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

Thanks for pushing this. I'm sure @Biker Gremling had a video on here if it helps, also once @B0B review goes up that'll help prove its an issue in comparison to other similar specced laptops. That bad publicity on a popular YT channel might help with pushing them to fix it.

 

It says documentation was last updated Jan 5, 2020. Looks like 2933MHz memory only now up to 32GB. But the big question now is does this apply to pre-existing models?

https://www.dell.com/support/manual...7064b8-2eb4-49ec-88a8-43b102e42417&lang=en-us

 

If Dell don't fix the Gpu temp trip point gimping in bios this means you are locked out screwed from using faster sticks if you prefer the old working firmware. Aka the choice between Pest and Cholera.

And it seems Dell went the same way as MSI Jokebooks. The motherboard can't handle faster sticks if all 4 slots is filled up... Everything is up to the MB quality.

 

That is the type of behavior that we have experienced in our past. I really hope they fix it but from past experiences I am not confident they will with the original temp or power delivery limits. That sucks to read. EBay will be flooded.

 

Fffffaaaacccckkkk... of course this is what will happen. They’ll enable XMP in BIOS with a big hot pile of throttling still there since BIOS 1.5.4.

Sad!

 

That all being said I think the majority of A51M R1 owners will be happy enough with the systems at least on 2070 level. 2666+ memory is fine, but its not necessary and only buys at max 5% frames. That being said, they ought to have simply replaced motherboards with revised boards that fail when they fail instead of a proactive gimping measure.

 

I think the majority of people purchased a laptop that was marketed as "Upgrade-able" will be severely disappointed in the fact that its not even worth upgrading due to the downgrading they have done through the software. Again they pulled the sleight of hand on the new generation of customers.

In the end if you are happy thats all that really matters, for that kind of money I just couldn't be. My opinion is not gold I am just grumpy with all these vendors at their price point.

 

Interestingly (almost certainly incorrect) in a chat session they told me the current motherboards support the 2933 memory, and the motherboard is the same rev....

 

As far as I remember all the original documents and promotional ads showed 2666mhz, never any more than that. I suspect somethings in the pipeline or someone has messed up somewhere and this documentation was meant for R2.

 

I jumped on a chat myself and was told it’s likely coming in a yet unreleased BIOS... LOL.

I also think maybe this was an R2 screw up lol!

 

Umars checking now according to Twitter. Apparently he's been told the latest BIOS from 3rd of December would support up to 3200mhz but its not clear in the notes. Hopefully, we can get a definitive answer in the coming days.

 

That’s “3200 MHz” for you too! It’s running at 2993 MHz from Dell.com... likely a hardware limitation again!

 

@B0B has put up his smack down review of the A51m, Evoc P775 and GT76. It shows the A51m GPU thermal limit in all its glory.

 

Link please!

 

It is upgrade-able if you bought lower end components and want to upgrade with what Dell supported in its R1 at least up through the 2070 with little to no issues beyond this dopey 2666 memory running at 2400. Don't get me wrong: the BIOS thing is hinderance, no question. There are happy 9900K+2080 owners out there, some post here but it requires doubling up on tuning and maintain expectations. I mean, its not likes its a totally non-usable system.... that being said, I think people expecting a big breakthrough on the R2 are probably setting themselves up for some disappointment... just having 64 GB of potential memory SATA and 2 M.2 slots, and upgradeable graphics (even gimped somewhat) - its more than most laptops offer from an upgrade standpoint. What's a shame is that the production problems were handled badly, otherwise its still a pretty good system compared to most of what's out there.

 

Thank you!

 

Probably so - seems really weird they would sell both side by side though... I'd be curious almost to buy some memory and try it to see how it goes

 

Is there anyway to change the power button lighting?
There's a #4 for it, but no way to change it. Also selecting All Zones doesn't change it.

 

Funny - I did ask what BIOS mattered and they said it wasn't dependent .... :shrug

Unless I am mistaken you click on the "4" or the "2" and then change that specific color with the palette on the left?

 

There is a way, the ON color can be changed as well as the charging color (amber from factory)... click around in there and you’ll find it... I can look in a bit once I’m at my system.

 

Honestly I wouldn't even mind limiting my GPU to 74C with the "new" BIOS revisions. Problem is, AWCC doesn't even go that low. Before I rolled back to 1.5.0 I was getting the 500MHz throttling problem on my 2080 even with the temp limit set to 75C.

 

that might be true from what i see in this video thats the latest bios from December 3

 

There are definitely a few on here that upgraded to 1.8.1 I think it was, but no one saw the speed increase/XMP support for memory.

 

Just curious - was this just in casual gaming, or gaming with a graphically intensive game, or bench-marking it was kicking in? I was under the impressions folks were tuning with undervolting, re-pastes, etc. to get the temps down enough to avoid the throttle in some cases.... maybe they are all just rolling back to 1.5.0?

I just checked - mine shows 2333 - but the actual speed according to HWInfo is 1196.8, though the main screen in HWInfo lists the memory as 1333.3 DDR4-2666. I am on the 1.8.1 Bios currently.

 

I am pretty sure that if there were some magical configuration with BIOS 1.8.1 that raised RAM timings and allowed faster RAM speeds, Bob would have found it during his testing for the smack down video.

I doubt that going from 2444 to 2666 is going to in any way alleviate the hard throttle we have all seen with 1.8.1

I’m unfortunately becoming all to familiar now with Dell’s methods of operation.

I suspect FUD and or new / different hardware in those higher RAM speed configurations.




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Maybe the memory speed has been increased?

Yeah 2400mhz to 2666mhz might not make much difference but surely 2400mhz to 2993/3200mhz would make a difference if what Dell or Umar say is correct?

 

I hope this memory speed upgrade is for all Area-51m R1 units

 

If BIOS 1.8.1 still hasn't added the XMP option, did you guys try to set it via Intel XTU or AW's software instead to see if XMP functionality has been implemented that way?

 

Just gave this a shot, XMP can't be applied through XTU, and AWCC doesn't show any memory overclocking options, just CPU and GPU.

 

If you have all 4 slots occupied, try with only two sticks.

 

You caught me right in the middle of reinstalling AWCC. Still doesn't show any memory overclocking after a complete reinstall unfortunately.

Uninstalled all the AWCC/OC stuff, reinstalled XTU, dropped down to two sticks, and it still can't apply.

I've never had any luck with XTU in the past, so if anyone else wants to give this a shot it may be worthwhile. But right now, I can't get it to work with XTU.

 

Check for XMP BIOS Option with two sticks installed. A51M Memory guidelines say:

• 16 GB XMP DDR4 at 2933 MHz (2 x 8 GB)
• 32 GB XMP DDR4 at 2933 MHz (2 x 16 GB)

Maybe also try the other two slots...

 

You guys know way more than me on this topic but could the XMP stuff be hidden just like our 2080's thermal limit? As in it 'just' works at 2666mhz, without the need to mess with settings?

 

Thoroughly checked the BIOS last night, I wasn't able to find anything regarding XMP in there. As far as the other slots, this thing won't even POST if the RAM isn't in DIMM 1 (According to the motherboard - CPU-Z says this is DIMM 2). I can get any combination after that, but DIMM 1 needs to be populated.

Hopefully Umar actually gets an update on this instead of leaving everyone hanging without a definite answer as they tend to do.

 

Yeah they definitely need to clarify this and I'd imagine if this was part of the 1.8.1 BIOS they'd have been raving about it since its something they seem to get asked regularly on social media.

 

Unfortunately not. Everything I use to check on the RAM is reporting that it's running at 2400MHz, despite being capable of 2666MHz. Someone mentioned the video that went up back in December showing a 51m running at 2666MHz, and that was shown in the BIOS as soon as the system booted. Mine consistently shows 2400 here. Not sure if XTU is the right path for this?

 

Try to use a newer AW OC Control App (maybe from another model)...

Latest I can see is still 1.2.50.1227

 

That's what I installed, from the Dell website as opposed to the Microsoft Store. I'll see if I can try downloading it for the Aurora R9 or something, and if that makes a difference....

 

I tried it on 1.5.0 the other day through XTU just messing around and it of course failed, if no one else does it first and we don't get any new info soon I may flash to 1.8.1 and give it a try … I am just not looking forward to having to undervolt the GPU to 900v and 1875mhz just to avoid the throttle.
I have mine setup and working pretty good right now on 1.5.0 and +100 on the GPU hitting 1995mhz and staying around 76c on the GPU in games like Control with full RTX enabled and on High / I am on the 180w VBIOS.

 

If the likes of CPU-Z is showing it as 2400mhz, then I doubt anything has changed. An upgrade/change of this significance would be somewhere obvious (BIOS/AWCC) and for me its something they'd have been raving about, the fact that they had enabled the XMP ability up to 2933/3200mhz depending which source you refer to. Here's hoping.

 

There is a workaround to increase the thermal limit, isn't there? I thought there were people using an ASUS utility to increase the temperature limit on the GPU. At the very least, AWCC still allows you to increase the throttle limit to 87 degrees (Or is this not working as intended?)

 

It sort of works, you can raise the limit in either application mentioned, however, the minute the GPU temp reaches 79c (regardless of the temp you set) you get an aggressive throttle down to around 30 FPS, with 300-700mhz clock speeds and until the GPU temp hits 50c. Then it slowly builds back up again and the cycle continues. Whereas on BIOS 1.5.0, you have the NVidia 87c limit and your GPU has more thermal headroom and doesn't aggressively throttle at 79c. Hope that makes sense.

 

Which is why I am leaning towards an attitude of "so what ? " if new BIOS 1.8.1 allows faster Ram speeds, thermal throttle will negate any benefits.

 

Your explanation at least makes sense, but Dell's logic behind it is a different story....
I'm trying it out for myself, but I can't get my GPU up to 79 (hit 77 before I ran into "power throttling", unless they're using that as opposed to thermal throttling?). Trying to install something a little more graphically intensive to see if I can't run into it myself.

 

What kind of clocks are you running? Are you overclocking using the voltage curve, or just adding a static value? I've been using MSI Afterburner with a mild overclock and undervolt. Get's me beyond stock boost clocks while reducing temperatures compared to stock boost clocks.

 

Can someone (with 2666MHz RAM or more) test the BIOS 1.8.1 and check the XMP support, please? (BIOS,XTU,AWCC,etc)

 

Yip, definitely a catch-22 situation. @MogRules is working with Dell on the thermal throttling to see if anything can be done. That coupled with the likes of the latest smackdown review by @B0B on YT that shows the thermal throttling to a wide audience will hopefully get them moving on that front.... I'm not overly optimistic though.

I'll likely move to 1.5.0 once I get a decent monitor that has G-Sync, that way the loss of G-Sync on the laptop panel won't be a massive loss. Don't get me wrong despite my moans and gripes I still love the laptop and although I experience the throttling, I'm not a major FPS geek and it barely bothers me when it drops. It would just be good to have it as it was designed and advertised etc.

If you are on the 180w vBIOS its quite easy to hit the power limit/throttling. A more graphically intensive game should have you hitting 79c no problem, or even leave the fans on balanced and load up the same game, I'd imagine that will give you the additional 2c needed to witness the GPU thermal limit and aggressive throttling.

If you read the last few pages you'll see @gr33n2 has just done this with no success.

 

I tried both and found that for me with my limited experience ( 2 laptops about 2 years messing with Afterburner ) that I got better more stable results on Area51m just OC the card +100 to +130, when I tried recreating that as a curve my performance dropped and temps went up. I found it frustrating trying to get the GPU to utilize but not exceed the 180W limit using a Curve, for what ever reason the utilization and temps are better managed with just a straight OC than with a curve.

With my current setup +100 in AB it peaks at 1995 and will sit there in benchmarks such as Superposition on extreme with acceptable temps it will hit 81c but comes back down and generally sits around 76c or so.

In other benchmarks like Valley or Heaven they don't seem to stress it as much so while it will hit 1995 it will be in the 1885 range most of the time.

In games I see similar 1885 - 1995 and of course below as some scenes are pushing less pixels I suppose.

I admit it could simply be my inexperience with fine tuning Afterburner.

 

Just to make sure. We are talking about AW OC App 1.2.50.1227 and not AW Command Center 5.2.29.0.