The Alienware 51m is a thick machine with desktop level hardware inside, but serious
levels of power equal serious levels of heat, so what sort of temperatures we are looking
at with this desktop replacement? In this testing I’ll be taking a detailed look at
thermals and seeing how much we can improve performance and temps with some simple changes.
The Alienware Area 51m is available in different configurations, I’ve got the top end model
with Intel’s 8 core overclockable desktop CPU, the i9-9900K, Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics,
and 64GB of memory running in dual channel. You can find examples of different spec options
as well as prices linked in the description.
On the bottom of the laptop there are air intake vents towards the back, and most of
the air is exhausted from the two corners on the back, though there are also smaller
vents on both left and right sides towards the back. As for the heatpipes, well as I
saw at CES earlier this year they’re pretty massive, as you’d expect for hardware like
this.
The Alienware control center allows you to run the laptop at stock settings, or also
pick from two built in overclocking profiles, 1 and 2, and these are the settings that each
profile gives us. None of the profiles perform undervolting, they basically just boost clock
speeds.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments. All of these tests are from combined CPU and
GPU workloads and are meant to represent worst case scenarios as I ran them for extended
periods of time.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
with only the stress CPU option checked, and the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at
the same time to fully load the system. All tests were also run with the fans at maximum
speed.
Let’s start with the stress test results, at stock down the bottom the CPU was thermal
throttling at 99 degrees Celsius, as shown by the blue bar. Simply by applying a -0.15v
undervolt to the CPU we were able to drop the temperatures back by 12 degrees. When
we enable the overclock 1 profile in combination with the undervolt the CPU temperatures rise
a couple of degrees, and the GPU also goes up by 4, if you recall earlier this profile
also overclocks the GPU which equals more heat.
Stepping up to the overclock 2 profile which boosts the 8 core boost speed by 100MHz we’re
back to thermal throttling at 99 degrees. As the higher tier overclock requires more
power I had to drop the undervolt to -0.075v to keep it stable in this workload, and then
when we add in the cooling pad we’re only seeing a small improvement to the GPU temperature.
The gaming results are a bit better comparatively in terms of temperatures, not quite as intense
as a synthetic stress test. Honestly once we add the undervolt even the overclock 1
profile isn’t actually running too hot at all, so personally I’d probably use it somewhere
around this level to keep it from getting too hot, as you’ll soon see we’re not
really getting much extra performance from the extra heat. In any case the cooling pad
did at least make a bigger difference here compared to the stress tests.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. You’ll notice that
there’s not actually all that much difference in terms of the CPU average over all 8 cores,
maybe a 350MHz difference from the lowest result to the best result. Rather than tweaking
for maximum performance, with these specs I think it will be more important to make
changes to keep it running cool instead.
In the stress test at stock we’re hitting thermal throttling, so just a lowly 4.5GHz
all core speed on the CPU. Undervolting allows the CPU to hit the stock 4.7GHz all core turbo
boost speed of the 9900K, and then with the overclock 1 profile with the undervolt we’re
able to hit the newly defined 4.8GHz all core limit.
It’s worth remembering OC1 doesn’t undervolt by default, but basically if I didn’t undervolt
the overclock profiles were useless in this workload as we were already thermal throttling
at stock with the fans maxed out. Applying overclocks isn’t going to help us out without
first dropping those temperatures, hence the undervolting being essential to properly utilize
the overclock 1 and 2 profiles in this stress test, though this would not be the case in
instances like gaming where thermal throttling is not hit, though of course depends on the
game.
The GPU also sees a nice clock speed bump here due to the overclock this profile applies,
and then a little extra boost with overclock 2 which further raises the clock speed. With
the second overclock profile the all core turbo boost speed is raised to 4.9GHz, however
we’re only getting a little extra speed here as I had to lower the undervolt to keep
it stable. We’re hitting thermal throttling here, so this isn’t all that useful and
nor would be adding more voltage, and the cooling pad didn’t really help this out.
The game tests saw similar clock speed changes, though we were able to reach the full 4.9GHz
all core turbo boost speed with the overclock 2 profile here with 2000MHz on the 2080.
These are the average TDP values during these same tests. The take aways are that we’re
using a fair bit less power when undervolting is applied, which is why we see lower temperatures,
less power equals less heat, which equals more performance when thermal throttling is
hit. Otherwise the RTX 2080 was pretty crazy, spiking up to 190 watts at times.
These are the average CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only workload. At stock we are
able to hit the full 4.7GHz all core turbo boost speed of the 9900K under this workload,
so no change once undervolted. If anything this test is too weak for this tier of hardware
and maybe I should have used stress FPU given we’re hitting 5GHz with my manual overclock
at the bottom. We can also see how much of a difference to thermals undervolting makes,
all theses tests with higher speeds are running cooler than the stock out of the box results,
which makes me wonder why Alienware didn’t incorporate stable undervolt settings with
the overclock 1 and 2 profiles. My guess is generally that’s not something you want
to do with such a high powered CPU, although in my testing so far it’s been good. The
temps basically match the CPU TDP, as more power equals more heat.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here.
In this test we’re not really seeing that much of a performance boost, a couple hundred
points depending on the customizations being made. In this workload I couldn’t get overclock
2 working even with a lower undervolt so I ended up giving up, so this profile really
doesn’t seem useful for multicore load as we’ve seen earlier, but may be more useful
in games that don’t thrash the CPU.
So how do these performance boosts actually translate into games? I’ve tested with the
exact same Windows, Nvidia and game updates installed.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested using the built in benchmark at ultra settings. There’s
a bit going on here so let me explain. I’ve got the laptop tested at stock in the purple
bars, with the overclock 1 profile in the green bars, then with the overclock 2 profile
in the red bars. Basically we can see the overclock 1 profile is giving us the best
results, as by default the overclock 2 profile seems to push it too far and cause higher
levels of throttling, still better than stock results, but again I think the overclock 1
profile is a good sweet spot especially if you undervolt it.
If you’re after more gaming benchmarks from the Alienware 51m, check the card in the top
right where I’ve tested 15 different games at 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was sitting at about the typical 30 degree celsius average. With the stress tests going
the keyboard area is actually still quite cool, and only getting to 40 up the back.
In the same test with the fan maxed out it was a little cooler, only a little warm to
the touch and quite impressive when you consider that in this test the CPU is thermal throttling
at 99 degrees.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle the fans were only just audible. With balanced mode set it was definitely quieter
compared to most other laptops tested, so you do have the option of sacrificing performance
and thermals for quieter noise levels. Even with the fans at maximum while it is loud
I’ve certainly had louder machines with much weaker specs that still ran just as hot,
take the Aorus 15 for example.
You might be asking why I’ve tested different volume levels of fans without also testing
the thermals, well buckle in because have I got a story for you. Essentially, the Alienware
control center software is trash, or at least that was my experience while using the latest
version during my testing. You need it installed to use the overclock profiles and control
fan speed. Basically with the software installed, during both stress test and while gaming,
the GPU power limit would drop every few minutes. You can see in the screenshot the maximum
power was 195 watts but the minimum was about 40, while it’s currently sitting at 50 with
a 390MHz clock speed.
This means that it thought it was operating at 100%, though the performance would suffer
during these periods. You can see the historical GPU load bar is essentially the same, but
the clock speed cycles up and down during these periods. Yes both power bricks were
plugged in, I even tried a clean install of Windows but the problem persisted as soon
as I reinstalled the Alienware software again.
The only way to prevent this from happening was to remove the alienware oc controls and
control center software. By doing this, the fans were stuck at what ever I last configured
them to, which in my case was maximum. I also was never able to reinstall the oc controls
no matter what I did, all sorts of errors kept coming up no matter what order I did
things in, and I don’t have time to keep doing fresh installs of Windows.
Basically after wasting over a day troubleshooting in the end I decided it was easier for me
to manually apply the settings of the overclocking profiles with MSI Afterburner and Intel XTU
and just leave the fans at maximum so that I wouldn’t have these dips in performance.
I couldn’t find very many instances of this issue happening to others, so it could just
be my unit. There was one guy who posted online who seemed to think it was an incompatibility
with having MSI Afterburner installed, however I confirmed this was not the case after my
clean Windows install. Just to be clear it wasn’t a reset, I tried that too, then after
I downloaded a fresh 1903 ISO and installed it from scratch.
This was one hundred percent some sort of software bug, in the control center if I swapped
between the different profiles while in a low performance period it would reset the
state and the power limits would boost back up for a while straight away.
So while it should be possible for them to fix this, this issue severely impacted performance
in my testing to the point where I had to rage quit trying to use it, however I believe
the data represented here accurately shows what you’d actually get from using the software
overclock presets normally, as I manually set the same settings that those use.
Overall I’m pretty impressed with the performance of this machine, software issues aside. Yes
out of the box with stock settings it does run hot, and thermal throttles under a combined
CPU and GPU stress test, however with some simple undervolting it was possible to improve
this quite a bit. You really do need to undervolt it though to get the most out of it, as we
saw due to the thermal throttling the stock all core turbo boost speed wasn’t being
hit under stress test.
This means enabling the overclock profiles is essentially pointless on the CPU side until
we can bring the temperatures under control, though some extra GPU performance was still
possible from these. Combining the settings with undervolting though gave excellent performance
without the temperatures being too crazy, so it would have been great if Alienware could
have incorporated this into their default profiles, maybe next time.
A cooling pad didn’t help out too much here, even while thermal throttling clock speed
boosts were not really seen, though interestingly the fans weren’t crazy loud either. Don’t
get me wrong, 55 decibels maxed out is on the louder side, but it was possible to lower
the fan speed at the expense of thermals and when you compare it to other machines I’ve
tested that reach the same noise levels with far weaker specs I think it’s fair.
This crazy machine is powered by two power bricks, which are 330 watts and 180 watts,
and I didn’t find the battery to drain during any of my testing, even with the overclocks.
These differences in performance shown aren’t hard and fast rules, there are different factors
which will vary results, primarily the temperature of the room you’re running in, application
of thermal paste, and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lottery. You
may not be able to undervolt or overclock your hardware the same as me, it depends on
the chip and its specific power requirements, so don’t just blindly copy my settings and
do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results.
It may be possible to further improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste, however as
this is a review unit that I have to send back I’m not able to change the paste, otherwise
the next reviewer will unknowingly report different results due to what I’ve done.
Additional undervolting, boosting fan speed, or using a cooling pad are much easier for
most people to do anyway, and as we’ve seen these tweaks did help improve performance
of the Alienware 51m.
Let me know what you thought of the 51m’s thermals down in the comments, and I’m sorry
that it didn’t catch on fire like so many of you were hoping. If you’re new to the
channel you’ll definitely want to get subscribed for the upcoming full review.