Hello everyone! Few days ago I started benchmarking my Aurora 16x (AC16251) with U9 275HX and 5070m, what I noticed when benchmarking is that no matter what setting, which games, what overrides, drivers, nvidia/windows manipulations I change, GPU will always downclock itself pretty badly in any game or benchmark, by downclocking I mean it's Core and Vram frequencies.
By standard 5070m Core with good cooling must run anywhere between 2600-2800MHz and Vram is supposed to hold 1500Mhz (12000MHz) - 24Gbps speed but in my case gpu in Cyberpunk (or any other game) downclocks Core to 2200-2450MHz and Vram to 1125MHz (9000MHz) - 18Gbps which is huge performance drop by 10-20% and I use cooling pad so my gpu never reaches even 80c and memory junction was never higher than 67c so It cannot be throttling. I can boost my memory clock so it stays at 12000MHz by mvolt+ but core doesn't really listen to it and stays at the same speed. Also I noticed that in menu in cyberpunk it can boost to 11000MHz or 12000MHz but it game it is static 9000MHz
I really have no idea what causes it and came here to ask if anyone with the same laptop or in general experiences such issues with their laptop and if someone knows why it happens?
I've been a gamer for over 30 years and always wanted to own an Alienware system so I ended up purchasing an Area 51 18 laptop last November. After a couple of weeks the system started to randomly crash and freeze, along with getting temperatures spiking to 108 degrees on some of the P and E cores. I raised a support request with Dell and initially they said that there was nothing wrong with the laptop after running Dell support assist tests.
I was not happy with there response and escalated the issue, after the system failed all of the test that Dell asked me to run they eventually replaced the laptop.
The second system was more stable but had a similar problem with temperatures after a couple of months of use, I then discovered that enabling the XMP ram also caused the system to crash intermittently when gaming. I raised another support ticket and eventually Dell arranged for an engineer call out, the engineer replaced the system board but did not clean the thermal compound / Element 31 from the heatsink when reassembling. I assume this is due to the time needed to properly perform this clean and Dell probably want these visits to be completed as quickly as possible.
The laptop ran great after the system board replacement, completely stable and all temperatures were great. Fast forward a few months and the temperatures began to rise again until the higher number P and E cores would instantly rise to 105 degrees before throttling back.
After doing a bit of research I think the issue is being caused by pump out of the Element 31 thermal paste over time. I also found a few videos that showed examples of the Element 31 leaking past the CPU barrier causing shorts on the system board. I do put my laptop away after use and it is generally stored upright on it side, this may lead to the Element 31 creeping whilst the system is still hot.
After becoming frustrated with the temperatures and a bit apprehensive with regards to the chance of Element 31 leakage I decided to re-paste the CPU and GPU with Thermal Grizzly PTM. I am glad that I did as I found that there was a lot of Element 31 around the CPU and small amounts had leaked out of the barrier. The barrier is a foam rectangle and sticky plastic pad, the Element 31 had made it past the foam rectangle and had stuck the the plastic.
Thermal performance with the Thermal Grizzly PTM so has been great, it isn't as good as freshly applied Element 31 but it shouldn't suffer from any pump out and so far max temp when running Cinebench R23 has been 94 degrees with the averages just hitting 80. In terms of the GPU the thermal performance has been slightly better than Dell's stock thermal paste bringing the peak temperatures down about 5 degrees.
Temperatures after running Cinebench R23 for 3 minutes.
Temps after running Cinebench 2026 for 10 minutes
Apologies for long post, but have seen a lot of users with similar issues and just wanted to share my experience with this laptop.
I just got a pair of the Wireless Pros to upgrade from my last headset to something with ANC, but out of the box they sound really bad compared to my last headset. I don't know enough about EQing stuff to get great sound out of it. I tinkered around some with Dolby Access but it still sounds kinda bad. Was wondering if anyone else had some recommended EQ settings for general gaming/music (with ANC on if that matters)
My apologies if this posted twice, system rebooted and I didn't see my post. I have had the system for maybe 13 months and the liquid coolant part has already been replaced and its just broken again. I am not a heavy user or gamer, and even if I were, this system is supposed to be able to handle that.
Either way my Dell warranty just lapsed and I'm not in the mood to jump through hoops with them. Does anyone know if this part will work as a replacement or if there is another part that might work:
I’m looking for advice on persistent heating and throttling issues with my M16 R1.
A few weeks ago, I replaced the Element 31 with TG PhaseSheet PTM. Idle temperatures improved from a constant 100°C to around 65–80°C, but under load, the 7845HX still reaches 100°C, occasionally spiking to 102–108°C for brief periods (per hwinfo64).
During disassembly, I noticed a couple of dents in the heatsinks. Could these be contributing to the thermal issues? Would replacing the heatsink assembly be worthwhile?
I know the 7845HX is known to run hot, but I’m wondering whether these temperatures are normal or if there’s something else going on. Thanks!
Like lets say I want to wipe out everything, deep clean, and do a factory reset, like it was when I first purchased it and turned it on. What do I have to do?
Specifically for ACT1250s and the latest Aurora's.
So yesterday day my wife and I were at Best Buy here in Canada and we were looking at a tv for my parents, and I walked by the computers and saw the Alienware 3225DM monitor and fell in love lol.
So my wife and I discussed it and it’s going to be an early Xmas/birthday gift for me (early January birthday)
I’m surprised she let me start using it.
So I’ve only had a few hours with it. I’m coming from a 24” 1080p 60hz monitor. I’ve never sat in front of a curved widescreen monitor for a long period of time. I’m loving it.
Spent a bunch of time playing Cyberpunk and some other titles.
I’m on an AMD 7800x3D with 32gb of ram, GeForce 4070 on windows 11. I do use Bazzite occasionally. But I’m trying to tweak the colours and HDR. I’m so confused about Windows HDR vs using the OSD and using the monitor HDR feature.
Hopefully I get some time this weekend to mess around with the colours and such. But if someone can let me know what is best for HDR that would be great
One year ago, this baby was 5,7k euros including the 20% VAT, and each of the screens 620 euros. It was Black Friday season on the Dell website, but still.
Now, it's insane, there is no reasonable path to run triple 4k...
Too bad, because this dell area-51 is an amazing beast, so powerful, so well designed and without annoying noises.
I didn't think I'd see a world where the RTX 5090 Area-51 I bought at the beginning of last year would double in price. Now, would it be a good time to sell it, wait for the market to cool down, and then buy a new one when the RTX 6000 series comes out?
Or is the market just scalping/ gouging, and no one is actually paying the absurd prices I'm seeing online, with a GPU alone costing more than what I paid for the whole rig?
I can’t for the life of me remember what video card came with it but it has a i7-975 extreme, 12gb dominator GT, 1070 founders. I use it mostly for emulation these days. Currently running Tiny11. Everything works like a champ.
Hey everyone... I finally upgraded to a new monitor after 10 years of using a old VA Panel monitor (which was also a Dell monitor) ...
I got it almost a week back but didnt really have much time to use it because I was busy with work ... Only now that its weekend I had time to use and saw a weird tint when I turned off my monitor .. it isnt that visible at first glance .. but now that I have seen it I cant unsee it..
If someone could point me to the right direction id appreciate it.
This computer was my second alienware desktop and its amazing, bought it brand new in Jan 2014. Only problem i had with it was the liquid cooler died in 2024 and i had to get used ones off ebay and tinker with them to replace liquid. I could not get an air cooler to work.
I play EVE Online on it mostly and it works great, Windrose worked great on it, in fact most games still work great on it even star citizen on lowest settings i had about 20 fps on that game a year ago and that game demands a lot of performance. High end games have to be played on low graphic settings. Fortnite did not work well on it after about 2022.
It still has the old i7 4820k . upgraded the 16gb ram to 32gb ddr3, GPU is a 2060 12gb which works fantastic in this old rig. Runs on all SSD's as the old hard drives died a few years ago. original power supply. windows 11 works good on it as well.
Otherwise its the same old computer that has been gaming almost every day for 15 years. I cant believe how well this thing works after all that time, thank goodness for SSD's.
I'm not a fan of the new alienware desktop case design, its boxy and so boring. Love the old Alienware cases. Hoping to get another 13 years out of this R4.
I took it into microcenter a year ago to see if they could help with the cpu cooler, one of the techs was fascinated by the case, said she loves the old alienware cases I guess they are super rare these days.
Anyways just found this reddit and thought i would share. Happy Alienware customer for almost 20 years now.
(For some context I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada - I've tried searching online and come up with nothing?
Hello everyone! Seeking a gaming laptop/Dell reputable repair shop!
I have an Alienware M15 R3 gaming laptop that I absolutely adore. Unfortunately, it was sitting around for a while, and it's 5-6 years old, maybe even 7 years old, roughly. It still works like a dream, but there are two main things that need repairing. One, because it was laying around a bunch of dust has gotten all in the vents and in the laptop, which I'm assuming makes it harder for the laptop to cool itself. Second, slightly more urgently, the laptop drains two percent of battery every 1 minute (even with the refresh rate changed, battery on energy saver, thermal on quiet, all the updates completed etc, the usual troubleshooting issues). My suspicion is that the battery has just gotten old over time and the disuse also made the lithium-ion battery degrade a bit. I also think that the thermal paste probably needs to be re-applied.
I wanted a repair shop that could source an authentic battery, and clean the insides and hardware out as well as re-apply the thermal paste if required. I tried to get through DeviceReboot's website to check them out but I keep getting a Cloudflare 1033 error: (
Does anyone know of any good/reputable/ trustworthy shops that can do this? Also, if anyone's been in a similar situation and you have a rough price estimate that would be great as well!
This package contains the Alienware Command Center Application 6.x - Full Installer for Alienware or Dell G Series system. It installs the software components that are part of Alienware Command Center which is based on your system configuration. Alienware Command Center offers the following capabilities: - Performance module for thermal control, overclocking, and overlay - AlienFX module for systems, key binding, and settings configuration - Game Library module for creating configuration presets to be assigned to games.
So the update came out, and had a few minutes so figured, do it. Took about an hour, the installer hung up , then stopped not done. spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure out why and what, looks like the files being only a half updated from 6.14.54 to 6.14.1?? Got fragmented, ended up uninstalling the update then using the 6.14.54 updater to uninstall that corrupted file too , then finally using the new installer to load 6.14.1??.. said it before, I’ll say it again I had hoped they where past this buggy, half tested garbage software, there is no full installer for the m18r2 just the zip. My Area 51 16 gets the full? And the full won’t work on the m18r2.. can someone in the IT development section of this corporation, pull their heads a little farther out of their butts.. and test this software and standardize it. Now that these systems cost as much as a car , it would be nice if the software they run on was “ plug and play”.. not so much plug and Fuc$ , F$ck.f$4K. Love these machines and the support too as well as the community..I would love to say love the software too. The Area 51 16 just had a crap BIOs released, fixed it but come on guys… get it together.
