integraly.

 

Ok so now you can try taking both the battery and cmos cell out and disconnect the SSD that you just installed. After that, hold the power button for a minute or so and then let it sit for 5 minutes before putting things back together (without SSD). Then run the Dell Diagnostic Utility by pressing Fn key + power button simultaneously and keep holding the Fn key until your machine enters diagnostic utility. Once there, do a full scan and see if it comes up with some errors under PCIe or any other module. Once everything checks out and you don't see any errors anywhere, only then plug the SSD back in and start it again. It'd be better to test that SSD in some other known good computer before putting it in here (which SSD is that btw?)

 

Ok i will try it this evening, thank's for the tips. I hope that FN+power button will work. I have the first SSD AW with me, i will try with it. My new one is corsair nvme MP510 960go

 

Why hide the failure posts?

 

Guys, appreciate it if you all can direct your post on failed area-51m to this thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/area-51m-failure-thread.829939/

 

Guys, sorry to quote my own post but any tips on this? It is a very minor issue but it sure us bugging me out. I don't have any other issue with my system other than this and I would like to get to the bottom of it. Thanks

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Try a different USB hardware. If no freeze happens, this could either be Windows itself or a crappy driver that's handling those headphones. Sounds like a driver issue to me. Try pulling the data from system logs through windows event viewer while you plug in the headphones and see what errors/warnings you get. That is the best error diagnostic tool for most cases.

 

Sometimes the solution is easy to overlook. If you haven't already, go into Device Manager and access the Properties for every device (not just USB, but everything,) that has a Power Management tab. This includes things like the Intel Management Engine. Clear the boxes to allow Windows to turn them off to save power and to wake the device from sleep. Then reboot and see if the problem is gone.

What could be happening is Windows is putting USB ports (and other things) to sleep/powering them off to save energy and plugging in your device requires a moment or two to wake up the USB port/hub. Windows 10 has become overly aggressive at power management and it would come as no surprise to me if a recent update made it even more aggressive. They are inordinately focused on things other than maximizing performance... and something such as maximizing battery run time at the cost of performance is right up their alley.

 

Dell is now showing 2666MHz RAM for configurations of 16GB ..... 32GB and 64GB are still showing 2400MHz.

 

This was it. Thank you!

There was some "USB suspend" settings in Device Manager which I was not even aware of (Damn Windows 10), turned it off and its smooth as butter now. Why would anyone want to suspend the USB ports while on full power? Only Microsoft programmers must know this answer...
I've also changed the all power "management" settings through Windows Power Plan (another piece of crap) just to be sure.

Thanks brother. Your input is always appreciated and it's very assuring to see that you still lurk around the AW forums. Thanks again.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Right. They have replaced my GPU. The system now works but I’ve now finally got around to playing FFXIV on the system and I keep getting massive frame rate slow down on the HDMI output at 4k. From what I can tell the GPU isn’t going over 75c...

This is getting ridiculous!

Edit - downgrading the bios to 1.5 seems to have fixed the issue... what a crap show from Dell. How can they get away with releasing bios updates that gimp performance? Might as well have purchased a laptop for half the prize at the performance that 1.6 gives!

 

Well crap. Heh, thanks for the info. I guess it is Microsoft Basic Display Adapter for me. Hmmmm. I suppose 2 months of playing Dwarf Fortress during downtime isn't too terrible.

 

Yep, sadly Alienware hasn't had a mux for the internal display since the 17R4. It's a feature many of wish was still included

 

Question now is if 2400 systems can be upgraded to 2666MHz at least for 16GB configurations or if they use a newer revision of the mainboard with better signal quality and only units ordered since today will have the higher ram speed which this notebook should have had from the start...

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Did they replace the GPU at the depot or was it an on-site tech?
If it was an on-site tech; Do you happen to know if they replaced the two ribbon cables that connect to the GPU?

While its not ideal I agree, several of us have tested this in games with multiple people and the FPS drop is not as drastic as one might expect.
But with that said, I agree that this is a BS migration attempt and direct resoluion would be better.

He is not saying to hide them. What he is saying is that people usually post when they are unhappy or have failures and that there are larger numbers of people without issues and are happy that just have not posted because they are happy and have no need to.
He was illustrating that "IF" every one that was happening and did not have a failure had posted, that the results would be huge and the positive responses would far outweigh the negatives.
It is kind of like reviews for products or services on Google or Amazon. Typically speaking, people are more prone to write a review when they are mad compared to when they are happy. I deal with this all the time with PR mitigation.

 

On site. They didn’t replace the GPU cables. He said Dell didn’t give him any spare cables, so he had to use what was there already. Why do you ask?

FPS drop not as drastic as one might expect? With the hdmi output at 4k I was going from 53-60fps to 20-23fps... you call that not drastic?

 

Because those 2 ribbon cables can go bad even if you look at them sideways. Run Dell Diagnostic test by booting the machine from shutdown state while holding Fn key as you press the power button and keep holding the Fn key until you enter diagnostic utility. Once inside there, run the full test to see if you have any PCIe problems. If everything looks good then it should be fine. Btw, what parts were damaged on your previous GPU (if you were able to look at the old unit before handing it over to the onsite technician)?

P.S., 1.5.4 and above are all optional upgrades at this point in time. You should disable UEFI Firmware Capsule Updates option in your bios to prevent Windows Update from pushing bios updates with regular updates.

 

No I wasn’t able to inspect it. I didn’t ask to be honest. I doubt a visual test would tell me anything anyways. The card just failed. All working fine now after bios downgrade.

 

You should invest in thermal upgrades if you want to get longevity out of your machine. Those oven-like mosfets on the back of the DGFF GPU board need a top of the line thermal pad (1.5mm Fujipoly Extreme 17w/mk should be the way to go). Check out my upgrade guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-for-alienware-area-51m-9900k-rtx2080.829543/

 

Well I have 4 years on-site warranty with accidental damage. If it goes wrong I’ll just get the parts replaced. And I’m guessing in 4 years it will be time to upgrade anyways.

 

That is drastic...
Sounds like I need to retest.
What game / test did it drop from 50 to 20 fps?
What other settings?

 

The game is FFXIV. Max settings at 4k resolution and full screen with the HDMI output. Not a test just playing the game normally.

Latest Nvidia drivers and laptop up to date using the Alienware update tool. I was getting between 22-26fps after about a minute of playing. If I alt tabbed out and went back into the game it would go back up to 60 and then a few moments later go back down to mid 20’s.

After 1.5 downgrade I’m getting between 52-60. Never lower than 50fps.

Edit - there is a FFXIV shadowbringer benchmark tool might be worth seeing if you could use that for your test?

 

Howdy,

I have read most of this forum, and a big thank you to all the posters. I think I have a pretty good idea of the risk/rewards of ownership.

After 7 years of service, my Desktop has started its death spiral, and its time for a replacement. I have $800 worth of Dell credits, and figure an area 51 would be a good place to use it. It overkill for me, but ...I want one! Plus I will be rearranging my office a lot over the next year or so, so portable seems prudent. I find the future upgrade path intriguing. I have some experience inside a PC (I have been building my desktops every 5-7 years since the early 90s...my first build used...POPDOS!) however I suspect you all have forgotten more then I know about recent PC tech...

My plan is to order a base unit, (I also own a graphics accelerator if I need more GPU power...) and I am fine turning down the graphics option on those rare occasions when I will be mobile. Frankly, the 51M will rarely leave my desk, maybe once or twice a year. I'm fine waiting to see what price replacement cards finally settle too, on the off chance I want to go down that road in the future.

I figure I can add my own memory and SSD cheaper,

So, the one area I am considering upgrading is the display. So my questions are:

Is the G-sync variant worth the upgrade over the non G-sync 144Hz panel?

Any advice on how long I should purchase the warranty for (besides the obvious "as long as you can afford too")? My experience has always been no failures the first year...chances of problems down the road are slim. BUT this laptop makes a man....a tad nervous.

I see two posts mention 2060 issues anecdotally but nothing from a actual owner...Any thoughts on failure rates for the base card?

Any thoughts on the best RAM to use?

Here is the configuration : Dark side of the moon, I7-9700, 2060, 1TB (+8GB SSHD) Hybrid Drive 16 GB Ram and then the 144Hz display, with or without G-Sync...

Any advice appreciated! I think I have until the first week of October to use the credits.

 

Great choices, I'd go with 9700K for future overclocking if ever needed but otherwise a solid choice. 144Hz for sure, go with g-sync if you will game on the internal display. External AMP will render only to the external display from what I've seen with my Radeon VII in my Area-51m. My RTX 2080 always is on for internal display. So getting a 2060 and using a faster card to play on the internal screen might not be a possibility. If this is an issue then I'd say go for 2070 at least.

 

Thank you!. The 9700K is only $100 more, certainly not a budget issue.

My experience with the the accelerator on my sons M15 is also that it will only drive an external display, but I am fine gaming with the 2060 on the internal screen...it will be rare, and probably not cutting edge stuff.

So the thought is...the 144hz screen is not wasted on the 2060?

 

i thought the AMP works with internal display too? Have u tried with other GPUs?

 

Not really, the 2060 will push games beyond the 100fps mark for most titles for now, the bottleneck in 1080p 144Hz gaming is the processor actually. For your use case, I would go with the 9700K and a 2070 so you'll get the beefier heatsink with the system and it'll me more future proof than a 2060. I personally do not like the option of my side vent not working properly, this machine needs as much air flow as it can get. I would get the 2070 just for the heat sink option if I were you.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

. Thank you....your posts have particularly helpful and a big reason why I'm buying direct from Dell. I'm glad your new LT is working out!

I'm convinced, I'm adding the 9700k. The 2070 upgrade is a big cost increase. I was thinking the money is better spent on the warranty. Budget is a bit of a concern...kid 2 joining kid 1 in college in 3 weeks! I do have some time to wait for a sale....