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

@Virale

when I had that, I created the Windows 10 USB Install disk using the Windows Media Creation Tool, then ran the setup directly from Windows off that flash disk and choose to upgrade rather than clean install then it worked.

 

I understood what you meant!

I also thought of doing this but I’m lazyyy todayyy hahahaha!!!

Thank you for sharing the detailed steps! What customer service!!! much better than Dell's haha.

The community provides!

 

If I tell you what kind of issues I solved for friends with Alienware laptops that dell Support had no clue about you'd be surprised.

Anyway, waiting to hear your success story and don't forget, before you attempt to update, make sure you have the latest drivers, here's the latest drivers collection:

Alienware Area-51m Driver 15-Jul-19

Before you unzip the file, make sure you unblock it otherwise all the files within that zip file will have a BLOCKED status. See: "Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

Ultra Male >>>

 

Now I’ve got another problem. Tried updating OC Controls and it failed saying it was already installed. Uninstalled and tried to install the new ones from the AW CC prompt and it fails to install with fatal error code 0x80070643.

I’ve read many things; fix .NET (done), uninstall Visual C++'s (done), disable/enable Windows Firewall (done), I also disabled my own (Avast), and disabled it completely (still nothing). I uninstalled AW CC completely and cleaned appdata & registry, still can’t install OC Controls (Or any previous version).

I’ve dug in so far into the logs and things that I even tried installing Intel XTU and it fails with THE SAME error. So it’s definitely something aside from AW CC for sure, and aside from OC Controls too... it fails at installing the OC Controls .msi (Or the XTU .msi)

Anyone have this issue? Anyone fix it?

Haha this day I’ve spent too much time trying to update and fix random **** that shouldn’t be broken. -.-

 

1) Disable the Windows Update service temporarily
2) Uninstall Alienware Command Center and Alienware OC controls (if it was installed)
3) Manually Delete this folder: C:\Program Files\Alienware\Alienware Command Center
4) Manually Delete this folder: C:\ProgramData\Alienware\Alienware Command Center
5) Reboot
6) Disable your Antivirus
7) Install the latest Alienware Command Center
8) Install the latest Alienware OC Controls
9) Reboot when prompted
10) Re-enable the Windows update service, set it to Manual (that's the default setting)

 

First on my agenda aside from a general look over. I plan on the Panasonic pad guide back on page 1307 I think. It never mention how many pads it takes. How do I know how many to order?

 

I believe that would be helpful as well. @S.K, Could you add that to your pad guide thread? I myself ran into the same question. I guessed the amount to buy.

 

I have a question about liquid metal. I'm a total newbie on the subject.
From what I understand, liquid metal is usually applied between the IHS and CPU die.
But I recall seeing a post here where it was applied seemingly on top of the IHS, between it and the heatsink.
Is this type of application fine as well? I was thinking of trying it out for my setup, but just a little confused about how it should be used, as well as just trying to understand the risks before attempting since I have no experience with it. Are there any extra precautions I would need to take when carrying in a backpack?

 

Doesn’t work for me.

I was able to install Intel XTU 6.4, so I don’t know what else to do! I’m going to try an older OC Controls. If that installs then I’ll just stay on an older version. -.-

Edit: an older version of OC Controls installed without a hitch... newest one always fails!

 

I helped a mate with this one last night. I don't have the laptop in front of me, so I can't screenshot it now, but if anyone wants to try this and take better notes than I did, feel free!

--- Usual advisory - follow this at your own risk! Especially since this was a one-off and I'm working purely from memory here. Maybe create a system restore point before trying this, just in case. ---

Uninstall the Intel XTU application. This should complete as you would expect, except that reading the failed log files from attempting to install the latest version of AOC, it apparently hasn't cleaned up properly. It still seems to detect installed components and fails to uninstall them.
Clean up the XTU devices. Open Device Manager and select "Show hidden devices" from the View menu. Expand the categories until you find a group of devices with names that contain "Intel XTU". They should be greyed out. Right click each one and click "Uninstall". The first time you do, you'll get a tick-box option to "Delete the driver software for this device." - tick that box too. We'll be reinstalling the driver with the new version of AOC.
Reboot and reinstall AOC. The AOC installer didn't find any remnants of the old install this time and it completed successfully. The overclocking controls in the Control Center reappeared and worked correctly.

Hope this helps someone! Good luck.

 

This was the solution!!!

Thank you very much kind sir! I had looked for “XTU” devices but hadn’t used the show hidden devices option and missed removing like 9 out of 10 hahaha!

Much obliged!

 

New one confirmed Dead. But this time 2070 which is rare. Area-51m, screen black

 

when was the last dead 2080? Is there even 1 dead 2080 that was built after 06/2019?

BTW i made a comparison between slient profile with eco settings and performance profile with OC.

DIvision 2 Benchmark:

silent fan profile:
GPU @ 1600mhz @74 degree
CPU @ 4500Mhz

Average 114FPS

performance fan profile
GPU @ ~2000mhz @80 degree
CPU @ 5000Mhz

Average 138FPS

There is a see- and feelable difference between them.

 

That's something that I cannot state because I never measure the quantity of thermal pads that I buy. I always buy mine in thick stacks. A general rule of thumb should be to buy *more* than you think you'd need. You can't go wrong with that. On the other hand, if you try and buy the *exact* dimensions of the thermal pad sheet that you think you might be using, you might end up cutting one of them wrongly and then you'll either have to put on a messed up pad which will ruin the entire build, or you'll run short and will not be able to put your machine back together at all. Having said this, I'll add my bare minimum recommendations on the post which may be a little too much for many but trust me, it'll be worth it in the long run.

So I tried the superposition benchmark at 1080P Extreme settings and it seems that our mighty RTX 2080 is already getting obsolete since I'm getting 51 FPS on average. Here are my results (Core: 1950 MHz, Memory: 7500 MHz)

 

https://www.techspot.com/news/80965-amd-poaches-alienware-co-founder-frank-azor-new.html

wuuuuut

 

Old news.

 

Yup, almost old news now, but it would be nice to hear what he plans on doing at AMD, I hope he pushes AMD into mid and high end laptops, still doing the low end but take on Intel directly at the high end. It may be Ryzen 3 before that happens, but that's not a long time away.

" Azor’s precise duties at AMD were not revealed, but his close work over the years with both Radeon and Nvidia hardware should leave his well-qualified for anything they throw at him. Judging from his title, he will at least be creatively involved with AMD's Radeon cards for PCs. He may also be tapped for input on semi-custom GPUs for gaming consoles or other projects."

Although he could certainly do those things, I think he's got too much laptop in him to give it up now, and his laptop expertise and industry contacts to get AMD a shot at many laptop vendors is what would make him most valuable to AMD, IMHO.

 

In my opinion, if the price difference is very small between 2400 and 2666 (like less than $15-$20 difference), I’d just go for 2666 in hopes we can use it one day.

Heck, that’s what I did! Haha. Got 2666 Ballistix 32 GB to replace the 8 GB from factory (how I bought my 51m).

 

Hey guys I think windows update 1903 is causing me WiFi drops. I did the dell recovery but for some reason it still shows the 1903 version. Also I keep hearing about this unblock thing. Are my drivers that I’m downloading need to be “unblocked”?

 

Any file you download from the internet gets marked as BLOCKED often leading to incomplete or erroneous installs.

In this guide, I explain how to unblock a file and better yet, how to prevent Windows from marking files as blocked in the future so you never have to worry about this nuisance anymore:

"Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

 

Thanks man. Do you know if reverting to a factory image is supposed to revert back to the windows version that originally came with the laptop or am I stuck with 1903?

Also I wonder if that’s why I’m getting WiFi drops. I wonder if my drivers are only partially installing.

 

Reverting to factory image will be like going back to the same OS when you first bought your laptop and turned it on, which is 1809 not 1903

That could be a reason, secondly, Dell has just recently released driver updates for WiFi/LAN/Bluetooth.

Get the complete package here, they are all organized in numbered folders as per the proper installation order. Don't forget to unblock the Zip before extracting it:

Alienware Area-51m Drivers 15-Jul-19

I recommend using the Killer Uninstaller to scan for drivers pertaining to killer, then choose to clean them all then reboot. Then launch the tool and choose the option which says Disable Killer From Windows update. That will prevent Killer Software from being installed automatically through Windows update.

Make sure when installing the LAN/WLAN Driver to uncheck the Killer Software which is the last option by clicking on it and choosing the X sign.

The biggest issue with these Killer cards is not the cards itself, they are good, it's just the Killer Software which cripples your connection and severely throttles your bandwidth thinking it wants to play God and choose which apps need more internet than others. Sounds great on paper, works like crap.

 

That’s so strange. When I did the factory image, I didn’t run updates and checked my windows version In system info and it showed 1903. Maybe it updated it during the whole initial Cortana setup after asking for my wifi.

That’s how I originally updated the WiFi card but again like you said, it could have blocked some of the install. Thanks for the link. I’ll see if it fixed my issue. The drops are random, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of playing online.

 

1) You should NEVER connect to Wifi when it prompts you otherwise you will be forced to sign in with a Microsoft Account and secondly, Windows will update immediately and also update all your drivers.

What I do if I revert back to the factory image is I ensure I am offline, once I am in Windows, I uninstall all the drivers and reboot, then I install all the new ones which I linked above and reboot after each driver install. That way, Windows will not update your drivers since you already have the latest.

PS: the only other way you may have had 1903 as the factory image if if you recently just got your Alienware and perhaps Dell has updated the factory image.

 

Makes sense and yes it’s only like 6 days old but man it’s a beast. I never feel any heat coming out of this thing when playing games, just cool air lol. A nice change of pace compared to the older 17R series.

Also while I’m picking your brain. What good programs do you recommend for maintenance? I mostly just game and that’s it.

 

I'm in bed now, I'll reply to this tomorrow bro.

 

No problem. Thanks for dedicating your time to help people. Not many people do that these days.

 

That depends upon what you are playing. If you are playing something with heavy GPU load and still no heat is coming out then that's a problem.

1903 is a half baked release that has a ton of bug fixes going on internally which are actually created due to "updates". Only switch to it if you want to stay on the bleeding edge while stay ready to compromise performance in some cases and face some major annoyances / security holes because this is a work in progress. If you want peace of mind, stay on lower stable builds. I personally do not use Windows for anything except gaming so I don't find it particularly useful to "upgrade" anyway until there are some REAL upgrades that actually matter. Most of my work is inside virtual machines or on a linux installation that I've dual booted my Windows installation with.

 

Here are the recommended programs for maintenance/some tools that are useful:

Autoruns (for checking programs that startup automatically and disabling anything if you want)
GeekUninstaller (Free programs uninstaller that scans for leftovers after you uninstall a program and deletes the remaining file and registry remnants)
HWiNFO (for monitoring your temps)
Display Driver Uninstaller (for fully uninstalling Intel or nVIDIA Graphics drivers for when the time comes and you want to upgrade to a newer version)
Wise Disk Cleaner (A better alternative to CCleaner for cleaning jump/temp files and browser cache, plus it has no spyware like CCleaner)

Create a folder on your D: Drive and name it Software

Place any new program you download in that folder to keep things organized. Also place the portable apps in there and create a shortcut to its Executable on your desktop for easy access.

Here's how I do things: on my D: Drive, I have a folder named Drivers where I place all the driver and replace older drivers with new ones.

I also have a Software folder which contains all the EXE setup installers AND also contains some portable apps which I don't like to install such as, HWiNFO, Wise Disk Cleaner (portable), AIDA64, HWiNFO, etc. I then right click on each of those portable app folders, then go to the customize app and give them an icon to match the program to easily differentiate them, I also create a desktop shortcut for them.

I place Defragment and Optimize Drives, Uninstall Tool, and Wise Disk Cleaner Portable in that folder for easier access

I then place HWiNFO's portable shortcut on the desktop

PS: Make sure you unblock any file you download before running it or extracting it, see this guide on how to do it and how to prevent this stupid blocking from happening in the first place: "Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

Here's my D: Drive:



Here's my Software Folder:

 

I'm repadding soon so I will see about getting some more exact suggestions on purchasing sizes etc.

 

Generally, 1 thermal pad sheet of every size mentioned in the message on page 1307 will be enough for 1 build. But I'd go with 2 each except for 3mm (it's needed in very small amounts so 1 should last multiple repads).

 

Anyone have any feedback on what the i7-9700 (non-'K' it seems) + RTX 2070 fan noise is like?

Would I be giving up much performance running this Area 51m combo under the 'Quiet' thermal mode?

I'm thinking not, as keeping both under 75 degrees shouldn't be too difficult..

 

Hello dude,

I just received my Aera-51M ! I'm planning to follow certain of your tips, especially your "to-do list" for new laptops (that I cannot find anymore in all thoses pages lol).
However, I followed your "Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No] tutorial but it does not work for me (I'm on Win10 Pro).
I sorted it out by clicking on "I choose when I want those notifications to appear and then I turned the cursor all the way down". Isn't it better to do so ?

 

It works 100%. For Windows 10 Pro, you need to do it via the Group Policy Editor then reboot as shown in the guide. For non Pro users there is a registry trick.

What you did is just hid the notification but does not mean the file is not blocked.

 

Well I must have not understood what it does then.
Are we talking about those messages for executables ?



Because then, I'm still getting these messages after following your steps and rebooted :



Thank you

 

nooo man, you're good then. that message you showed me is the UAC prompt. Totally different thing.

To make sure the tweak is working, download a file right now, then right click on it and go to Properties, you will notice that it doesn't say BLOCKED at the bottom and have the option to unblock it.

 

Nice !
Tbh, I've never seen this "blocked" messages on the Properties tab in my life ! There are "Read only" and "Hide" (and Advanced) at the bottom of the window.

I'm curious, how could this happen that I don't even meet this "blocked" mention for 5 years now ?

 

I'm sorry to quote you for this, but I can't find where you posted your "to-do" list for new laptops which included tips and links to minimize the Windows 10 BS. Could you please link the post to me ?
Thank you

 

NBR Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide
Windows 10 Tweaks and Fixes (Index post #1)
O&O ShutUp10 - Do not use Windows 10 without it!
Macrium Reflect Installation/Usage Guide
The best and fastest way to backup your data!

 

A non K CPU will not thermally outperform it's K counterpart at the same frequencies. A K CPU is better binned silicon. You can also lower clocks on a K CPU if desired

 

Yup, and you can disable hyperthreading in K CPU's to get a nice drop in thermals and gain some headroom for thermals / power / cooling.

The hyper-threading difference isn't something you notice or miss in day to day use. There are some batch processing jobs that optimize for hyper-threading benefits, so switching it off can affect times for that kind of use.

Games for the most part still use 2-4 cores and turning off hyper-threading can reduce by a few frames or none, not noticeable is normal use.

So except for benchmarking and some batch jobs, hyper-threading can be better turned off for thermal / power drop.

 

My build is suspended due to a processor shortage. In the mean time I've been reading up here and I've found that there is a noticeable difference in the two displays. It seems the LG is preferred due to it's brightness and viewing angle. I tried to talk with customer support about this to no avail. Is the LG display the one that is not labeled nvidia? Or is the LG display not available anymore. Customer service said they are no LG displays, if you can believe that.

Edit: seems like did not read enough. LG is not the display of choice, the AUO is. However I am not sure if that is still an option.

 

Hey, when updating the Bluetooth and LAN from dell website, can I just run the install or is their a program I should use to uninstall those two things first?

Also, I updated the card the CORRECT way and I’m still getting random drops. I can’t find anywhere on the inet about problems with WiFi drops tied with the ax1650. I never had issues with my router before. This is frustrating as it’s my only issue with the system.

 

If you have another laptop that you can swap cards with, try that. Maybe the card is bad? Worth a shot in my opinion (and a very simple swap).

 

Don’t have another laptop but I might just buy another card. How can you tell a card is bad? The card physically doesn’t look damaged. Is my problem a symptom of a bad card?

 

Maybe you can buy a card, test and return it? Haha... I don’t know if your symptoms are due to a bad card, but it sounds like you’ve tried many things, except that! Haha

 

Hey, is it normal for the 180w charger to get quite hot when paired up with the 330w and gaming?

 

My 180W adapter burns!!! I think this is normal... it’s delivering all of its power, so it’s bound to get hot. I believe that’s why some people opt to buy a second 330W (excessive, in my opinion). The notebook will draw what it needs, and it’s less than 510W with a 2080 & 9900K.

When and if the 180W adapter dies, I’ll get another one.

 

Because power from the 330w adapter is capped (can't be utilized at max), the smaller 180w psu has to be maxed out and it will run hot. It's normal. It's by design.

 

Switch to Intel 9560ngw. The PCIe based cards often cause this problem on z390 chipset. This is not specific to this motherboard only. I have seen this happen on other z390 motherboards as well. What's frustrating about it is that it is totally intermittent and random. The M.2 CNVi cards work the best. And I'm talking about Intel cards, not the killer crap.

I use 180W adapter as my travel adapter while use 2x330W as my home setup. I have noticed that 180W adapter gets hotter when paired up with 330W as the load balancing circuitry drives up the power draw from it when plugged in alongside the 330W one. When running it alone, it doesn't get nearly as hot, although the performance is trash and only suited for low load work.