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

Same here. Nothing looks bent whatsoever.

I also got the heatsink delivered today (less than 24 hours, yay!) and it looks perfectly straight mounted without issues.

 

He'll need a white stick after gaming on that thing for a week!

 

Sheesh that's pretty friggin good...what's your gpu overclocked to

 

What does "pwr thrm" mean in the below screenshot? Whenever I get that green bar in "PerfCap Reason", my GPU clock goes to 300MHz and the framerate tanks to almost nothing.

https://imgur.com/a/X99mnYq

 

Throttling. What BIOS and VBIOS are you using?

 

I am in the bandwagon Just ordered the 51m on Dell website, i9700, GTX2080, 32Go RAM, 512SSD+1To HD, 144Hz IPS panel in lunar white
Now I have to wait 3 weeks for the estimated delivery and hope that I don't encounter any issue with this unit, but from what I read on this forum it seems that the new batch of unit after May have less heat control issues.

 

So I was checking HIDEvolution's website as I have yet to pull the trigger and the 51m is $100 off right now. Any thoughts as to why they would be having a "sale" so early in the product's life cycle? Are we anticipating a product refresh already? I'm ready to pull the trigger on my purchase I think.

@Donald@HIDevolution

 

Dell has a sale on them right now also. Dell always puts them on sale every other day or week. No big deal...

 

My temperature levels and boiling rage has reached critical levels, I literally could not be angrier at Dell right now, what a useless company.

My laptop is reaching 100.c avg on the CPU package, after a few seconds of load, the avg clock speed is 3.2 GHZ I have tried for 6 hours on the phone, after being passed from department to department to try to resolve it. The laptop is completely hot to touch, and mostly hot where the power supplies plug into the back, the keyboard panel is so hot to touch I would burn myself if I left my hand there.

Originally, the alieware technician over the phone remotely accessed my desktop, confirmed there was an unacceptable temperature issue, he then asked me to run tests myself for 30 minutes and email him over the log file from HWINFO, I did this and it confirmed the situation was even worse. He then backtracked and tried to tell me everything is normal and that the machine I paid £3500 for that now works like a £400 Inspiron was normal. In the game rust I used to get 139 fps now I get 52fps and severe throttling. I am currently also rendering a majorly important animation in Blender for my business and am facing severe heat issues.

Want to know what is even worse, I was passed from department to department told lie after lie, told I cannot speak to their supervisor because there is not one, but then they would say please hold while i speak to my supervisor. wtf?

Then it gets worse, originally when I bought it, I was told to save a couple of £ they would downgrade my warranty and it would still be 1yr which i agreed to, but they failed to discuss the ramifications such as it being depot return only. So now I am stuck with a 100.c lemon, at the mercy of the agent who thinks its ok after agreeing on call, recorded that its not, with no department to complain to or independently investigate. Or i send the laptop away for 3 weeks, explain to my 30,000 customers of my business that there will be no summer sale, lose thousands in revenue and put a lid on the animation I spent 15 weeks working on.

But wait for it, theres more, it gets worse. Do you know the situation of 51m's overheating and causing a fire? The well-documented issue here in this forum? every agent I spoke to flat out denied it ever existed, from customer support to Alienware tech support.

Never been so angry and only 0.0000001% of that has been relieved by creating this post.

 

You will absolutely be floored by this machine, it IS that good! Your specs is very similar to mine so believe me when I say this, you will not use your desktop for a while if you have that lying around too.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

I agree with this, also, ordering from Dell directly basically confirms you're getting a fresh batch of machines, resellers might be restocking the old machines too, you never know.

Having said that, I would absolutely recommend Donald and his services, just stay way from the thermal "upgrades" if you can.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

Try their Twitter helpline, its much more faster and efficient, speaking to Dell reps on the phone is like banging your head against a wall, its painful and I can completely relate to what you're saying. I went through that ordeal myself few weeks back and it took about 2 weeks for them to approve a system replacement. So, persistency pays off man.

If I were you, I would open up the guts of the laptop, reassemble each part individually and repaste and repad those innards. Get some Fujipoly pads and some Phobya nanogrease and do it yourself. 100C is not normal by any stretch of imagination and people around these forums have reported fantastic temps. It is one of those "rare Dell laptops" which actually has good thermals right out of the factory.

Hope things get sorted for you asap and keep is posted man. Good luck.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Yeah, my rage started to boil once they said 100.c was fine cos its a gaming laptop, haha, I said to them that it's pretty embarrassing for dell that their flagship product cannot even perform 40% of its intended performance and runs so hot. Yep, like talking to sand and hoping it blows in another direction other than your face, you have no control over the situation. I am severely disappointed. Damn.

 

I made sure the screw was looser. Only way to reduce bending was to loosen it to the point the drive was not secured whatsoever.
@hmscott

 

Dell support guys are mostly clowns who are under qualified for their jobs. So don't mind their ridiculous answers. They don't matter. What matters is that you get things your way. If you're having thermal issues, you could ask them for a new machine. If 30 days have already gone and system is not usable, go for heat sink replacement and delid that 9900K pronto! You'll do yourself a big favor.

Put a few warshers under it and call it a day. Put some thread locker on it as well to make sure that it doesn't come off. Loctite blue works great! Seems like your NVMe socket is not perfectly vertical.

 

If I put washers under it it will be angled vertically in the socket.

 

That's the point. If it's bending then the socket is not soldered to the motherboard perfectly vertical. And that little angle makes no difference as far as connection goes, even if the socket was vertical wrt the motherboard.

 

So you recommend going with the "stock" thermal solutions for the CPU and GPU? I'm skilled enough to do a repaste/repad if and when that time comes, I was just hoping to not have to right out of the box. Is there any thermal upgrade you would suggest from HID?

 

Given this and the speaker issue should I just call Dell and let support deal with it? @hmscott

What size washers would I need?

 

This happens to me as well. Well, the heatsink bends when its mounted.
It annoyed me because I looked and it would lift the pad off the chips.
Where are you all getting the sinks from?
I was thinking of trying a different sink.

 

The drive is also bending. The standoff left an impression in the bottom of the 960 pro I pulled out from the pressure

 

I'm using the Dell default heat sinks for both my nvme drives and I can confirm that mine is not bending at all, I've opened up my system multiple times. I'm using the .5mm pads however, not the thick ones.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

If you can fix it yourself you'll save the loss of the laptop and the disappointment to find the same problems exist after the laptop comes back...it's been known to happen - they don't understand the problem or don't have an easy fix and then just send it back.

Such simple issues, but they could require replacing the motherboard - if the fitment and alignment of the M.2 socket / standoff are inbuilt to the particular motherboard you might get a replacement laptop - refurb'd with other issues.

So, try to do the alignment fix yourself - washers / labels to get room to clear the standoff and remove the SSD from the heatsink and flatten the heatsink before reattaching.

If the heatsink threads are stripped you might need to find another heatsink or run without - at least worth a try - or ask AW to swap you an unbent undamaged heatsink for your bad one.

 

The heatsink threads aren't damage. There's a screw that goes into one of the speakers (left side when working in laptop/right side when using the laptop)
The stub the speaker sits on is chipped, shorn and messed up as is the screw. I think it wasn't tapped properly.

 

The speaker is damaged or just not properly secured? You could use foam + gorilla glue to secure it, or some other soft dampening material and glue.

So if you can re-flatten the heatsink and then raise the SSD bottom to clear the post while allowing for secure/solid mating of the heatsink you can do it all yourself.

 

I have a 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus in that slot without any issues. It's straight as an arrow.

The actual stock ssd heat sink bending is common, which is why I don't use the stock one as you have to over compensate for the bend to make proper contact -> for proper heat dissipation.

The stock ssd heat sink bend is due to the slot where the end of the heat sink goes into not being deep enough.

This may be an isolated issue on your unit as the tolerances seems a bit off for it not sitting flush. I must say though that it's the first I've heard of it as I've seen quite a few units that did not have this issue.

* I've also had my Samsung 960 Pro in that slot as well without issues...

 

Looks like both you and your laptop needed to vent

 

If I remember correctly, +150 core & +300 memory.

 

Yes you should ask them for a fix and insist on a replacement chassis + speakers. Keep the motherboard if it's functioning well otherwise. And i can't give you an exact size for the warshers. You can look around or alternatively cut your own using a thick gasket paper or something. You could even make a tiny ring there with a silicon gasket maker. It'll do the job just fine too.

 

How do you uv the gpu? Throttlestop?

 

MSI afterburner

 

Is there a guide on how you how you have yours running? Computer finally got delivered today and Windows is driving me nuts. I've been slowly playing with it but haven't had much luck between kids and current internet issues. How do i get the drivers? My hardware seems identical to your setup. I appreciate your time and knowledge.

 

Alienware Screen Keeps Dimming [Fixed]

Don't know if anyone here has had this problem, well, to me it's a problem, been driving me nuts. Every few seconds without any input, like when reading, the screen would dim on me. I tried everything, adaptive brightness (which there is no longer a setting for) etc.. Turns out for me it was Tobii eye tracking power optimization. I even had Tobii disabled from starting and these optimizations still had an effect on my display.

Anyway here is the link to the fix, and a couple pick to go with it: https://www.joshuacasper.com/blog-post/alienware-screen-dimming-fixed/

 

Disabled my Tobii on Day 2, and that stopped, never liked the dimming

 

Hope this helps

 

@Papusan I look at these vrms in fear, fear that once one of them blows I have to pay £1k for another rtx 2080. I hope it doesn’t come to that lol:

 

Did you remove the shield? Nothing some pads and tiny heatsink won’t help

 

The shield doesn’t cover the last vrm, I question Alienwares choices sometimes.

I think I might fix it up and sell it, I’m happy with my Gt83 tbh, that 18.4 100hz panel is nice plus temps are better due to the massive amount of copper heatpipes.

Not hating on the Alienware it’s just that I don’t trust it with all the rtx 2080’s frying, motherboard issues. I just want a solid laptop which I can gladly say my msi is.

At the end of the day I buy and sell laptops at a profit anyway, this will just give me more money and more laptops to test out

I also wanted to ask, does anyone know if the edp screen's used in the alienware 51m adhere to standard edp 30 pin/ 40 pin cables. Essentially the 144hz g-sync panel in my alienware lp173wfg (sp)(b1) is fried (light filter burnt out) the 40 pin edp connector is on the right side of the screen instead of the left.

What I'm asking is with a 40 pin edp extender cable can I make a normal 1080p 144hz lp173wfg (sp)(d2) screen work?

Comparison between the two:

Alienware area 51m screen:



Standard LG LP173WFG(SP)(D2) screen:




If I cut the mounting points and put in the extender cable it should, theoretically work right? It is the same panel at the end of the day, so it shouldn't be whitelisted if that is what alienware do anyway.

Here is the 40 pin edp extender:





@Khenglish your assistance would be nice

Ok, last question, since the graphics card has output points on it, if I use a display port cable and connect it to my g-sync screen will the alienware 51m output at bios level? As in can I see the bios settings etc. If someone could try this I'd really be grateful and I'll give you all the reps possible.

 

Thats why i bought the 4 year warranty. Things seem to have settled down with them (knock on wood). Would be nice to have little extra cooling on the VRM's though. Im sure even thermal pad that is sticky with a think heat sink of some sort would help somewhat.

 

Try K5 pro. I've had it on my R4 and R5 and made my systems runs smooth from the throttling mess they where. Haven't seen anyflags go off since ! Best 14 euro's i spend in my life.

 

On a older question, I installed a Intel 660p 2TB and it works fine even thou Dell doesn't list it as compatible.

Waiting for a new 970 EVO Plus 500GB as main system disk now.

 

I think when my black one gets here Monday I am going to give the new western digital 2tb nvme a shot.

 

Got the exact SSD going into my alienware, glad to know it's compatible

 

I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible as it's a standard M.2 NVMe SSD

 

Ok so anyone with the same issue as me buy this screen: B173HAN04.0

It is widely available, AUO and LG are basically the same company, this is the same screen as the lp173wfg(sp)(b1)

 

I think this was your original question a couple of sides back. Do get the heatsink thou. It's runs a bit hot on full load. Oh, and the 3rd party heatsink I got was too big, so original or only slightly bigger max.

Dell has goblins and dragons in their hardware. We shall never know, so we must try!

 

I've been running it without a heatsink in my clevo laptop for a while now, the ssd stays fairly cool only reaching 70c max. Worrying temps start at around 90c+

 

I don't follow any guides. Just download all the drivers from Dell website for all the hardware modules and install the latest versions. The only things where you need to be particularly careful and choosy is the BIOS and VBios. For everything else, you can safely go with whatever latest you can see on the website. Go to support.dell.com, enter your service tag number and it will take you to the area 51m specific page. You can download everything from there, or you can alternatively download any version from this link: https://downloads.dell.com/published/pages/alienware-17-area51m-laptop.html

 

No refresh is on the roadmap...it is just a sale

Give me a call or email [email protected] to discuss thermal upgrades.

 

Post a close-up picture. What mosfets are those? If they are NCP-303150 (and NOT NCP-303151!!!) then you are good to go. However, they look crusty AF and the top of the chips seem baked excessively. Are you using a good thermal pad there with the heat sink? If not, you should. This is one of those places where I highly recommend sticking to FujiPoly Extreme 17w/mk 1.5mm thermal pads (nothing cheap will do here), especially if yours is a 2080.

A non-gsync screen will only work with the 30 pin connector. 40 pin is for gsync ones. You'll have to get a 30 pin connector (you can order it from Mad Dragon on Ali Express).

 

the one I quoted is g-sync right, b173han4.0??

 

Well I haven't taken my screen apart so can't tell you first hand. However, on many places where this screen is being sold (3.0), it doesn't say gsync in specs. It should be identical though. But it's a gamble to buy anything without confirmation. Why are you replacing your screen yourself? If there is a defect in it, why not get a new one from Dell? I changed 3 screens on my machine for free!