Area-51m R1, GPU thermal throttling issue

Question

I bought an Alienware area 51m R1 (Intel Core i7-9700 CPU, 32G RAM, NVIDIA RTX 2080, Windows 10 64X) early last year and it has been absolutely amazing until about early January of this year. The problems started when I used Support Assist and Alienware Update to install a bunch of updates (can't say which ones exactly).  The problem is that the GPU thermal throttles whenever the temperature hits 82 degrees (a temperature that is totally acceptable for gaming laptops). the GPU hits these kinds of temperatures on any kind of demanding game approximately every five minutes and causes the FPS to tank dramatically for at least a few minutes which makes many games downright unplayable. I am now in the ironic situation where I have one of the most expensive and powerful gaming laptops and can only play games from 5 years ago (if that) I apologise in advance if I am beating a dead horse because I know that I am not the only one experiencing this problem, I have seen many posts about this very issue and the root cause seems to be the BIOS. I have tried to resolve the issue through Dell tech support and to be fair to them, they were friendly and they tried. However the issue hasn't been resolved by them. I also know that there are multiple tutorials explaining how to downgrade the BIOS, however I am hesitant to do this because I know that this process has the potential to brick the laptop and because I never fully trust non-official online tutorials.  Does anyone have any kind of advise about downgrading the BIOS? Am I more scared of the procedure than I should be? Also I don't suppose Dell is releasing a new BIOS soon that will hopefully fix these problems? Lastly I'd like to say that my trust in Dell products has been shattered. If a solution to the problem isn't found and it turns out that I wasted $5000 then this laptop will most likely be my first and last purchase from Dell, which is really unfortunate and makes me quite sad because I think that the Area 51m is an amazing bit of tech.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @DaGrouch welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.

As you rightly noticed, there are a lot of Dell Alienware users complaining about the curious way that Dell has deployed an urgent BIOS update, and the other applications that then intentionally prevent BIOS downgrades.

The GPU Thermal Throttling issue could be a result of installing BIOS v1.13.0 and only you, have the before and after knowledge that this should get some, if not all of the blame. This BIOS update does state: This update addresses the Intel Technical Advisory INTEL-SA-00391 and Intel Security Advisories INTEL-SA-00358, INTEL-SA-00381, INTEL-SA-00389. The Installations Instructions do not state that BIOS downgrade is not allowed/prevented. In the past, third party web pages have provided this clarification, that Dell are obligated to have stated.

The BIOS v1.13.0 older versions are listed, so guess that BIOS downgrade has not been prevented. However, not sure which Older version to use. So its back to your before and after knowledge. The Dell How to Download and Downgrade the System BIOS says its easy.

Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from another user. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

BIOS v1.13.0 older versions.jpg

DaGrouch · Answer

Hey @crimsom thanks for the quick and helpful response, I really appreciate it. Though, unfortunately what you suggested hasn't worked.

I was able to downgrade from BIOS version 1.13.0 to version 1.12.0 without any issue but the thermal throttling issue was still there. I then downgraded the VBIOS to the previous version which also didn't help. Lastly I tried to Downgrade to BIOS version 1.10.0 which wasn't possible even with administrator privileges since it came up with a pop-up that stated that flashing the BIOS to an older version isn't allowed.

The only thing that I can think of now is to wait and hope that Dell releases a new BIOS that fixes the thermal throttling issue.

As a side note (and because I need to vent a little) What is wrong with you DELL? Are you trying to lose customers?

mattyb3 · Answer

Hey mate, I'd jump over to the NotebookReview forum and ask some of the guys over there. There are a bunch of guys there who know a lot about these laptops and have pushed them to the limits. Hopefully they can help you more.

Have you tried doing a repaste? You shouldn't really need to after only a year but it may help bring temps down a few degs.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-area-51m-r1-owners-lounge.826831/

Support Assist claims another victim

DaGrouch · Answer

Thanks for the advice I will definitely check those guys out. As for repaste, that and cleaning the heatsink was one of the first things I did when the thermal throttling issue appeared. Repasting helped a lot but didn't make the problem go away.

LUISON40 · Answer

The only real fix to do this is to downgrade to BIOS 1.5.0 (this ins the only bios version where there was no Temp limit for the GPU) , keep in mind that this is not possible with the regular .exe app on windows, you have to actually create a BIOS pen drive with version 1.5.0 and flash the BIOS from boot up, I did this and it worked, the issue with this fix is that you lose G-Sync capabilities, for me with was an OK trade off since I don't really use G-Sync any way.  I haven't updated my BIOS in the last 1 year and a half due to this, with me the thermal throttling started from 75 Celsius,  can you play at 75-80 Celsius with no thermal throttling? if so, I might actually update my bios cause it might seem they upped the temperature limit from 75 to 82 Celsius and my GPU never goes above 78.

LIL REDD · Answer

Try uninstalling support assist and alienware update , that worked for me

LIL REDD · Answer

Check your fans, make sure they are clean from dust balls, i just did miunes and there was some stopping my fan from blowing out the heat good, also try repasting your video card and CPU

LIL REDD · Answer

I found out the problem, it's a service called Nahimic service that is used with the Realtek audio card for audio enhancement., just run msconfig and under the services tab find the Nahimic service and uncheck it then hit apply, restart computer. i did this after finding out the other things i tried seemed like they worked but really didn't, but this works for sure, hope this help

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