Alienware area 51M

[je355804]

Hello this is my first post  

 

So I've been interested in getting a high end gaming laptop for quite some time, and I've finally decided that I'm going to pull the trigger. I've got my eye on the Alienware area 51m. Normally, I wouldn't go anywhere near alienware, but this product for some reason seems to be a major improvement. I do have a few questions though.... from people who are much more knowledgeable on the subject.

 

My first question is, if given the choice of any make/model, would anyone suggest any other laptop in this category? Specifically I've targeted the area51m because I liked the idea of getting the 9900k to go with the 2080.

 

Which leads me to my next question, would a 9900k with a 2080 essentially be a piece of molten lava sitting on my desk? I have the msi gs65 right now, and as I am typing this my fingers hurt because the thing is so damn hot...

 

Thanks for any advice you guys may have!

[Firewrath9]

yes. It will be a pile of molten lava. imo, just get something like a razer blade, or other 15" laptop with a medium level processor (8750h), and a medium max-q GPU (1070 max q), then it'll have better temps.

[unclefarkus]

22 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

yes. It will be a pile of molten lava. imo, just get something like a razer blade, or other 15" laptop with a medium level processor (8750h), and a medium max-q GPU (1070 max q), then it'll have better temps.

Hmmm. I'm not sure about this. Generally the reviews I've seen between the Blade 15 and Alienware M15 (not the A-51 I know) say that the Blade has better cooling but gets hot to the touch because it's aluminum and how its fans work; meanwhile the Alienware does not get nearly as hot to the touch or as loud, but also doesn't cool as well. So if the question was literally molten lava in how it feels, the Razer will feel much hotter (according to reviews, haven't tested either personally).

[je355804]

Interesting. So that would essentially mean, while the alienware may be more comfortable to use, it will suffer from throttling more... should that dynamic hold true on the A51.

 

"yes. It will be a pile of molten lava. imo, just get something like a razer blade, or other 15" laptop with a medium level processor (8750h), and a medium max-q GPU (1070 max q), then it'll have better temps."

 

tbh, I want the big rig. I miss my old 17 inch, I don't think I'll ever do a 15 inch gaming laptop again.

[Super Spartan]

1 hour ago, je355804 said:

Interesting. So that would essentially mean, while the alienware may be more comfortable to use, it will suffer from throttling more... should that dynamic hold true on the A51.

 

"yes. It will be a pile of molten lava. imo, just get something like a razer blade, or other 15" laptop with a medium level processor (8750h), and a medium max-q GPU (1070 max q), then it'll have better temps."

 

tbh, I want the big rig. I miss my old 17 inch, I don't think I'll ever do a 15 inch gaming laptop again.

It will get hot and the 9900K WILL throttle as it even throttles in a full fledged desktop case. But that does that mean it won't provide great performance? Heck no, I have seen benchmarks and it will smoke any laptop out there right now despite a bit of throttling.

 

With that said, I am going to order one from HIDevolution as I don't want to get the stock Dell crappy thermal paste and lack of quality control. I am getting it from them and upgrading it with a Silicon Lottery Delidded 9900K which will mitigate the overheating issues since a good binned CPU means it can operate at the desired speed using less voltage than badly binned ones which in turn results in lower temps. I am also getting their thermal upgrade of "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads". If there's one company who knows how to tame these beasts and fix the overheating issues it's HIDevolution as I've bought many laptops from them in the past for this reason.

 

See: Custom Built Alienware Area-51M - 17.3" FHD 60Hz / FHD 144Hz - i7-8700 / i7-9700K / i9-9900K - RTX 

[genexis_x]

If you need a desktop CPU, I would suggest getting P750/P775/P870 from resellers that offers delided CPU like HIDevolution

[ahuckphin]

Don't fall for the whole upgradable gpu concept. MSI GT80 Titan customers knows this too well. You never know. The next generation of Nivida GPU might be completely different in terms of power consupmtions and effectiefly making the whole upgradable gpu idea false hopes. 

[je355804]

19 hours ago, Ultra Male said:

It will get hot and the 9900K WILL throttle as it even throttles in a full fledged desktop case. But that does that mean it won't provide great performance? Heck no, I have seen benchmarks and it will smoke any laptop out there right now despite a bit of throttling.

 

With that said, I am going to order one from HIDevolution as I don't want to get the stock Dell crappy thermal paste and lack of quality control. I am getting it from them and upgrading it with a Silicon Lottery Delidded 9900K which will mitigate the overheating issues since a good binned CPU means it can operate at the desired speed using less voltage than badly binned ones which in turn results in lower temps. I am also getting their thermal upgrade of "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads". If there's one company who knows how to tame these beasts and fix the overheating issues it's HIDevolution as I've bought many laptops from them in the past for this reason.

 

See: Custom Built Alienware Area-51M - 17.3" FHD 60Hz / FHD 144Hz - i7-8700 / i7-9700K / i9-9900K - RTX 

Hey man thanks for the response! I've actually looked at their products and heard lots of good things about them. 

 

Do you have any opinion/heard anything about XoticPC?

 

 

4 hours ago, bindydad123 said:

Don't fall for the whole upgradable gpu concept. MSI GT80 Titan customers knows this too well. You never know. The next generation of Nivida GPU might be completely different in terms of power consupmtions and effectiefly making the whole upgradable gpu idea false hopes. 

 

Could you elaborate on this somewhat? I was actually thinking to myself today, what if power requirements change? But I'm not sure how this would affect the ability to upgrade the GPU? 

[Super Spartan]

6 hours ago, je355804 said:

Hey man thanks for the response! I've actually looked at their products and heard lots of good things about them. 

 

Do you have any opinion/heard anything about XoticPC?

 

 

 

Could you elaborate on this somewhat? I was actually thinking to myself today, what if power requirements change? But I'm not sure how this would affect the ability to upgrade the GPU? 

Well here's my experience with Xotic PC:

 

Before reading all the negative reviews on the Notebook review forums about systems that overheat out of the box and lack of quality control, they were actually my first choice and I did place an order and their payment system did accept the fact that I paid using PayPal even though I am an international customer. I didn't know that wasn't allowed, so 2 days later I call them to see what's up with my order and Mr. Pat was very helpful but unfortunately, their policy is that for international customers, they only accept wire transfers! Screw that! I'll never do that! I would only pay by credit card or Pay Pal, not write transferring anything to anyone. He then spoke to their management about this but they couldn't do anything so they lost my business of $6000 USD for that order.

[TheOptometrist]

On 2/6/2019 at 3:14 AM, Ultra Male said:

Well here's my experience with Xotic PC:

 

Before reading all the negative reviews on the Notebook review forums about systems that overheat out of the box and lack of quality control, they were actually my first choice and I did place an order and their payment system did accept the fact that I paid using PayPal even though I am an international customer. I didn't know that wasn't allowed, so 2 days later I call them to see what's up with my order and Mr. Pat was very helpful but unfortunately, their policy is that for international customers, they only accept wire transfers! Screw that! I'll never do that! I would only pay by credit card or Pay Pal, not write transferring anything to anyone. He then spoke to their management about this but they couldn't do anything so they lost my business of $6000 USD for that order.

I ordered around 5 laptops over the span of 10 years. I tried powernotebook, gentechpc, and hidevolution. Powernotebook is out and I think its now part of hidevolution, gentechpc had some good discounts + freebies, shirts + their upgrades like free thermal paste of your choice and such (my experience with that is I don't really know if they did things correctly because its free cause the aero 15 i7-8750 1060 gigabyte that I purchased tends to be slightly warmer compared to results that I found in the web on the 1070 variant. So I'm not sure if they really did what they say they'll do for free. The alienware 17 R4 that I had with hidevolution was a very solid laptop which really performs. The only thing that I hate about it is the backlight bleed, if you're not buying their additional 100 usd charge to choose a panel with less backlight bleed, then you'll be sorry. I felt like I'm treated to sh*t whenever I look at the edges of my laptop monitor like its not fair to buy a highend laptop then just because you didn't shell out an extra 100 bucks, they'll give you a really bad panel, like, really bad, i felt like sh*t and won't do business with them anymore.

 

Now to XoticPC, I just wire transferred money to buy the Area 51m 2080, I'm based in mid-east too and although it took around 3 days to clear here and 7 days to clear in their bank. They have now confirmed that they're just waiting for the arrival of those badass laptops from dell. I'll maybe update this post once I get the item.

 

On 2/5/2019 at 8:35 PM, je355804 said:

Hey man thanks for the response! I've actually looked at their products and heard lots of good things about them. 

 

Do you have any opinion/heard anything about XoticPC?

 

 

 

Could you elaborate on this somewhat? I was actually thinking to myself today, what if power requirements change? But I'm not sure how this would affect the ability to upgrade the GPU? 

The MXM Module that MSI GT80 Titan used to provide replacable video cards was somewhat killed by Nvidia, its a gray area industry standard module (mxm) but in the end nobody really standardized that module. Now, with dell they hope to accomplish the upgradable GFX dream by making their own module, well that same module is from their enterprise section so I hope that it really works and will really be a future proof (module) form factor.

[Super Spartan]

40 minutes ago, TheOptometrist said:

I ordered around 5 laptops over the span of 10 years. I tried powernotebook, gentechpc, and hidevolution. Powernotebook is out and I think its now part of hidevolution, gentechpc had some good discounts + freebies, shirts + their upgrades like free thermal paste of your choice and such (my experience with that is I don't really know if they did things correctly because its free cause the aero 15 i7-8750 1060 gigabyte that I purchased tends to be slightly warmer compared to results that I found in the web on the 1070 variant. So I'm not sure if they really did what they say they'll do for free. The alienware 17 R4 that I had with hidevolution was a very solid laptop which really performs. The only thing that I hate about it is the backlight bleed, if you're not buying their additional 100 usd charge to choose a panel with less backlight bleed, then you'll be sorry. I felt like I'm treated to sh*t whenever I look at the edges of my laptop monitor like its not fair to buy a highend laptop then just because you didn't shell out an extra 100 bucks, they'll give you a really bad panel, like, really bad, i felt like sh*t and won't do business with them anymore.

 

Now to XoticPC, I just wire transferred money to buy the Area 51m 2080, I'm based in mid-east too and although it took around 3 days to clear here and 7 days to clear in their bank. They have now confirmed that they're just waiting for the arrival of those badass laptops from dell. I'll maybe update this post once I get the item.

 

The MXM Module that MSI GT80 Titan used to provide replacable video cards was somewhat killed by Nvidia, its a gray area industry standard module (mxm) but in the end nobody really standardized that module. Now, with dell they hope to accomplish the upgradable GFX dream by making their own module, well that same module is from their enterprise section so I hope that it really works and will really be a future proof (module) form factor.

To be fair though, Alienware laptops are known to have backlight bleeding and is a matter of luck to get a screen with no backlight bleeding. Back in 2014, I bought an Alienware 18 from Virgin Megastores here in Dubai and it had backlight bleeding, I called Dell and they sent a technician who changed the screen but guess what? it was exactly the same because the screen is not the issue, the issue ins with the bezel's design once you screw it on, it creates extra pressure on the corners of the screen which causes the backlight bleeding. Then he tried putting some pads between the screen and the bezel, it was better, but I wasn't happy so they gave me an entire new laptop which was ok. 

 

My point is, you shouldn't feel bad nor blame a company if they're giving you the option to pay extra for a hand selected perfect panel rather than just one off the shelf. I did pay the extra 100 USD on my current Alienware m15 because I can't deal with backlight bleeding and I think this service is worth every buck.