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

i had the mothership. loud as heeeeeeeeck...seriously sounds like a hairdryer. also the temps aren't that great on that thing. 9980hk @4.4ghz playing modern warfare 2019 reaching almost 80 degrees c while my 9900k in my a51m ends up at around 65deg.



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That it's an old response right? Or it's since bios 1.8.1 ? They said the new bios like it was 1.5.4.

Since two weeks ago they're given me different answers from that

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Tested 1.5.4 as recommended by Alienware Support. Just awfull.

Loaded 1.5.0 (of course G-Sync was gone) and did some comparison testing.

At max OC and 200W, my GPU stabilizes at 84°C with max fans (82°C with cooling pad).

At an undervolt for ~180W, my GPU stabilizes at 80°C with max fans (78°C with cooling pad).

So the 77°C limit at AWCC is still not ideal, but guess the performance hit is not that bad. Still, wouldn't mind running the laptop slightly warmer.

Temperature limit behavior is similar for both 1.7.3 and 1.8.1, kinda bummed I didn't realized about the 78°C temp limit slider earlier .

Back at 1.8.1 and 180W because of G-Sync and because Windows just keeps reinstalling 1.7.3 everytime I reboot with an older BIOS.

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Has anyone seen or heard ACTUAL confirmation about an Area 51m R2? Just got my 51m a couple months ago now and I'm not sure I'll jump on the new one. Thermals are acceptable for a laptop this powerful in my opinion, and judging from what guy above said about the ROG mothership the 51m is really the only option for something this powerful - aside from the potato looking clevo laptops. Even if the R2 came out next year I'd still wait another 8-12 months for bugs to get worked out given the track record of issues that occurred when the 51m was released. I think I'll be content for a while.

 

75c on Silent mode and 87c otherwise

 

Well, at least it's a cool potato...

Spoiler

 

I tried both bios as well It seems like 1.5.0 gives me higher fps in games then the newer bios, if you want the bios to stick, after you downgrade go to the bios settings, go to security and disable UEFI Firmware Capsule Updates

 

ShaggySVK is a pro bencher who was hired and given an A51M with a test BIOS and XMP support to retaliate after AW´s PR disaster Notebookcheck article.

Spoiler

I wish Clevo would support me like that...

 

Nothing like setting false expectations for customers. Shameful business model.

" You can look, but you can't touch."

It sucked hearing that when I was a little kid, but it sucks even more as an adult.

 

Thanks for confirming this @B0B

 

Regarding #Shameful business model#.

Have you seen the new censorship on reddit Alienware sub forum? This is the final solution when they can't handle the huge increase in posts with thermal problems. Still a very bad idea rely on censorship to stop bad publicity for products that don't stand up in any forum. God thanks we have NBR.

Yeah. What did you expect? For me as expected.

Edit. New AW OC Controls App out. Z390 MB support the KS processor. Area-51 is left out.

 

It is even more sad that the person that paid a lot of money for that "high-end" turdbook doesn't know it is a soldered piece of crap that cannot have the CPU swapped out. Hopefully, that is an ignorant person with lots of money and not someone that went into debt buying a pile of garbage they thought would be nice out of ignorance. We can have some sympathy for the latter due to the financial impact of their mistake.

Sometimes I feel like Uncle Martin in a world filled with Cliffords.

Yes, same here. Very predictable and true to form. They're not going to do the right thing when it comes to fixing their messes. They never do. Neither do most of their competitors. If it's not gimped, then it's got thermal management problems, or both of those problems in addition to having one of those extra nice butterfly keyboards as a special bonus. This is what happens when too many people value form over function. You get form up the ying-yang and very little function. When I can't have both, function trumps form every time. No contest.

 

Wow, spin that in your favor any more? censorship lol, give me a break.

We were sick and tired of people not reading the FAQ and people are tired of seeing "How are my temp" posts 10 times a day. You guys would be pissed as well if every third post in here was "Hey guys, how are my temps" with the first top comment being a thread on temps. Any post that has a legitimate thermal issue is manually approved, not that I expect you to believe that, keep pretending that we cover it all up. Any post that is automoderated is messaged to me and 99% of the time manually approved right after.

 

Yes, that much is true. It gets old seeing wave after wave of those "how are my temps" threads anywhere. I mean, if they really have to ask if the temps are OK, they already know their temps suck. Most people don't look for information to enrich their understanding of things. They just want to rush in with an OMG-911-all-hands-on-deck crisis in hopes that some knight in shining armor can wave a magic wand and make all of their problems instantly disappear. They need a new thread for that because they are really important and everyone needs to stop and help fix their mistake. Right now. If they post questions in an existing thread their crisis might not get attention fast enough.

I certainly don't like to see anyone screwed like that, but there is no excuse for anyone having a surprised look on their face if they were to have exercised even a little bit of due diligence. It's unfortunate that more people don't go looking for that kind of critical intelligence before they waste their money buying broken garbage that is difficult or impossible to fix due to shoddy engineering.

 

There is all sorts of people on the web. As you say... Thermal posts now has to be reviewed by a moderator and 99% will be approved afterwards. Why not automate and add in link to the FAQ/sticky instead? I'm for free speech. What you or reddit do is wrong. And not the first time I'we seen it.

 

That's actually a good idea, I can add a link to the FAQ in the automod message. But I am still not letting every thermal post through if the answer has been posted 100 times and only requires a search to find the information. Free speech is one thing, being to lazy to search is another, especially when I see multiple posts a day asking the same question over and over. The number one complaint from users in /r/Alienware is seeing the same posts over and over again. No offense but you guys don't see it here, either because it's filtered out, or most likely because notebookreview attracts a different level of user. People here are not coming here to ask the same questions that they do on Reddit. by the time they get here they already have at least some information and generally have an idea what they are doing. I deal with people that, in some cases, couldn't tell you the difference between a CPU and a GPU. You guys get the enthusiasts, and we get the average user that does not care about any of that for the most part, they just want it to work.

 

Guys, since I have the pc, the hard drive stops (rotation and heads) a few minutes after being inactive (no matter how many time before HDD stop is set up in the power management). That's ok, not a problem .
But for weeks now, the SSHD sometimes starts to click when inactive. I mean it's as if the head wanted to park "ok it's time to go sleep now", but it do not work and it repeat the operation around every second. It's a noticeably audible sound.
If any activity occurs on the drive, the clicking sound totally disappear. Note that it never click at other times (right/read/idle but not trying to stop) and there is no performances issues.
Usually after a reboot, that behavior stop... for a moment. It generally happen after multpile PC sleep mode in/out.
Im running a 512ssd + 1tb SSHD and only my Google Drive storage is sitting on the SSHD.
Im good for a new technician intervention?

 

Have you tried changing your Windows power profile to see if the behavior changes? What profile are you using? Try setting the time to turn off the hard disk to "Never" and see if that helps.

 

Yes I tried 5 minutes and Never. And before that the stock value was around 15min.
It does not change the delay before stops, the drive continue to go asleep after a few minutes.
I also unchecked the power management setting in the optane software.
No changes :/

Note that write cache is enabled.

 

They're telling me a different answer...

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I think it depends who you speak with but I don't think we'll see any sort of GPU thermal increase on this revision.

Don't get me wrong I'm happy with mine for now, I'm just thinking about some of the newer games next year for example Cyberpunk, I can imagine thats going to require some power to run and we could see a lot of throttling. At which point us with the new Chi Mei panel will need to choose between G-Sync or throttling. If you run an external G-Sync screen you could be fine in terms of the rolling back option.

 

Unlock more power options (Google) and set AHCI link power to 'active' as below.

 

I really don't know if to continue talking to support since they just wrote me of with this issue.

 

Ok I just did it
I'll see in the coming days if clicks starts again
Does this change the disc stop rule? edit: no the HDD just went to sleep after minutes

 

2666MHz on A51M?

Huh? Anyone?

 

I see you started a special thread for this, so I will link it here to avoid having concurrent discussions about it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/2666mhz-on-area-51m.831256/

 

Finally pulled the trigger!
9900k
2080
Base ram and sshd

I will use the 1.5 bios, did not g-sync as I don’t game much. (Will use as a mobile workstation mostly.)

Plan to get a 970 evo 1tb for main drive.

Which ram is best among these three? I don’t know much about ram actually.....

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BGZEVHU/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1


Vengeance


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07N124XDS/ref=psdcmw_172500_t1_B01BGZEVHU


Samsung


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01NAL3TYY/ref=psdcmw_172500_t3_B01BGZEVHU


Kingston


Also I read somewhere that although the 51 only officially supports 64gb ram, you can up to 128 by installing 32 gb at a time in between reboots, anyone tried?

 

Huh i didn't, someone else did. But thanks anyway!

 

I mean this is sort of a non-issue if you run settings which allow higher frame rates. I selected this system for the 144 hz display with gsync, but you could easily run it with 144hz without full graphic settings ... gsync is icing on the cake... but not required.

 

So what actually is this issue with g-sync and throttling? Not sure I’ve heard of such a thing before.

 

Its a stupid m/b BIOS and vBIOS problem created by Dell due to a flaw with the heat on the 2080 cooling as I understand it. Still not clear _why_ this creates a conflict with gsync, but it is what it is.

 

If you own a newer A51m with a Chi Mei (eyesafe) panel, you can downgrade to BIOS 1.5.0, however, in doing so you will lose the G-Sync option. This is because the Chi Mei panel didn't exist when BIOS 1.5.0 was released and therefore doesn't have the configurations such as G-Sync for it.

So what I meant is that in future if games make the laptop run hotter then we'll need to choose whether we want to keep G-Sync and have throttling or lose G-Sync by downgrading to 1.5.0 to allow the GPU to stretch its legs more before it thermal throttles.

Hope this makes sense.

 

Why would you do this ...did u not know that CLEVO or "insert any other brand" is soooomuch better . helll even a base acer "or any other brand"runs 1000000x3 better benchmark scores, runs 500% cooler and comes with imax quality surround sound.

Plus Dell is the only company in history that promises things (like 5000hz mem) and never delivers.

I can prove it...my commodore 64 runs MUCH cooler and its 35 years old. Alienware has disgraced themselves by only delivering "the tied for 1st" fastest laptop ever...

Now excuse me. I have to tell xboxpro owners how much better the playstation 3 was...


Oh....good purchase. I love mine.

 

Not neccesarily. I guess it depends on what is an acceptable frame rate. We could lower the graphic settings a bit..

Anyone else played halo reach yet? I forgot how great it was. But more importantly running very cool with a 2070.

I think it's locked at 60 fps though

 

I have downgraded from 1.8.1 to 1.5.0 200w .
I lose G-sync on laptop screen but I play mostly with a external G Sync monitor so... I will stay like this waiting for a new BIOS for the moment

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Why should we have to lower our settings? Its a 2080 which should be able to handle the latest AAA games without throttling at 75c, much lower than the Nvidia specification?

I'm not slating the laptop I love it, its just facts? We will lose G-Sync by downgrading or face throttling at anything over 75c on the latest BIOS revisions?

I think thats probably the best setup and likely how I'll go next year.

 

Yeah. A timeflaps of bro Silverfeyn and bios 1.5.0

 

Probably hahaha, but I Will keep my Hope

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I agree, and did not mean to come off like a cak...But im also ok with AW errering on the side of caution with thermals. It would absolutly be better if they had a fix, but its pretty clear they are being (overly) cautious

Im pretty sure we will be able to game AAA titles with great frame rates. Its not like we are pushing 4k screens...( yes thats meant as a deprecating joke). Remember its me ..90% of my post are dry humor ..

 

Yeah, sorry about that. But, it's great that you alerted everyone to the thread @maoshen1234 started. Thank you.

 

Aaaah I see. That makes a lot of sense. Are the chi mei panels really any different otherwise? Mostly curious if the quality is any worse or not?

Might be smart to just stick with the non g-sync version for future buyers then. If you can get it to run at over 100 FPS then you likely wouldn’t miss g-sync too much. Not so sure I’d have faith in Dell fixing everything with a bios update.

 

Reach can do 60 or unlimited in the settings. I’m not impressed with the GPU saturation however. The 2070 does 100+FPS nowhere close to 99% gpu usage with fluctuations all over.

It looks sharp with all things considered and a definite improvement over the 360 version.

 

Guy's, we need to read those posts from Alienware not for what we want to hear, but for what they are not saying. They are carefully saying yadda, yadda, yadda, trying to give hope, or to just get you to go away for a while, but nowhere is there any kind of a commitment.

The Alienware Area-51M is what it is. It is a great system...with flaws. They all have flaws. You can either enjoy it for what it is, or be frustrated by what it is not...your choice.

The refresh next year will be what it will be...which is hopefully better.

 

We are not worthy of your wisdom and wise council Donald.

 

Crap, knew I should have gone commodore instead, so much cooler! Didn’t know about the imax audio, is it full 3d speakerless surround sound?

 

Remember when Dell’s engineers removed possibility to use 2x330w for AW18 ? One of the reason for this...
Alienware M18xR2 Fire Hazards


Area-51M


In short... Dell capped the balls on the successor branded AW18 (this model is known for blowed out power delivery). Many of the Alienwares have struggled with weak power delivery components. Not only the Area. Will we see the same this time as well ... See restrictions on max power draw or added too low temp limits on comimg models because of what they learned from R1? Or the move to AW18?

 

This is what happens when companies cut corners to save a few bucks. They don't charge any less for this, but they scramble to castrate things to help cut their losses that result from poor planning. Firmware is the cheapest and easiest path to gimping to offset the fallout resulting from engineering defects. Would have been better for everyone to do it right the first time, even if you had to pay an extra $20.00 to cover the extra $2.00 it would have cost them to build it right to begin with.

 

Yeah my apologies too, I've taken it out of context, sorry.

Hopefully the AAA of 2020 run as well as I hope they will, as mentioned we can use a G-Sync external and have BIOS 1.5.0 if we really want the best performance.

 

Found the unlock setting and just finished a session. Saw the same results, also on a 2070. Lot of room for MS to optimize.

Oddly enough! HWINFO is reading temps about 5 degrees cooler then afterburner.