Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Well back then we didnt have low cost good phones until maybe 2014, same for the tablet scene, but we already had the m18x R2, P370EM (and its future revisions) and the P570WM. We never really got replacements for those systems either unless I missed something (which is entirely plausible).
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Okay, Looks like they really pulled it off. Props for that, after 4-5 Years of failures, Alienware finally lands something as usual using former names.
This is my analysis on the machine and it's current data and the Alienware landscape.
Build Judging by the screenshots took from the Verge article. The chassis construction is similar to the Clevo/MSI and not Alienware at all. Look at the Chassis thickness ( M18x R2 vs A51) and here look at how the M18x R2 and 17 R1 Ranger chassis were made, they both have the solid built into chassis construction, exoskeleton including other Alienwares of this age and making them is an expensive task not something you cut out like a sheet this A51 looks like. That's why you add a battery compartment and other bays to secure the fit a solid robust built not like a thin flimsy box you put these motherboards etc you need a chassis which melds through the machine. Perhaps that's why they added this black-backplate (Correcton : this is plastic frame ugh on the Area 51.) which sits on top of the components sandwiched in between the bottom door to provide that missing rigidity but you cannot simply make up the lost metal body which is MG Alloy thankfully, this is lost art. Not coming back, no machine has that design anymore. Only Precision used to have and still has that style of design and rigidity, however it's a dead end with proprietary GPU and BGA CPU. They even advertise that anemic thinness at NBC "Dell says the new chassis is 32 percent smaller than the Alienware 17" Pathetic and outright shameless. Oh and the backside vent is made of Plastic as well. vs the outgoing 17R5 has metal chassis. (Edit : Verge guy said it's plastic, from the CES videos, I saw a chip mark on the lock port which is not Kensington btw, it is indeed metal, also if it is plastic it might not hold the laptop since the whole backside weight its falling under that vent attachment)
Looks wise, definitely not an Alienware at all looks Acer inspired along with ASUS with that butt to reduce thickness. The black color only looks acceptable if I had to pick. That's subjective of course. Coming to the Foot Print / Size - Why didn't they go bigger, like MSI has this massive GT73 VR Titan Chassis which is more thick or the GT83 Titan chassis. Hell even their own M18x R2 size or the P870. It's a shame they settled for that, esp the 870 and the GT83 have SLI while this one doesn't have. M18x R2 timeless design even the Echo are better than this.
Looking at the I/O options it's a compromise against the MSI flagships too, the MSI machine WT75 has 18" GT83 machines both have over 5 USB 3.1 ports both gen1 and gen2. This machine has none 3.1 all 3.0 only, and one Type C/ TB port. And an SDXC slot this one has none again (WTH ? I use it all times damn). Add the ESS SABRE HiFi DACs on the MSI and Clevo plus MSI GT83 has a BD Drive, 4x speakers + 1 Subwoofer, optical as well. Clevo has 2x TB ports and 4x Audio jacks with SPDIF, again 5 USB ports 3.0 Type A and again multi speaker system with Subwoofer. 870 has this 2x RJ45 ports on top of that. And the biggest and baddest part is the 870 has 2xSATA 2.5" bays with 3xPCIE slots. MSI has 4x NVME and 1xSATA 2.5" slots, that makes a lot of daughter boards for both. Add the status indicator lights and buttons for quick touch on both MSI and 870, heck my AW17R1 has the status lights M18x R2 / M17x R4 / M15x and other old machines had that wonderful quicktouch panel, damn this one has nothing, absolutely nothing, explains since how their chassis is made so thin and the motherboard - chassis integration so much less money is put vs the old designs it's crystal clear.. I'd also point out that the MSI WT75 has Xeon LGA 115x CPUs / Quadro (more on this later). Plus can also house 2xSATA 2.5" bays with 4xNVMe again. All those Z390 PCIE lanes went to that stupid AGA port. And no Fingerprint scanner as well.
MXM / Upgradeability upgrade-able what ? they are using Proprietary form factor, and to further complicate they added the ports to the GPU if the port breaks the whole GPU is bad, and the new Dell Precision DGFF cannot be changed into this machine, the WT75 has Quadro P5200 MXM3.0b Standard FF capable, even with HS mods (maybe if the EC boots and allows and Mobo, like Alienware 17 R1 / 18x R2 / R4 will be able to boot the 1070N which is junk MXM FF with tabs, this is another whole discussion though) so this new FF is ONLY for A51, since the ports are directly soldered as well, about the upgrades, MSI dug a hole which they couldn't come out despite having the total reference design and Clevo as a customer and has tons of high end Desktop AIB GPUs couldn't make a new MXM FF with 4.0 and a proper size. And instead removed the page which said so and caused a massive backlash and offered new systems.
That's true color of any company. Looking at Clevo the 1080 GPU pins incompatible with the 870 Gen 1 Z170 caused havoc and mods being essential, however the Clevo FF GPUs for RTX are also poised to be coming in the same FF and hopefully no upgrade shenanigans atleast with the Gen2 machines with Z270. And the uber infamous Intel Der8aur Z270-Z390 LGA pin fiasco exposed. We even did this with a Clevo P870 Z170 as a proof as well, thanks to @Mr. Fox and @Khenglish, @Prema . And other talented hardworking people. Also on the Clevo P77x platforms. This is a whole another joke that people are falling for this fallacy. MXM is dead, Long live, it lives in Quadro Workstation class but with Dell abandoning that for (which reason did they give ? saying MXM is dead for Pascal ? how come HP Z Book 17 and MSI WT 75 were able to use it, Alien technology friggin rubbish PR BS).
Now the most complex part. The vBIOS, who decides on what ? the Pascal posed a massive issue to flash the vBIOS with normal flashing through NVflash for atleast major Chipsets in the market and the encryption that Ngreedia put into and now this, no one knows what's inside that, this one to further complicate has the Video out mDP and HDMI ports directly which speak with the A51 EC and Motherboard. That's a lot of complications and messy. Dell could have simply avoided that and established a proper MXM successor which allows interchangeable GPU chipsets like people still do, the Precision M6700 can house a 970M also the old M15x as well. So that might as well even force Clevo and MSI to do the same it would have been absolutely fantastic. That speaks a lot since Dell won't get money instead consumers themselves sell them to re coup some cash as they upgrade or change, it's a great thing for consumers but not for predator companies like these, so scam up this DGFF BS get a high markup and add planned obsolescence tech with BIOS locks and HW integrity checks. ASUS did this long back..
Now this will even force other BGA peddlers to come with such proprietary BS tainted LGA sockets more Instead of using the existing MXM as base and come up with a new standard.
And the Verge video itself says that (3:18 mark) directly from the horse's mouth.
Heatsink this is short, the heatsink is simply inadquate, the stupid verge video shows 4 - 4 pipe with 2x pipe shared HS design, the utter failure point. This is where it gets clumsy, the F5 couldn't handle due to the fans of the 8700K to peaks, no idea about the WT75 / F7 since it shares a bit from the GT7x MSI which has convex BS cold plate issue and castrated HS pipes on the BGA version. And even Clevo P77x chassis has its share of problems with that. Also their own Cryotech-Unbalanced rubbish tripod evolved into this. Add the weak sauce dual Power connectors, instead of going for one shot highly robust motherboards that Clevo and MSI have that can take a lot of load even that solid 700W PSU, this is the Achilles heel of this machine that will have worse consequences moving ahead. The separate Heatsink design will add more complexity and manufacturing since they already abandoned the Fans being independent to the Heatsinks like Clevo and old Alienwares which are superior solution and also has a space to mod like Delta fans for the Clevo etc, this removes that possibility as well. As @Papusan quoted how the 125% power is advertized it's clear how they'll scrtew up this machine due to the inferior cooling. The 9900K PL2 is 180-250W to be having sustained turbo clocks. It's not happening since the shared model GPU if it's an RTX it will overload and add more throttling, either the GPU will be gimped by default or it will throttle, add the NOS system that they proudly say. Overclock to 5GHz ? Clevo GRID says hello.. and dell will simply claim this but in a rehashed way for the LGA 9900K
As the coffeelake processor supports higher clock rate than kabylake or older processors, you may easily notice that the Alienware 15 R4 / 17 R5 generates more heat compared to previous generation platforms. Therefore Dell engineering optimized the system to tolerate higher temperature from design perspective, and the new specification for Alienware 15 R4 / 17 R5 is:
CPU peak temperature will be no greater than 100 degree C
CPU average temperature will be equal or less than 95 degree C
Anything under these figures will be normal for the Alienware 15 R4 / 17 R5
Last but not least, the AWCC is now owned bt M$ mafia UWP Store. And the AW/MSI are in bed along with Intel for the DCH drivers moving forward. I don't know how the INF mods will be even possible or the reduced junk from the Windows 10 ever updating cancer WaaS system for the updates.
The best part of this A51 is, the Clevo and MSI, they are looking at this. Also that rubbish Acer and ASUS, might as well thinking ROG Module crap...But on the bright side Clevo finally has competition, simple reason even if this throttles because look at the Press release, Verge / Cnet / Engadget / Youtubers etc that's massive reach, Free PR from Alienware fanboys, this machine will reach out to so many people that is great news. I hope the new Clevo Liquid cooled @Prema modded Win7 with solid good old BIOS machine is coming, 2020 UEFI Class III and Win 7 EOL + BIOS EOL are approaching sooner than ever, be prepared to cede your control to the Corporate mafia, M$ / Intel and nGreedia and others. Clevo massive VC GRID will decimate this anemic stupid cooling system to oblivion, need a revision of that with good fitting. How about a homage to the P570WM.. A man can dream.
All in all, I'm not buying this machine at all. But looking forward for it's results and how market is going to change
Last edited: Jan 13, 2019Rei Fukai, Mr. Fox, Vistar Shook and 6 others like this. -
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Yes indeed. The whole time with knowing about this release, the main thing that was always on my mind was the bios and the ability to mod it.
IF, the bios is locked then it would be a huge shame and IMO all this goodness would be good for nothing.
As I've mentioned in the previous post, AW is being very open, honest and willing about the new offerings. This is a good thing, because those three things are almost non existent with any other companies.
I don't think that the addition of the AGA port has anything to do with the fact that the system is inadequate, rather it is added on there as an option like it has been for many other previous generations like what @Game7a1 pointed out. Better to have an option than not.
I do agree about not tampering with internal gpu power limits etc... but from the posture that we're all seeing from AW/Dell with this Resurrection of what made AW so great, with them being very open and honest from the gate, it would be foolish for this "very important system FOR enthusiasts," to be gimped in anyway.
What we have going for us here is that they are listening and willing... now let's hope that translates to real changes where it is needed.
All in all... this is a dream come true for some to have a fully modular system back again from AW. A lot of us are grateful for that.
Now that we (old school AW buyers) finally have what we've been wishing for, it's better to be grateful than to bash things to death, because nothing will ever be perfect.
There's that saying "No matter how good something is, someone will always gripe about something. Can't make everyone happy."
The release of the AW51M is a much needed one and I think it was a smart move on AW/Dell's part to do that with the competition on the rise.
Look at Asus with their innovation. Heck, even HP is on their way up and their latest Omen X 17 inch gaming laptop, proving that they can hang in that class. The recent HP's that I've worked on are solid and cools the GPU's better than the AW17R4 for example.
We all have our own opinions about certain things, but I think its wise to give credit to where it is due, over bashing things to death and having to play the "crawling out of the hole" game from all the heavy words spoken from the past toward a certain product or brand. Doing so only brings about putting someone in the position to have a 'forced' bias, about a product in order to make up for all the previous words spoken. That's why it's much easier to remain neutral over going to one extreme and having the burden to stay there.
However, deep inside, I think a lot of the nay sayers, deep down, find an appreciation for this resurrection of a fully modular AW.
Either way, it's really cool to see this being a reality.
I totally agree... I have never understood why someone buying a "gaming laptop," would put so much emphasis on the battery lol. Like really?! This is a gaming laptop and like many of you, I'm all for making more room for other goodies on a gaming laptop that will be plugged in 99% of the time..
As I've said before... any battery talk on a gaming laptop to me is like someone talking about gas prices when they just bought a Lamborghini. Gas and Prices should not be in the same conversation. LOL
^^^ Great point and very true. Having an option is better than none.
Last edited: Jan 8, 2019Rei Fukai, Vistar Shook, steberg and 3 others like this. -
I'm glad it has the AGA port. This allows more options for people and even if they end up not being able to provide upgrades in a few years, the AMP would technically still be relevant.
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I don't complain about gas prices getting 17mpg gasing my 5.0 mustang but I will complain about battery life lol. It's still a "laptop" Maybe I'm the only one that uses these class machines as a laptop?
Actually, if you look at the bottom with the laptop open, they seemed to have reduced the battery to add in that 2.5" HDD slot. They probably could have made a 99Whr battery without the 2.5" slot but I agree haven't both options would be nice for everyone.raz8020, cruisin5268d and iunlock like this. -
Haha fair enough.
ssj92 likes this.
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External x8 or x16 pcie slot on laptop when
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Who dat?
Vistar Shook likes this.
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The 2 PSUs are interesting in that every config has a 180w. I would be shocked if they had each PSU slot "hardwired" to specific components in the laptop - that would frankly, be bad engineering. Also, that would remove the ability to use the laptop with 1 PSU when traveling or on the go and then use 2 PSUs when at your main desk. Which seems like a reasonable use case to me. Most likely internally the laptop is combining all of that juice into a single pool that all devices draw from.
I am very encouraged by the design of the CPU cooling based on the pictures we have seen but do wish it was a discrete heat sink for each component rather than the shared design. I wish this simply because it allows you to repaste one and not the other. That being said, the GPU will not heat up the CPU much in this design which is a pro and the radiating fins are a lot beefier than what the current 15/17 have. Liquid cooling in a laptop is pointless and stupid - stop asking for it or thinking it will help. At the end of the day, the fins and fans are the limiting factor whether using heat pipes or using liquid to carry the heat there. More moving parts and something that could leak are unnecessary complexity and risk.
I do like that all 4 DIMM slots are on the bottom of the motherboard and not 2 under the keyboard which is how most 4 slot designs have been done for a while.
Having only a single M.2 slot is pretty weak but survivable (at least for me). EDIT: It appears there is in fact a 2nd M.2 slot although I could not visually locate it. So that is better
I definitely miss proper MXM cards and am not thrilled about this new DGFF format HOWEVER having a modular design is fantastic from an RMA standpoint (but again - shared heat sink dampens that a little).
The back cover is likely plastic, just like the current 15 and 17 - and that is fine - not really a concern to me. My 15 R3 has held up very well for the last 25 months. Finding a backpack that can move this thing around should be interesting....I still have my Orion 18 backpack I got Dell to throw in with my M18x R1 haha - may need to dust that off. The bump in the back makes my 15 R3 pretty much not fit bags advertised for 17" laptops - at least from SwissGear.
Seeing as there are options for G-Sync and non G-Sync screens, can we assume that the non G-Sync options have Optimus? If so, this will be a boon for that battery that some seem to lament. I do not use my laptop for any long period on battery but having the option is always a pro. The space taken up by the battery would not really be usable for additional cooling but could allow for more storage options which I know that some people want.
Someone really needs to make a 17" 1440p 144 Hz IPS screen. And when they do, I really hope that it works in this laptop
I am confident that the AGA will continue to have PCIe x4 - hopefully these still come directly off of the CPU. Additionally, I hope that the TB3 also comes directly off of the CPU like it does in my 15 R3. To achieve this, the 1070 in my 15 R3 has PCIe x8 only (which I am fine with).
Also on my wish list, LET ME DISABLE HYPERTHREADING IN THE BIOS!!!!! This would help thermals and power draw a lot - I don't need "virtual" CPU cores, 8 REAL ones is more than enough - thanks.
Overall, I am very excited for this laptop. I was not expecting it at all and figured I would buy an m15 once they got 2k series GPUs but that is completely not of interest now with this being on the horizon. I am really happy to see a return to making BIG laptops that can do the things enthusiasts want. There is no reason that thin and light and gaming need to go together. It looks cute when Razer does it but the results speak for themselves (crazy hot chassis and throttling)....Looking forward to seeing the pricing and ordering go live to start planning what I want.
Way to go Dell
Last edited: Jan 9, 2019 -
Wow seeing this thread grew exponentially in just one night is quite astonishing and proves that there is a market and people are thirsty for high end, all socket base, hardware with out limit DTR laptops.
HELLO CLEVO, ALIENWARE, MSI, ACER, ASUS, MICROSOFT, SONY, APPLE, RAZER, SAMSUNG and many more please listen to this people! haha
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Looks like it only has one slot for an M.2 NVME SSD?
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Preeech!!! Totally agree as I type this on my M18xR2 in bed.
TBoneSan, raz8020, Vistar Shook and 2 others like this.
NEW!! Alienware Area-51M LAPTOP!! (to replace alienware 15 and 17)
Discussion in '2015+ Alienware 13 / 15 / 17' started by QUICKSORT, Jan 7, 2019.
