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

Nice skin. I bought a brushed aluminum decal set from MightySkins and wasn't impressed (it barely covered anything), may have to look into other sources if ones this nice exist.

Actually meant to post a picture of my own but forgot multiple times. My battlestation:

 

This has been the hardest skin for me to apply, but it’s due to the enormous size of the adhesive panels on the lid, bottom, and palm rest. Also, matching the ends on the back vents was a challenge (it has bottom, top, and 2x sides stickers).

If you know how to and are very patient and cautious, it comes out great. I am a perfectionist and will take as long as it needs, so it took me 3-4 days to put them all on (taking care of baby and wife, so not on it 100% of the time).

I snipped off corners from the backing of large pieces to paste the corners on perfectly, and started peeling back the backing and adhering the rest of the sticker as I went. Whenever I went astray, I’d pull back gently and reapply. Any bubbles, I’d peel back gently and continue applying, millimeter by millimeter.

At the end of every panel, I used a hairdryer on low to smooth out bubbles or stick down a feisty corner. I’ve had skins like this that stretch or rip very easily, so be very careful with heat... especially when peeling to restick!!! This one will stretch or rip easily under stress or heat when applying, I can tell, so be very careful.

 

Nice!!!

And yeah, mighty skins barely cover anything. There’s these Chinese guys that always make skins for Alienware laptops that cover 99% of the surface of the laptop. My Area-51m even has the bottom covered!!!

They have brushed aluminum style FYI.

 

aesthetically I don't like it, but congratulations for the precision of the installation

 

That’s actually very nice looking, that must have taken a while to get it all in place properly you’ve got some god like patience friend.


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Who was it here that is using the Advancing Gene M.2 NVME Heatsink ?

Did you just use the Top or where you able to use the full enclosure?


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I'm sure it was @DeeX , for me the M.2 closest to the battery is too much of a squeeze even for a 3mm heatsink. I had to switch my M.2's over so the Dell OEM heatsink was next to the battery and the aftermarker heatsink on the other.

 

Do the M.2 heatsinks really help beyond heat for large read/write operations for apps like graphic utilities, etc?

 

To my understanding they do IF you do anything involving sustained heavy reads and writes, just like other components they have designed in heat tolerances and when those are approached the drives slow down until they cool down.


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Nice job.

Lunar Light Customers - Dont want stains? - GET A SKIN!! Solved!


Or the stickers way to protect your fragile Lunar White color
Sticker bombed Area 51M

 

Yeah kind of my point - unless you are running those kinds of applications, beyond just life of the drive, does it really do much? I mean, would you see any difference in the typical IOPS for say light application work and gaming? Just curious if anyone saw or bench-marked any difference here on the A51M.

 

The few videos I’ve watched have seen 1-5c but it’s very case air flow dependent obviously, but similar to a cooling pad when it works is my impression,

But even 1-5c less why not?


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Agreed - I might get one but not sure what to get - any suggestions?

 

The Advancing Gene top piece is about the slimmest I could find online ( most of these seem to be designed for desktop )

Of course if Dell ever has them in stock again those are thinner still.


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Yeah, given that it’s lunar light, I couldn’t go with a black carbon fiber skin because the white edges would bleed out everywhere and look absolutely hideous. I considered leaving the black parts bare, but to hell with it, I put it all on.

If my unit was dark side of the moon, it would still be bare.

Also, the pics don’t do it justice, the lighting looks weird in the pics.

I’ve got them too. I’m using it completely. I don’t think it could work with just the top on. It’s a clasp so the “lid” needs the backing to stay in place.

I don’t use one near the battery. Still pending... haven’t had the need for another NVMe just yet.

 

I’ll get my chance to find out next week when my 2nd 97O EVO PLus shows up


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Oooo please let us know!

Here it is man: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/372621126424

Seller should be “KH”

 

The 970 Evo Plus 1 TB I just added (along with switching to AHCI since it wont work otherwise) is really nice, but not running a heat-sink on it. Its not running as hot as I expected, but its not far off from the crappy Hynix drive that came with the unit.

Thanks! Is that an older AW 15 in the pics, or 17? NVM, 17 I'm sure.

 

The pictures are just to show the materials... they’re shown on different models, but rest assured when you purchase from the link I sent, it will be all cut for the Area-51m, like the stencil in one of the pics (the 1st I think?).

 

Looking at picking up external Samsung T5 1tb today for $189AU....... Worth getting to connect to USB-C on 51m?

 

Anyone else play Far Cry 5 on ultra settings? What temps do you guys? Since setting my GPU temp limit to 78c, the throttling is really good in terms of the clock never dropping below 1700mhz (or there abouts), but due to its sustained 77c temp, I've noticed my CPU experiences spikes in the high 90' causing CPU thermal throttling. These spikes are for a second or two and the average temps over a 2 hour session last night were 75-77c on the CPU. Is this normal or should I not be hitting high 90's at all even if only for 1-2 seconds?

This is with a Nanogrease repaste and un-modded Notepal U3 laptop cooler.

 

CPU clock? Package power? Undervolt?
GPU curve volt/freq? Power?
Max fan?
Environmental temperature?

 

Ill see if I can dow load and test.

Game hint: u can get on the top greenhouse roof of the main compound. You can not land on it though. That would be too easy....

 

Yeah good point missed out the main points....

9700k all cores x50, -105mV
GPU is standard 2080
Max fans

Environmental temp, I have no idea but would say around 20c max.

 

launches cinebench with max fan, what temperatures and how many watts?

 

I'm not at the laptop just now, but can share tomorrow, do you have the same config as me to help me compare?

 

Hi,

This is my first post here, although I've been a lurker for many many years now.
(I actually have 3x Alienware Laptops: the 2011 M15x, the 2013/2014 M17x (with 3D Visison Display) and now the Area 51m.)

I had my A51m arrive on the 15th Jan (10 days ago). It was a gift.(Intel i9 9900k and RTX 2080)
And I am already very familiar with the issue of past Alienware laptops, I wanted to see what the deal is now with the Area51m.

I've done lots of testing especially after reading about the Bios 1.5.0 and the onward problems as well as the vbios 200w vs 190w vs 180w.

I would like to share my results between Bios 1.5.0 and 1.8.1 as well as vbios 1.0.0.5 (180W) and 1.0.0.3 (200W).
I used 3D Mark Timespy to show this:
https://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/10322848/spy/10321053/spy/10278896#

For me Gsync is mandatory and I was really surprised when I scored a lot better in TimeSpy with the latest bios (with Gsync support) and the 200W 1.0.0.3 vbios.
I know the parameters between all the tests vary a bit and I apologize. These are the best scores that I was able to obtain on my A51m with each bios and overclocks.
One thing to note, is that I haven't seen any decrease in performance, on the contrary.

However, the Alienware Command Center Overclock profiles are broken (as is the non-oc/default profile). It will let the card hit the new "79 Celsius" threshold and perform a "hard" throttle on your GPU.
I was able to fully mitigate this, by making a GPU only profile with a 77 Celsius limit in Alienware Command Center. (The software still is buggy after almost 10 years of me using different iterations of it).

I don't believe this is revolutionary or anything but I hope my tests could prove useful for other people

Cheers,
Helifax

 

Dang it now your going to make me try 1.8.1 with 200w VBIOS lol.... I must resist …… I can't resist ..

 

@Helifax thanks for the post! Have you tried setting the GPU thermal linit to 78c, it tends to go a little further than the 77c limit, but 78c is our absolute limit before the aggressive throttling.

 

So from a noob just move the pointer to 78c on AWC GPU OVERCLOCK

 

78c did not work for me it be be different for each of us due to ambient temperature and other issues.

I think the idea behind this is to overcome the hard throttle by triggering the cooling Before you reach the hard coded limit .

But the Real trick of the matter is you still have to keep the temps below that limit, only way to change that limit so far is to run 1.5.0




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There also seems to a a bit of variability between GPU’s as some here are able to run Time spy at much higher + core clock then I can, timespy so far crashes on my if I + core anything over +60.

Ok I take that back, it might be my methodology but I really seem to get slightly different results each time I try different configurations, now THIS time with BIOS 1.8.1 and 200w VBIOS it seems I can run +100 core clock AND +100 Memory on my GPU, and it seems stable, however I’m not really seeing much of any gains except better GPU temps which all leads me to believe that it may just be the buggy interaction between AWCC and Afterburner.

I really wish I could ditch AWCC but that’s never going to happen.

Anyway we will see how this runs for a few days.


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Not unless we can convince some smart dude to get like speedfan or some other app forking for fan control...

 

I have tinkered with the temp limits on the 1.8.1 bios with the 1.0.0.5 180W vbios and im here to tell yall that it doesnt matter what temp limit your GPU is set at its going to throttle when it hits 78c. I just downgraded to the 1.0.3 bios and the 200 watt vbios. all with gsync... gsync on laptops arent the real thing anyways since its a just nvidia's implementation of the HDMI/Display port variable refresh rate standard. Meaning theres no gsync module on your laptop so basically its just gsync compatible/freesync cause its all done with software implementations.

 

Ok I forgot that in my last setup I had re enabled GeForce experience Whisper mode, now I’ll admit Whisper mode is pretty neat, temps stay nice and low on the GPU and the graphical changes are easy to miss,

That explains the strange performance discrepancy.

It’s weird because it’s actually pretty good the GPU seems to hit its low end rated speeds when it needs to and most importantly never thermal throttles even using 200w VBIOS, but benchmarks tell the story, whisper mode TimeSpy 690O / Whisper off 10728.

Funny thing is you really don’t miss the performance in games, I’m sure most of the dedicated benchmark folks know what to look for and would spot it immediately but I missed it, until I went looking for why the scores and my GPU temps were so low.

New theory, I bet a lot of average folks that are perfectly happy with this laptop have Whisper mode enabled.




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Hi, first post here. Just got my Area 51m (i7-9700 / 2080 180w / 32GB ram / 1.8.1 BIOS/ ) more than a week ago, and so far happy with the performance. However, I'm encountering a peculiar issue when restarting after the latest AWCC components update. When restarting (manually), the system seems like it fails to boot. The LED of the keyboard will turn into the 'rainbow' pattern which is the pattern when the system is powered up, which seems to indicate that the system has indeed rebooted. However, the Alienware logo doesn't appear and it's just a black screen and nothing happens. Have to long press power to force shut down the system. When you power the system up, it boots properly. So either the system actually failed to power down/restart and freezes/hangs or it hangs during the boot up.

Additionally, the system seems to restart and boot properly if you reboot immediately in the Windows login screen (not logging in). So quite an odd issue. Anyone encountered this?

Also just to note, the SSDs are in RAID mode though the two SSDs are not in a RAID setup (configured as individual drives). Also, below is the current version of AWCC (as per "App and Features") :

* Command Center - 5.2.63.0
* OC Controls - 1.2.50.1227

Thanks!

UPDATE: seems like the USB C / thunderbolt hub that I'm using is the culprit. Didn't encounter any issues when using it in Windows, but when I removed it on restarts or boot up, was able to restart properly. Will continue to observe though as the system also boots up properly from a powered down state even when the hub is connected.

 

Same outcome though - not sure it really makes any difference if its a hw module or software as software and hardware are logically equivalent. I'd call that the 'real thing' from a Computer Science perspective

I might be mistaken but people were able to run systems with heating and no throttling exceeding 78c in the past before the whole "burning laptop" issue came to light and the consequent 1.5.0+ BIOS/VBIOS changes, but someone correct me if this is wrong.

 

Hi,

I haven't used whisper mode. I remember reading about it when it was launched, but then forgot about it as my previous Alienware didn't support it.

I did play with the "battery mode" though:
On bios 1.5.0 playing Metro Exodus will work super fine. The FPS cap will be 30 pretty solid (I had to turn off RTX as GFE thinks I should use it on battery). All went well until my battery dropped to 50% at which point my GPU downclocked to 300Mhz and was "stuck" there for the reaming 50% of the battery (with abysmal 5-10FPS).
I have tested this 3 times and every time it was the same.

I plan to test it on the 1.8.1 bios and see if the problem is the same.
Out of curiosity, did anyone try this?

Cheers,
Helifax

 

It would be interesting to see how it did with on Battery WITH Whisper mode enabled.

 

Im considering modifying a heat sink for water cooling this laptop, I might get an extra heat sink to play around, Not sure if this is a wise thing but apparently, water is the only way out of this. How to remove the heat pipe from this thing !

 

You should watch this (Cooling the Area51m):


I giggled so hard ^_^

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081568SS8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have always used a laptop cooler with my laptops but have never spent this much for one. I've had it for a couple of months now and even though I feel almost embarrassed to post this, I really do think it is a good buy (I did get it a little cheaper than the current price).

First, it can get very loud! Not due to low quality, but just pure air movement. It does have an auto mode and I always switch it to auto when playing games, but otherwise I leave it on manual and running at 17%. My fan profile on the A-51 is always set to balanced. It's just less steps to switch the cooler to auto than it is to switch the ACC to high-performance.

With the cooler in auto and ACC set to balanced, the cooler compensates very well for the lag that ACC has. The cooler is actually too responsive, hence why I only run it in auto mode when playing games or benching.

Pricey, but I'm glad I bought it. Especially since I usually game with noise cancelling headphones.

 

This one of the worst I have seen. Not even 1 month old. The full color transformation to pink happened within a single night out of the blue. He have probably not seen the change come creeping. I have even seen people talk about the same for the Dark color but not so openly as this white due black will cover the most. Dell need to stop using recycled plastic for special colors.

What the heck is this pink discoloration besides my notepad? Its all over it the white casing.

 

The user could have been wearing long sleeve shirt that was red and sweat or rubbed a lot on it for hours. I have a white version of the 15r2 and no color issues at all.

 

White is risky, no question, but many don't have issues, but some do clearly. If it literally happened one day to the next that is something external I would think, either a shirt, something from the skin reacting with the unit, etc. if you read the post, it all sounds like he handled or wore something then when touching the unit it reacted. Dell from what I read elsewhere recommends a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser for stains used carefully. If there are accounts of Black doing it too, then its a general material problem not directly related to white.

 

Definitely inclined that this was do to the user having something on his wrists or wearing a long sleeve shirt with bright colors. I have a few red dish towels and even after years of use they wring out red when rinse them after use.

That being said I’m very disappointed there isn’t some kind of protective coating on the laptop that would help it from staining like the xps 13.

When I had my Area 51m I did make sure to wash my hands before use. I work in a steel plant so my wrists are very commonly dirty. And I never ran into any issues after a month of use.

And I swear someone here on the forums put some pads or vinyl on they’re wrist rest to help prevent this. Might be a good idea for anyone opting for the sexy beautiful gorgeous lunar white.

 

Yeah, that's the thing. One might identify the cause, but it is ultimately irrelevant. Needing to handle an unreasonably fragile finish with kid gloves isn't what one would expect when purchasing what they believe to be a premium product.

 

Yup. Totally agree. Alienware really has been swinging and missing a lot lately. Either they need to stick to black or they need to start using more durable material. The rest of the manufacturers are mostly using aluminum so maybe Dell needs to consider going that route. Or carbon fiber. Not only would that be nice and durable, but would look pretty sick.

Actually I’d go for an Aluminum silver exterior and white carbon fiber on the inside. That would be right up my ally.

 

Just the texture itself of the Lunar white feels absorbent (but looks and feels good). Almost like soft rubber. I am not surprised to see that there are issues. I like that it feels kind of grippy, but it sounds like it's not easy to remove stains.

Since mine is mostly 'docked' I have not had any issues, but I am not surprised here. The texture just screams 'feed me stains!'.

 

the cpu block is clearly not conducting the heat.


I believe this solution is far superior

 

I’m also thinking of cutting the Coupper pipes , and loop them with a pump , this might do the trick.
We have a total generated heat of 300 W

it can be managed with internal water solution.
But the big down fall is those tubes are small in size, resulting in high pressure loss due to friction thus using a high pressure pump can actually damage the tubes and possibly rupture them. I have to check the design pressure of the tubing (copper)

I believe internal water block is very doable for high performance laptops.

vapor chamber should be left alone for small chassis laptop in my opinion

 

It looks like there was a spill and the stain stayed. Plastic don’t discolor easily. It takes awhile to discolor.