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My Experience with the New Alienware Area 51 R2 (Late 2014): Compatibilities, Damages, and Other Issues
// Last update on October 5, 2015 | The unit is still in process for a resolution
// Last update on January 9, 2015 | The replacement units are damaged again (Pictures on page 6):
http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19608440?pi21932=6
// Last update on November 29, 2014 | Section on the drives and RAID
On November 4, 2014 I ordered my New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) with:
Intel Core i7-5960X (8 cores)
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit English
32GB Quad Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz
128GB SSD SATA 6Gb/s Main + 2TB HDD 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s Storage
Dual NVidia GeForce GTX Titan Z with 24GB Total (2x 12GB)
4 Year Alienware Enhanced Support
Total Price: $7,482.56 CAD
Estimated Delivery Date was for December 4, 2014.
On Tuesday November 25, 2014, I received my delivery with Purolator. As you can see in the two pictures below, I was happy until I saw the box was damaged.
The New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) box had only 2 of 4 clips that hold the top-box to the base-box. Purolator delivered my Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) box upside down.
Here is a sample of my conversation with the delivery guy:
Me: It would be nice to see the people to handle it with gently with care.
The Purolator Delivery Guy: Why would I? It’s just a big heavy box?!!
Me: Because you’re holding a super expensive computer the box is damaged. Do you still have the two missing clips that hold the box in place?
The Purolator Delivery Guy: No I don’t have them. I received your box like that when I loaded my truck this morning.
Me: Alright... I’m hoping everything is fine when I’ll open the box. Would it be possible to help me bring this big box upstairs? It’s a bit difficult to handle alone.
The Purolator Delivery Guy: Sure, I can.
Once we got on my apartment floor, I signed on the terminal for the reception of my delivery. Before he left, I told him: I’m worried my computer is damaged.
The Purolator Delivery Guy: It’s normal! The damages happen all the time for a delivery and if something happens to your computer please contact Dell. Plus there are no symbols, signs or icons to show that’s fragile or which side is up. How am I supposed to handle the box if there’s no indication. Normally this kind of box should not be delivered by one guy, but two. Also, the bottom was hanging out so I had to handle it upside down. The clips were not strong enough to hold the bottom part of the box. They should add more tape around it.
Me: Well, I guess they didn’t think that it was necessary.
I noticed Dell changed their packaging this year. They cheaped out a bit with the New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) box compared to the old Alienware Aurora R4 (2013) box. Here’s a video showing the unboxing of the Alienware Aurora R4 (2013) for comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3irfNNI4U5Q
In order to show how the quality of the box has changed, I compared the previous year to this year.
From this YouTube video, you can definitely see the old Alienware Aurora R4 (2013) was really well packaged.
You’ll notice there’s a symbol with an arrow on the box below the kid’s left hand showing the right side up. Also, at the same level on the box, there are other instruction symbols which are not on the New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) packaging.
As you can see in the two pictures below, the big box contains two other boxes, each with padding on the corners.
One of those two boxes is accessories box, with foam compartments for the manuals instructions, discs, mouse, keyboard, power cord, mouse pad etc.
The second box is the computer box that has 4 clips at the bottom.
You have to remove the clips before pulling the upper part of the box.
Inside that box you will find 4 foam corners padding the computer casing and with the computer case protected by a cover sheet, preventing scratches and rubbing the computer case against the foam.
As you can see, the Alienware Aurora R4 (2013) was really well packaged for transportation.
For the New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) Dell has omitted the necessary layers of protection and to secure the unit in place so it won’t have any accidents.
I detached the two remaining clips in order to pull up the upper part box to reveal the contents inside the box.
As you can see the presentation of the Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) box is unpleasant to see and is not grandiose like the previous one I showed above. At the top you‘ll notice the accessories box, however it is not padded like the prior model.
On the top front and back of the computer there are two cardboard triangles, meant to stabilize the computer. However the triangles were squished and essentially useless.
Then the computer casing has a foam hat to cover the top of the computer. But the computer casing was not place correctly in the foam place holder base.
The computer was actually standing on one side corner of the hexagon shape. The state of the two triangles cardboard that’s squished show that they were not strong enough to hold the computer casing in place when the delivery guy flipped the New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) box upside down during the transport. Another important mistake Dell made in the packaging that wasn't present in the previous year, is not having the computer casing covered with a cover sheet or a thin plastic film to prevent rubbing of the foam against the computer casing during transportation.
Due to the lack of protection on the casing, the casing was damaged. Below are pictures of the damage on the computer casing.
Scratches on the right door.
Scratches on the left door.
Scratches on the left door and dents on the black plastic frame and dust.
Other dents on the black plastic frame.
There’s a bend on the left metal frame edge where the left bottom door sits on before the door can be snapped on the casing.
On the picture below, the left door has a gap because the left metal frame edge is bent inside the computer casing.
The gap also prevents the left door LED light from lighting up because the contact doesn’t touch with the Alien FX connector. Also there's no stickers for Express Service Code and the Product Key for the Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit English.
I immediately called Dell.ca to report the issue. For the three hours, I was transferred back and forth between Canada USA where I had to explain my problem to 5-to-6 customer service agents before someone helped me submit a request an exchange.
After I finished the call with Dell Customer Service, I decided to look inside the accessories box:
The box contained manuals instruction, Microsoft Windows 8.1 Recovery Disc, Alienware Disc, Power Cord, mouse and keyboard. The keyboard box was upside down. However there was no mouse pad, no DVI-to-VGA adapter, and no extra modular cable 6 pins to 8 pins to add a third GPU card.
To be sure I wasn’t missing something, I looked inside the computer casing and effectively there’s is no extra modular preconfigured to add a third GPU card.
Dell have completely removed the extra modular cables that were in position R3 and R4 of the power supply.
However the cables should be there because I remember Eddy Goyanes (Alienware Marketing) mentioned the computer will be ship with the extra modular cable at 4:06/5:28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xPG3AK9CE0
Joe Olmsted (Alienware Director of Product Planning) also talked about it here at 10:43/13:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-urlcdzvgA
On a side note, for those who want to know the specification of the standard ATX Power Supply 1500W, see the picture below or http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/psu_reports/DELL,INC_D1500EF-00_1500W_ECOS%203950_Report.pdf .
Further, the choice for default drives that comes with the unit could be better. The main drive is a Samsung SSD PM851 | MZ7TE128HMGR. The specifications below will give you an idea of the performance you will get.
The storage drive is a Toshiba HDD | DAT01ACA200, which is average and manufactured on OCT-2014. The date is quite recent like you can see on the picture below.
The HHD specifications and performance are like the other drives in the same category of 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB cache.
http://storage.toshiba.com/storagesolutions/client/dt01aca-series
I’m curious to know what kind of drives Dell will put in the system when you upgrade for the option of 256GB SSD 6Gb/s Main + 4TB 6kRPM SATA 6Gb/s Storage or 512GB SSD 6Gb/s Main + 4TB 6kRPM SATA 6Gb/s Storage. One thing for sure these upgrade come with a storage drive that run slower at 6kRPM compared to Toshiba HHD 2TB 7200RPM.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You will not be able to RAID your SSDs. Dell/Alienware don’t officially support the RAID for SSDs in the bays/SATA ports 4, 5, and 6. They made a really bad decision and design choice for the motherboard firmware. Most of the hard-core enthusiasm gamers will be very angry and furious when they will try to install their SSDs in RAID 0, 1, 5 & 10.
In my case, I can’t even RAIDed all my Intel SSDs 730 Series 480GB the way I want.
NB to Dell or Alienware: Please fix your motherboard firmware and please unlock all the SATA ports for the RAID mode and add the support for the NVMe. Your X99 high-end PC desktop should have all those options available.
To my surprise, my first initial boot up was already done by someone. It has a username of “ooba1”.
I don’t know what happen there? Why is there no initial setup when you boot the first time the computer?
Another surprise, the Intel i7-5960X is not factory overclocked at 4.0GHz like they stated on www.alienware.ca.
It was set at 3.0GHz which is the default speed set by Intel.
To conclude, I’m a bit disappointed to see my New Alienware Area 51 R2 (2014) with all these damages with the delivery, the lack of good packaging, missing the extra modular cables, the issue with the RAID Mode, the initial booting was already done by another user and the Intel CPU i7-5960X was not factory overclocked at 4.0GHz. It feels like Dell was not ready to release and they were rushing to push this product out quickly.
There is a snowstorm in Montreal Canada; winter is here. I hope the next delivery will be better, but I doubt they had the time to improve the packaging so that it is more adapted to the weather conditions and for transport like the older model.
Zero989
59 Posts
1
November 27th, 2014 11:00
Oh my God, I would be so angry if I saw that presentation and I would immediately let the public know.
Dell has been "cheaping out" over the past couple years. Even the M18 $6000 laptop no longer comes with a leather covered manual and a few other goodies like the cloth cover.
If mine comes like that I will get a refund so fast and take my money elsewhere.
___________________________________________________________________
By the way: You are not supposed to get the extra cables for another card that you don't have. In the release video they stated it ships with only what it needs. In your case you essentially have 4 GPUs (2 x TITAN Z) so why would you need em?
Correction: Apparently they are saying that they should ship with the spare GPU cables. I would call tech support in this case to clarify and see if they can ship them out.
brians4902
27 Posts
2
November 28th, 2014 12:00
Donovan,
ARGHHH thats awful..... best of Luck. What did AW do - agree to replace entire computer.
But thats what happens when Alienware sells out to Dell's ineptitude and builds all Alienware Computers in Juarez Mexico. Quality suffers.
I like all my Alienware Computers- but I agree the Quality and Standard is slipping BAD.
America and Canada expect quality from Custom Build products.
I just ordered the following: Delivery 12/5/2014
************************
My Order:
Alienware Area 51-R2
8 Core Processing
Microsoft Windows 7 64bit
Titan Z Dual Graphic Card
Hard Drive 512 GB
Memory 32GB
TOTAL PRICE: $7,252.00
***********************
Also ordered the Alienware X51 and it was delivered.
The package was suspect-- and I ordered the Computer with Microsoft Software- Alienware failed to send the Microsoft software or load it on the PC. So I got to spend 5 hours on phone solving the issue.
Overall- Hoping that this is just a Glitch for Alienware- or this once Great and Unique company will become the new company tomorrow.
Jonas200
97 Posts
1
November 28th, 2014 16:00
thanks for sharing your experience, I think your case highlights a special need for Alienware/Dell to reconsider their shipping arrangements for these systems.
As we know, Dell charges a much higher premium for these systems so it is only reasonable they don't cut corners with using cheap contracts with low quality shipping companies or warranty service providers (we hear so many countless cases of technicans making the problems even worse).
-Donovan-
62 Posts
2
November 29th, 2014 12:00
Hello brians4902,
Dell agreed to replace the entire computer with a brand new one, but I doubt the replacement will be in good condition unless they add the same level of protection as the old Alienware Aurora R4 (2013) packaging. Otherwise this kind of incident will provoke a massive return and exchange by many customers.
-Donovan-
62 Posts
1
November 29th, 2014 12:00
Hello Jonas200,
If you’re interested, I just added a section on drives and RAID issues in my post.
-Donovan-
62 Posts
2
November 29th, 2014 12:00
Hello Zero989,
I called Alienware Tech Support Level 2 and they wanted to sell me the extra modular cables. I told them that doesn’t make any sense, it’s something that should be included with the computer. They told me to call the parts department to order what I need.
Hockeytown_N
47 Posts
1
November 29th, 2014 15:00
Donovan,
My Area 51 R2 arrived in the exact same condition this but with no noticeable damage.
The box was crushed, security tap broken and 2 of the 4 plastic box assy clips were missing.
I helped the delivery guy lift it out of the van and I thought it was going to drop through.
Zero protective wrapping or covers on the PC itself. Just some foam and boxes wedged in there.
I have spent 3 hours today trying to get Dell / Alienware to give a part number and sell a triple SLI bridge.
Normally I would just go buy an EVGA or Nvidia bridge but leave it to Dell to use a wonky motherboard with non-standard PCI-Express spacing. Most are 40mm / 80mm. Dell is using a triple PCI-Express at 60mm and good luck finding a bridge that will work.
Tech support refuses to give a part number nor will they sell it through spare parts.
I am at a point i think i will return the machine.
Its sickening to see such an awesome machine ruined with horrible packing and even worse customer service / support.
-Donovan-
62 Posts
1
November 29th, 2014 19:00
Hello Hockeytown_N
I understand your pain. I still have to contact Dell again next week since they are closed for the weekend.
Dell Tech support won’t give you the part number unless you need a replacement part. That means you’ll have to buy the 3 NVidia video cards with your computer from Dell in order to get the Dell’s original NVidia Triple SLI Bridge. In your case you’ll probably have to cancel your order and place another order with a triple GeForce GTX 980s just to get the Dell’s original NVidia Triple SLI Bridge. If you don’t need the Dell’s original NVidia Triple SLI Bridge, you could search to find a third party flexible ribbon Triple SLI Bridge.
On another note, the current motherboard firmware limits down some features like the RAID. Dell/Alienware don’t officially support the RAID for SSDs in the bays/SATA ports 4, 5, and 6. I found out that Alienware doesn’t plan to unlock all remaining SATA ports for the RAID support via a motherboard firmware upgrade, which is ridiculous. I feel like the only way Dell/Alienware will unlock all the SATA ports for RAID support is if people speak up and ask them to unlock all the features that are hidden in the Intel chipset X99. I hope there will be an update to unlock the remaining SATA ports for RAID support and all the potential of the Intel Chipset X99.
brians4902
27 Posts
1
November 29th, 2014 23:00
Donovan
Well my opinion you bought a Brand New Machine - clean and free of scratches and dents and defects.
That is exactly what you should receive.
Please keep us posted on your replacement experience.
Also did you notice the recent Post about SLI bridge? It gives you the party number- but I agree it should come with the computer.
Donovan I would like to add you as contact/ friend- I have several questions - that I do not want to post on this site- as I do not want to offend anyone. Can I add you and email you?
Thank you
-Donovan-
62 Posts
0
November 30th, 2014 08:00
Hello brians4902,
No, I haven't seen the recent Post about the SLI bridge. Maybe you can share the link and the part number with Hockeytown_N and with us aswell.
I accepted your friend request and please send me a private message with your questions.
Hockeytown_N
47 Posts
0
November 30th, 2014 09:00
I believe that was my post regarding the SLI bridge.
I did receive a PM from Dell, I am sure hoping they can come through.
Right now the only option to upgrade is dual graphics cards with a 60mm bridge.
I bought this machine with plans for triple SLI (yea, its overkill but its advertised as supporting it).
Crossing fingers the part (GYN70) can be made serviceable and orderable through Dell.
Switching thoughts,
Happy to see others start to chime in on this machine.
Little disappointed the internal theater lighting isnt better. The single LED just doesnt do well in the large interior space.
brians4902
27 Posts
0
November 30th, 2014 18:00
HockeyTown and Donovan,
Yes I was referring to HockeyTowns post:
"Alienware Area 51-R2, Nvidia Triple SLI Bridge"
Donovan I will send you message- tomorrow..
Yes we need to post our disappointment-
KillerPooh
31 Posts
0
December 1st, 2014 11:00
To further illustrate the design decisions for the R2 Area 51 ..
I ordered my Area 51 R2 with minimal components; I intended to add additional memory (16 GB->32 GB), hard disks (2 x 6 TB) and an SSD (500 GB) for the O/S and applications. I also ordered the machine with a DVD burner intending to replace the optical drive with a blu-ray burner (which is NOT available as a build option).
Issue 1 .. NOWHERE is there the specification for the optical drive online. I deduced that the optical drive was a slim slot loading drive from the few pictures available from the service manual. Yes, the sales page does say that the drive is "Slot loading" but the specs should be easily available and are not.
Upon opening the chassis (very easy, by the way) and removing the optical drive, I discover that the optical drive is a brand I've never heard of and the drive is not the "slim" type drive but a drive that is 5 or so mm SHORTER than the "slim drives". That is, the slim burner WILL NOT FIT into the optical drive caddy.
Moreover, the optical had its front bezel removed; the slot and the eject button are integrated with the chassis.
So much for standardization ..
Issue 2 ..
After I added the SSD and additional hard disk volumes, rebooted the machine in order to install single partitions on new drive (and format them), and verifying that the new drives, are, in fact, recognized by the system, I rebooted from the previously created USB recovery media fully expecting to asked on to which volume I wished to install the O/S, drivers and associated applications.
Respawn rebuilt the O/S onto the 2 TB volume that came with the system and I was not asked by the software where I wished to install the O/S.
Foo ..
Issue 3 ..
The computer can accept up to 32 GB of RAM. I had the system configured with 16 GB of RAM expecting DELL to populate 2 of the 4 memory slots with 8 GB modules. Upon examining the system, I discover that memory was 4 x 4 GB modules; so, when I added the 2 8 GB memory modules I had purchased a week before, I had to extract 2 4 GB modules leaving me with 24 GB of RAM, not 32 GB.
Lets see if customer service will exchange 4 x 4 GB memory for 2 x 8 GB ..
KillerPooh
31 Posts
0
December 1st, 2014 18:00
Update .. From the packing list from my Area 51 R2, I have deduced that the optical drive is a 9.5 mm ("ultra slim", I think) slot loading drive. These drives are the ones on a Mac Book Pro, and while they have been seen on Windows laptops, they are few and far between.
Lets hope that Dell updates the documentation/sales pitch for the R2 Area 51.
A blu-ray burner with this form factor is the UJ-267 (Panasonic).
The 9.5 mm drives have the same power/signal connectors as the more numerous 12.7 mm "Slim" drives but do not have a front bezel, thus requiring the chassis to have a hole for the slot and a button that will be used to eject media on command. That is consistent with the R2 Area 51. They are also 3.7 mm less tall than the "slim drives".
I also incorrectly stated that the optical drive in the build I received was not a brand name. That is incorrect . . the drive was an LG drive.
kiax0001
49 Posts
0
December 3rd, 2014 06:00
Hey Guys,
I'm also interested in purchasing a new Alienware Area-51 R2 and transferring the two GTX 970's I purchased to it. From what's been posted it doesn't sound like we can use any of Nvidia's SLI bridges at the moment (at least the one's purchased through the nvidia store). Even for two cards correct?
It's not posted on nvidia's website about the size of the bridges but I assume the 2-way spaced is the same length as the 3-way bridge meaning that there's 40mm spacing between each connector on all of them. If anyone is running two cards in this system you would have to find 60mm spacing and I think EVGA sells one but its not as pretty :(
Thank you for keeping us in the loop and I hope we can order the correct sli bridges soon through Dell.
kiax0001