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

One of the major issues is stupidity and unprofessional thermal pad jobs.

This happens when you rely on a "reseller" for "thermal upgrades" and then beat the hell out of the poor machine with benchmarks without even realising that there is a barbecue going on within that chassis.

 

Was there any user investigations? What is overheating with smoke? I thought that if you catch 100C on cpu/gpu they will throttle or even self shutdown. And no issue will occur. Or its not cpu/gpu that overheats and melt plastic? What is it?

 

It has been discussed in immense detail in this particular thread already. I'd say, take your time and go through the older posts. I don't find it particularly useful to beat the dead dinosaur all over again.

 

If it was discussed, how about to put a summary in the first post?

Okay, I found an answer:
Raised wattage and improper cooling of mosfets. But I don't understand how they could leave a gap between them. Forgot to put thermal pads?

 

Refer to this guide and live happily ever after. http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-for-alienware-area-51m-9900k-rtx2080.829543/

 

Circling back around on this...has anyone created a holder for both the 330w and 180w adapter? Would love for it to be one piece (don't care about thickness) rather the two it is now. And no I'm not going to spend $700 on that Eurocom 700w adapter lol.

 

Wrap velcro around them

 

Hi all,

Just like lots of people on this topic, I was very happy with my area51m system (hopefully considering I payed 4.5k€). However things started to mess up with the 1.5.4 Bios update. It took me quite a while to make the link between the embarassing trottling and the Bios update but now looking at your comments I know the root causis.

I have downgraded successfully to 1.5 and it's already better. However I have heard best combination in terms of perfmorance is 1.3.2 BIOS + 200W VBIOS.

Currently i'm on 1.5 BIOS + 180W VBIOS. It is worth downgrading further down to get the "ideal" configuration ? Also can i downgrade the BIOS from 1.5 to 1.3.2 directly with the exe file just like I did from 1.5.4 ? It is worth downgrading the VBIOS as it seems the GPU runs lot cooler with minor impact on performance (i've seen 2-3%).

Are there any benchmarks out there between the bios versions so we can see the difference ?

Thanks a lot for your help guys.

 

So I finally cracked my 51M open to repaste it. Actually both the stock paste and pads looked quite ok. I only had to replace very few of them with thicker ones.

After finishing up, I ran Fire Strike and got 20991 points. Not awful, but I tested it at 22025 back in march. Temps are good good thou. CPU peaks at 75C and GPU at 77C. Room ambient temp is 25C.

What could the 1100 points less come from? I have bios 1.3.2 and vbios 1.0.0.3. Fan set to max for testing now, but the heat was noted at performance.

At max fan GPU max at 74C and CPU at 68C. Quite ok IMO.

 

I have had my laptop now since March, running older 1.3 bios and 200watt vbios. I have been generally happy and does not seem like my machine will blow up like the others even though its an earlier model. Couple of things leaving a sour taste in my mouth though is franks departure, and how we have been left in the dark about faster memory. Imagine paying this much for a machine locked at 2400 I do 3d creation every single day and need everything I can get. Im also at odds with this processor, If i render raytracing in blender cycles this bad boy gets so hot to touch near that mosfet area that I could quite literally give myself a 3rd-degree burn. Like i said I am surprised it has not exploded. Saw those new ryzens today and realized with the 3950x I could double my render time, lower my wattage and also heat, pretty jelly!

 

https://wccftech.com/intel-10th-gen-comet-lake-desktop-cpu-lineup-leak-lga-1159-socket-rumor/

So, new socket means no more upgrades =(

 

Reseated the heatsink one more time. Wasn't 100% happy with two small pads. Now it's close to perfect. I think I got the paste on even better now, with CPU max at 65C and GPU at 71C. Max fan for testing purpose.

21014 points. Give or take. It works great at least.

 

Good results, any pictures?

 

Ran one more Fire Strike with bios 1.5.0, gained me nothing at all, of course - 21024. Wanted to try it anyway, just in case. Temps GPU 72C and CPU 66C, within errors margin.

Sorry, I did not. I was so focused on not messing up did it didn't occur to me to take any pictures. :-(

 

I think there were two distinct locations for components blowing up (literally) and one was the VRMs on the GPU and the other was near the DC input jack. Considering smoke and fire emerged with some
laptops on "idle" and not a definitive statement from Dell, we can let our imagination run. We need an expect on power supplies to tell us how he would rig a buck converter to catch on fire and melt the VRMs while the current draw was minimal

 

Yeah, this is one of the things with DTR "upgradeability" In a desktop you just swap a $150 mobo out and you are done.

 

Sounds like you got it all sorted 2nd time round, well done and enjoy it!

 

Thanks!

Also found out that I had G-sync activated while running Fire Strike, so I ended up at 21717 which is close enough to my old 22025. Might as well be driver difference.

I see no reason to roll back to bios 1.3.2 for the moment, so I'm going with 1.5.0 now.

I get a litte higher temps when playing real games, but still only 73C on the CPU and 74C on GPU. Peak values too, not average.

Anyone having problems with Vulkan? I can no longer run Vulkan and I have no idea why.

 

Do you mean halve?

 

Debating whether going with the 65W cpu and a cooler/quieter system is worth it vs the 95w varieties.

In particular this relates to the Comet lake which does seem to be incoming.

 

Hey there !

Came here once again to read some updates of NBR users ...

Seems like things are going well for more users now..

I'm still very happy of my 51m, i9-9900k & RTX 2080 combo is great... I started to look to the future now, backuping my Windows 10 install on my N.A.S...

I've seen a lot of good temperatures here, I'm never reaching 80s on cpu but I'm always on the 83/84 on gpu both on undervolt, but anyway... I tried my best with repad&repaste, so it seems like I can't help more .

Yesterday I heard some sizzling coming from the front speakers when I was playing music at a normal level, seems like turning the audio drivers to 16bits/96Khz solved the problem, that's good for me, I've an external Scarlett 2i4 2nd gen USB to drive my home speakers If I wan't more sampling anyway...

Hope you guys enjoy your laptop as I am, Do you have any questions you would like I ask/update to Umar ? (except 2400Mhz, I've already asked)

 

It's Wccftech

But if true the TDP will be increased for the fastest Cpu. This means new MB anyway.

Seen this? <contrary to the popular "smoke" beliefs. That's a bunch of BS>. If the "Smoke" problem wasn't real... Dell wouldn't spend time, resources and try whatever they can (with nice help from Micro$lope) to push out firmware with crippled settings to lower the RMA numbers.

 

Sure, ask him why the new motherboard bios releases are throttling the GPU when it hits 75c..

 

This is just a rumor so it's not confirmed
dell will probably have new boards as upgrades
this chip probably wont be in any laptops tho it wouldnt be able to handle it since its still 14nm
the 14nm 9900k gets extremely hot and some were burning out with 8 cores at over 5ghz I'm sure this would be worse lol

 

What's the verdict about the screen?
I personally am not digging it lol.
Bout to run some tests on it.

 

I haven't received my shipment yet, Dell courier service screwed up the ETA and is currently sitting somewhere in Tilburg, Netherlands for the last 24 hours.

In any case, I don't know which panel I'm getting with this new one. I've a AUO panel from my old one sitting here so I do have the option of replacing it if I find the new one unsatisfactory...

Let us know about your findings, I'm looking forward to your report.

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

I have a feeling that you'll be able to push the temps further down(assuming you have undervolts in place), the moment you switch to Panasonic thermal pads. They are really squishy and get compressed really easily under pressure which gives a tighter contact. I personally only use 1mm and 1.5mm Fujipoly pads. All the other places where 2mm or above are required, I go for Panasonics. I also noticed this temp rise in my case when I slightly tried to innovate and adjust thermal pad heights a little here and there, which sort of confirmed the thermal pad guide that I had initially posted.

 

What are the main differences between 1.3.2 and 1.5.0 regarding performances and throttling ?

 

None, and I knew that, but I still wanted to rule out any possibility. ;-)

 

Nice to know you also do 3D rendering with your machine, this was my reason to get this machine too, and my also is early march, unfortunally it gets 101c if I leave it rendering. I have undervolt it, but even just undervolting it the maximum I can, I still get very hot temps and also hits 101c. the only way I can leave the machine rendering for hours is undervolting but also limiting my speed to around 4.2ghz maximum clock, in that way I can get my temps around 90c maximum.

 

LOL i'm guessing SK on that post is @S.K on here.

If you honestly think the volume of defective units is down to a "myth" and purely thermal pad related, you are deluded.

 

Some games seem to take over the keyboard lightning. I guess it's a feature. but I'd rather disable it if possible. Anyone knows?

 

I've tried it for many weeks and failed miserably. There is no solution afaik other than disabling the AlienFX service before launching the game. Metro Exodus is the worst of them all....

Sent from a Galaxy S9+

 

Will standard lightning still work if I disable the service?

I cannot find any AlienFX service. How do you disable it?

 

I don't know if I'll have enough patience to open it for the 6th time

But last time, I was waiting for phobya nanogrease extreme to ship and I resigned myself to use Kryonaut because it shipped to late. But now I've got this thermal paste and if I order Panasonic pads and Fujipoly, both could do a great improvement..



Can you indicate me the references you used ?
Can I order it in Europe/France ? Amazon ?

Edit : I found ‎EYG-T7070A20A‎ on this thread :

Ordered 2 ‎x P121373-ND‎ / ‎EYG-T7070A20A‎ THERM PAD 70MMX70MM W/ADH BLACK
From Digikey

And 2 Fujipoly... 1mm&1.5mm

With Phobya Nanogrease Extreme.... If that doesn't improve temps.... I'll stop there

Thanks for your answers

 

I don't think so. Without proper cooling and half of the chips not even making contact to the heat sink, when one runs "benchmarks", that's it. It takes guts to admit that one made a mistake. It's quite easy to blame everyone else over your own mistake.

I used Ubuy to import it in Singapore as it wasn't up for grab for my location on Amazon. You can do the same if you find that a certain listing on Amazon is not available for your country. Ubuy seems to be an awesome workaround.

 

I'm a bit confused. By this, do you mean it takes guts for Dellienware to admit the mistake (which I don't believe they've publicly addressed) and quite easy for Dell to blame everyone else for Dell's mistake?

This seems like a manufacturing issue. IIRC, the posts where were units that came directly from Dellienware. So any improper cooling and application of thermal material all comes from Dell's production facility, correct?

 

It is both. But I haven't seen any person whose computer died and Dell didn't entertain them with a replacement. So there is nothing "wrong" at the end of the day. On the other hand, I have seen people killing their machines by improper thermal upgrades and then blaming the manufacturer (if you remember those "thermal upgrades" from some of the re-sellers that were discussed here). That is plain wrong. Last week I was talking to a friend of mine who is in Dell support and he told me that there are so many cases with Alienware lineup of laptops where people drop liquid metal into the motherboard and when it stops working, they claim warranty. He told me that there could potentially be a workaround for this upcoming in the new machines where liquid metal induced damage will no longer be entertained under warranty. I wonder how they'll achieve it but that's something which needs to be in place so people can't abuse their warranty. And, it's only fair. It's no day and night in the end. Mostly, users are at fault for frying their machines and this cannot be related to units that came faulty out of the factory because they were replaced anyway and the number is QUITE small compared to the other. It's unfortunate that whining over own mistakes has become a culture these days.

 

It's not that it's a myth

Read again what he said. He didn't say it was a myth. He said it was thermal parts causing the problem as opposed to defective design. This is surely the problem. Multiple people with multiple samples have essentially proven it.

In a similar situation, Google "1080 evga burning thermal pads" you will see that a couple of years ago, essentially the same thing happened with EVGA 1080 desktop cards. Mosfets were burnkng because they got too hot. The fix was proper thermal pads and pad contact.

If you look at the cases of the burns on the A51M they happen in the same locations.
Between myself, my friends, and my family we have had 5 systems. All have been repadded with proper pad contact, all have BIOS version 1.5.0, and all have the 200W VBIOS. 3 of them are the original launch systems. Not a single one has burned.

 

If the number is quite smali... Then, Why would Dell cripple the firmware? This doesn't fits! Dell did the same for the XPS models from last year. Problems = new firmware who will handle the increased RMA numbers. Pure simple! There is NO need for releasing firmware who change power/temp limits to the worse "if this isn't a problem".

See........ post here <(but not suddenly dropping the GPU throttle temperature with an irreversible BIOS update months after launch without notifying customers like they did with the 9570)>

 

Question, since you have been around those 5 systems, which panel do you think is the best?

 

Sorry guys chasing a bit on my request. Any suggestion ?

 

Use this guide to downgrade to locked lower bios versions. http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ny-alienware-to-locked-lower-versions.829542/

And, there is very minimal difference performance wise between 1.3.2 and 1.5.0, however personally I prefer 1.3.2 over 1.5.0 based on my testing. But there are people here who are happy with 1.5.0 so it's really your personal preference between these 2. And all 200W VBios are the same. I am on version 1.0.0.2 and quite happy with it.

 

I was asking about the displays, AUO LG or Chei.

I'm using 1.3.2 with 200w. Thanks to your post, I was able to downgrade to 1.3.2.

 

I have seen two samples of the LG, two samples of the AUO, and one sample of the Chi Mei / Innolux (new EYESAFE).

Here are my findings and opinions:
Chi Mei: This panel has EYESAFE so if you are one that loves warmer colors and is an advocate of low blue light levels than this is the panel for you.
When uncalibrated with its low blue light levels its a whopping 400 nits. (it should be noted that panels in general will have a higher whitepoint brightness when calibrated to a warmer color temperature.) Once calibrated to more normal blue light levels (6500k - 7500k), the nits goes down to 300 - 320 nits.)
I personally dislike this panel. The color profile to lower the blue light is hard coded and supposedly there might also be a film that also makes the colors warmer.
While I was able to calibrate the panel to my liking, I was essentially fighting the hard coding and the film for proper color I like. Plus I'm sure many know often software like games can fight ICC profiles, or ignore them all together when in full screen. I personally think its better to have a panel that is out of the box closest to your preferred color profile.
It should be noted that these panels might be the panels that come with the systems going forward. This is suspected because all of the 144Hz panels now say EYESAFE technology.
So in the least bit, if they are not all Chi Mei panels, going forward they are indeed now hardcoded with warmer color temperatures, and possibly a bluelight reducing film.
Knowing what panel that @VoodooChild gets might add to further confirmation of this either way.

LG: This panel is has some better color vibrancy. I initially liked the way this panel looked when it comes to colors and games looked in general when compared to the AUO.
This panel had more nits (brighter than the AUO) also. However, after doing some testing on the panels, I discovered this panel has some color banding at various color calibration temperatures that was for sure a characteristic of the panel as it happened on both panels. You can see it yourself by using a monitor testing program like PassMark monitor test, and doing the scale black to color tests. When doing these tests its best to do them on an uncalibrated screen. Often calibration looks better but then changes the way gradients look as they are outside of the how they hard calibrated when produced. These banding issues caused me to be turned off by this panel.

AUO: This panel in my opinion is well rounded and is my personal preference. None of them had dead pixels like others have suggested they might be prone to. While its not the brightest of the bunch. with its calibrated brightness around 300nits, it was still as advertised and still looked good to me. (One was 302 Calibrated and one was 315 Calibrated)
Out of the box they came pretty close to about 7000k color temperature and when calibrated it was not a very drastic change needed. The banding was fine unless color calibrated to something crazy etc. Also for me the ones I had encountered had the least amount of bleed. (not to be confused with IPS glow) With that said, the bleeding had nothing to do with the panel at all. Bleeding comes from how the panel is in the lid so it technically could have happened to any of the others, and can be resolved by manipulating the bezel / panel / lid.

Response time for all: All panels have around the same response time. While I will say that technically LG is ever so slightly slower.
(Or one could say the AUO and Chi Mei/Innolux are ever so slightly faster) It would be very difficult to actually notice as its extremely close.
You would need to have the panels side by side and do many movements to even notice the blur difference. So in my opinion I would not worry about response time when it comes to panels.

 

Thank you for your input.

 

Hi guys, some of you might remember my little area 51m issue a few months ago. But, before I ask my question, a quick recap of my issues:
1. I received my first area 51m (2080 and 9900k) in early April. After 5 days of usage (no changing thermal paste, or pads, etc---never opened) and while simply idling, my 2080 died. Black screen. So, Dell sent me a new GPU.
2. I received that GPU late April, put it in and replaced everything with new Kryonaut. The laptop was cooler and worked great, but the CPU temps would still spike to 99c quite often on many different games at full settings. So, I followed advice on this forum and undervolted to -100mv using Intel XTU as per the received advice. I played Empyrion for about 6 hours, amazed that the temps had dropped so low, and even noticed increase in performance. However, after that 6 hour (on and off, not straight) stint of gaming, the computer simply cut off with no signs of life. It would not show life again. Ultimately, Dell ruled it a dead motherboard but said they couldn't really diagnose from there. Luckily, they were willing to give a replacement.

So, I receive my new laptop about 2 weeks ago. It has had no issues as of yet. The laptop shipped with the 1.5.4 bios and 1.0.0.5 vbios. Obviously, I immediately noticed the cap of 74c for the GPU, but I've noticed no difference in gaming. However, this CPU is slightly hotter than the last. Playing Monster Hunter World or Far Cry 5, after about 30 minutes the CPU stays at about 95c with spikes to 100c occasionally happening. Obviously this concerns me. Now, to my question:

I understand that undervolting is a safe procedure. I also know that my last laptop obviously had a few issues innately. However, I am paranoid to undervolt now since, last time I did, my whole computer died 6 hours later. So.......

Given that scenario, would you all still recommend I try to undervolt again? I know it is safe, and I'm probably being unreasonable, but I am paranoid to undervolt when it died hours later last time I did it. I know it was probably coincidence but... yeah. So, ideas?

 

My motherboard died as well, I had great temps but I have the 9700k with 2080. No OC on cpu or gpu and the computer died while playing Metro so don't worry about undervolting the cpu.

 

the 17 r4 had similar issues with GTX 1080'S Throttling with Dell's crappy heatsink design, fixed it myself - no more stuttering etc.

Question ???

Why were these systems not blowing up too then if it's just thermal pad related and poor contact?

It sounds like @S.K is saying most of the users having issues are ones who have been messing with the laptops, most cases I have seen, not one person has been under the hood?

I think it's more a case of poor components used personally, and rolling out sneaky revisions later down the line...

@DeeX @S.K

 

The 17R4 had core differential and temp issues as a result of the heat sink contact with the dies. The thermal pad contact on the mosfets were fine. Also there are other variables at play here. This is a different generation of GPU and a different generation of CPU, now with desktop CPU packages. Thus the power delivery and over all design is different than the 17 R4. You cannot compare the shortcomings of a system to another. Again the components are fine. All evidence and common knowledge points to mosfet cooling issues.

I promise, if one of the 5 systems I have repastes and repadded for family and friends burns, I will post here first.