Was waiting for @INXSEX to say something like “I have the chip at hand because my cousin is Linus” or something before begging him for the chip for @Anonymous .

Hey, thanks for the prompt reply, i was hoping it was supported bye my Área 51 R5 because they are cheaper, @Anonymous @GTS81 , hey i know its very dificult to find one, if i find one maybe i will resell it and then buy a more expensive i9 9980xe, i think i saw one on ebay sold from thailand,  but hey with coronavirus arround i wont risk it.

Thanks  and if you find one, send me a message.

@Anonymousi don´t need a specific amount of cores, i am just an entusiastic gamer and i like to modify my PC, i have an Area 51 R5 here is the pic, the only difference is that now i have an ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti 11oc:

You can see the cooling i have now, i just added a Midle Fan Corsair ML120 pro Led (it is not in this pic yet),and i also bought a Noctua NF-12 Industrial PPC 3000 PWM, that i plan to add to the radiator, to make a sandwich one pulls air and the other extracts.

Can you tell me if this Will be enough for the cooling for a i9 9980 xe??

Thanks for the advice,  first i have to find one cheap CPU. Hahaha. Good luck with that.

Before going into whether that 120mm x 38mm radiator is going to be sufficient for the 10980XE, how is it handling your current CPU? Is it a 7780 or something? I think for games, you're unlikely to push the CPU far enough to hit TDP and then some. But if you run Cinebench or Prime95, how hot does your current rig get?

In all honesty, your R5 today with that 2080 Ti Strix OC should be chewing through most AAA title games at 4K 60fps 120Hz easily. To look into upgrading your rig is to satisfy the builder inside you. Not the gamer. 

OP

dell does not test or publish ever CPU that runs in any PC they make (just the Day1 option list) tiny.

  nor do they add words to the info file (at bios page, click information) useless to look yes..

next the the BIOS upgrade text saying , CPU xyz now supported,  SAD No?  that  is dell poor BIOS support.

CHEAP CPU? from 12,000 miles away will get you only counterfeit chip..  why do that?   or factory rejects,

@Anonymous @savvy2 @GTS81 Great article, now i feel confident on the cooling of the Area 51 R5, i will add another fan to the radiator and that should be enough. Thanks for the info.

I don't mean to put anyone or any site down but the moment I saw HotHardware, I stopped reading. Someone in this community has referred to them as hardware shills before, if I'm not mistaken.

I have a 95W TDP 6-core 9600K that brings a 120mm radiator to its knees when running small FFT torture test on Prime95 with the following settings:

1.4V Vcore

5.0 Ghz with -2 AVX offset

XTU recorded power draw @ 160W <-- I had to override PL1 limit

Granted this was done in the Aurora R8 casing but I did the same thing for open-case scenario, leaving the radiator and sandwich fan outside. W/K of the Asetek 120mm AIO CLC wasn't enough to keep temps below 85C.

Every modern CPU has effectively the thermal density of a nuclear reactor. When you run power viruses or stress the most demanding circuits on them, there's no escaping the laws of physics.

Paging ancient @Cass-Ole , @redxps630:

One of you mentioned before that the Asetek 120mm cooler used for A51 R5 is different than the Auroras. Can you please share the details here? Thanks.

*Aurora R4 had optional 38mm wide rad (up from 27mm, link)

On Aliens.com sales page they used to list the radiator sizes, where 51 R5 was listed at 120x27mm, Aurora at 120x30mm, so 3mm wider. I suppose u could measure rad relative to 38mm fan in photos, see if can spot 3mm diff (pic link).

Hi there, 

The Area-51 R5 will definitely support any XE series CPU with LGA2066.

Although the 10th gen CPUs are new but intel has kept the same socket for XE series CPUs.

So, i9-10980XE will work perfectly with Area-51 R5.

Just make sure that it's a  LGA2066 CPU and not the common intel 10th gen processor like the new LGA 1200 CPU.

The issue is not about socket compatibility.  The 10980xe requires a bios update to run on x299.  Dell has not announced the release of such an update for the R5, and considering it is discontinued there is little incentive for them to do so.

For example Area 51 R4 and R5 both use x299.  In fact, early R5 models have the exact same mobo, part number and all. But the R4 does not support 9980xe and the R5 does.  Why? Because the 9th gen bios was only added to the R5.  

In b4 https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Aurora-R7-upgrade-to-i9-9900K/td-p/6180735