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I have had people (some not even noobs) argue with me and say things like "no, that's not the problem because my RAM is only reaching 65-70°C" and they often don't believe me that anything above about 40-45°C is "too hot" and will cause errors.

Just having a 5080 in your AGA means you’re definitely doing it right! This laptop has won me over so much that I honestly can’t bring myself to move on to another laptop. I really like the R2 as well. The 10900K is an amazing CPU, but since there isn’t much of a difference in GPU performance and it only has two RAM slots, I decided not to go for it. After upgrading the CPU to a 9900KS, the performance has become really impressive, even though there was never a properly optimized BIOS for it and the CPU is limited to 130W. Interestingly, the CPU temperatures have also dropped significantly. I was comparing the performance of Thunderbolt 5 and OCuLink, and the benchmark results with the same GPU I’m using were almost exactly identical. On top of that, I’m also really satisfied with the Area-51m’s appearance, design, and build quality. It’s a laptop I genuinely love in those respects. By the way, regarding the limitation that many people experienced with the newer BIOS versions, where GPU performance would become limited once the GPU reached around 75°C, I actually found a workaround for it. Because of that, I never had this issue even with BIOS versions newer than 1.5. I’ll post a guide explaining how to do it as soon as I get the chance. One more thing regarding RAM frequency: BIOS 1.7.3 and the older versions perform much better and are significantly more stable. There’s another point I always keep in mind: if I’m going to put a system under heavy load 24/7, constantly gaming and rendering on it, which setup is actually more reliable in the long run — an Area-51m paired with an AGA, or one of these sleek and delicate new-generation laptops with a single-piece motherboard where practically everything is soldered directly onto the board?

Yep, RAM is very temperature sensitive. The upstairs A/C in my house broke recently and we had to get it repaired. While I personally didn't mind the 10-15°F higher ambient temperatures, that destabilized the memory overclock on my desktop. At first, I thought something was horrifically wrong as the machine would just keep freezing and BSODing after over a year and a half of working great. Nope, it was just the higher ambient temps causing RAM instability. Whew. I wanted my 2.5% overclock though! Grr... performance being left on the table I couldn't access.

GPU-z always shows 1709 as max boost clocks. For RAM it depends on vbios. For the 3 that work on the card: vbios 1: Will show the overclock, but run at 6ghz. vbios 2: Always shows as 6ghz even unmodded, but will properly run 7.2ghz. It always displays 6ghz and runs at 7.2ghz even if overclock modded. vbios 3: Will both show 6ghz and run at 6ghz if overclocked. If unmodded displays and runs 7.2ghz. I might be mixing this up some, but it's something like the above. The card can only run Dell vbios. MSI and Lenovo both crash on an Nvidia driver. HP does not work at all. The card itself is a Gecube card. I have not found a gecube p5200 vbios.

@zerokool Damn you got really lucky with that screen then.

What does the GPU-z windows show ? Normally the edits from the program to base and boost clocks should be visible there.

When Gigabyte scores a win it is usually pretty solid and respectable. They often do not, and they are masters of cheapness and engineering shortcuts. They are an example of a company (there are many) that doesn't learn from its mistakes. The X870E AORUS Master was a phenomenal motherboard and I mostly loved it. The firmware had some minor but glaring functionality omissions that they didn't care about. The one that I hated most was no ability to disable onboard WiFi and BT modules. For people that use them, not a big deal. For people like me that do not, being able to disable them is super important. I don't want crap that I don't use enabled and I deserve having the ability to disable it. Like many companies, they only care about what normies care about so they can sell them products and if you're not a normie you get to have whatever the normies are willing to put up with. Guess what? The Elite Duo X has no BIOS option to disable WiFi/BT. But, I can disable the wired ethernet device if I use WiFi. Bastards.

That was my fear with that board, great looking board and features, 2 DIMMs, but the Gigabyte UEFI has been rumored to be trash, especially for D2D tuning. This is why APEX is such king this gen, despite slightly lower memory tuning compared to OCF. If I can't push D2D, or get a reliable stable setup, being able to push slightly higher on memory OC is worthless to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jXNs3Hrgpg Given the price mark up on Broadwell GPUs, you are going to see a lot more 4090s and 5090s get memory upgrades.

Who said it was a huge shortage of vram? China have everything if and when you need it. Yep, China is the global tech Mecca. Ask and you get whatever tech is possible to get. And no one can stop them. None! Yup, because the US chip restrictions for China doesn't work. Nada. Zero. Modified GeForce RTX 4080 32GB cards flood China’s second-hand market RTX 40 memory mods have become a business This follows several similar cases we have covered over the past two years. Modified RTX 4090 and RTX 4090D cards with 48GB memory have been sold in China, while RTX 4080 SUPER 32GB cards appeared in much larger quantities last year. We reported in October...

The tool does seem to raise both base and boost clocks correctly, just not the max clocks. Without mods, the card only runs 1709MHz if under 50C. With mods it will maintain 1709 over 50C and just bump the voltage up from 0.85V to 0.862V instead.

Huh, I wonder at what voltage my vram runs at as it does 9Ghz on my P4000 That's so strange, okay well I will investigate, I'm sure I can get it working as iMac vbios for Px200 manage to overclock them no problems. I will make a completely custom vbios without using my app, I'm annoyed it doesn't work, I though the app could be universal...

Alright the motherboard is faulty... I tried with an i3 10100F known for working with dual channel memory. Same issues as before. For some reasons it booted with 1x16 3200MHz at 2666MHz and 2x16 3200Mhz at 2666MHz in single. It also means the I9 10900KF is half faulty. It couldn't run a single 16 nor 2x16gb. Can only run 2666MHz sticks at 2133MHz

I am returning the Gigabyte Z890 AORUS Elite Duo X. It arrived today after a 5-day slow ride from Amazon in Baltimore and I have spent about 8 or 9 hours fighting it. Super nice motherboard, but something is bugged with the hardware or the firmware. When I first installed it, could not get it to POST normally with two RAM sticks. It would POST, restart and then hang with the DRAM debug LED illuminated. So, I swapped in another memory kit. Same thing. Cleared CMOS several times and nothing. I then got it to boot with one RAM stick, but Windows would freeze while loading. I tried to reflash the BIOS using the EZ-Flash button after renaming the BIOS file GIGABYTE.bin but the button would not do anything. Totally unresponsive. I finally got into the BIOS and the file was seen as "invalid ROM" by the BIOS. I moved the memory stick to the other slot and tried again, then it worked and I flashed the BIOS. After that it booted with both RAM sticks. Both memory kits booted fine. I turned it off, unplugged it, then plugged it in again. This time the EZ-Flash button worked and it seemed all good. Easily hit 8800 stable. I thought "OK, that was weird, but everything is fine now." NOT! I began working on tuning the CPU, but any change made to the D2D clock ratio other than leaving it set to "Auto" it would only boot to BIOS Safe Mode with the message that the BIOS settings were unstable. Another issue I encountered, even though it is a 2-DIMM board, the memory slots are spaced several millimeters further apart than the Apex and the Supercool direct touch RAM block would not work with it. I considered getting an ASROCK Taichi OCF, but don't really like the brand or how it looks. (I have hated all three ASROCK mobos I have owned in the past.) Ordered another Z890 Apex for $25 less than the OCF. It was $100 more than the Duo X, but I don't need any more drama. It will be worth the extra to keep my sanity. No more likely to drip on the GPU than the CPU block. I've never had a memory water block that leaked before. This story made the thought of getting the Taichi OCF an even more unattractive option. That, plus the fact that I have never actually cared for any ASROCK motherboard previously, including a Z370 Taichi and X870E Taichi.

TM5 is primarily Memory and some CPU. Windows Memory Diagnostics. I just toss it on top of the pile with MemTest when I'm just hitting it different ways but less intense than Karhu. If I can make it past TN5 extreme I'm usually good but many times toss Absolut on it for that extra lock down for at least 90 minutes on either.

That would be really awesome....

1.3.2 was only popular to keep the higher 200W on the 2080. I personally do not care since I run the AGA. I ran my M15x from 2009 (I forget, I think two sticks banged together) -> 680M (2014) -> 980M(2018) and even got Occulus Rift running on it (such great memories Xmas work week VR stuff w coworkers). So that's 17 years on only two Alienware laptops....not bad. Area 51m "upgradability" was a total knife in the back. Zero drop-in....not even 2080 Super but the 2080 worked for me through Cyperpunk, BG3 & Alyx so I didn't suffer. Only recently with 2025+ titles did I dust off the AGA and throw in a 5080 to continue being fine. I heard from Amir that 1.7.3 has more forgiving RAM speed settings vs. 1.9.3

from Neowin - Microsoft shares Windows 10 LTSC end of support date, and extended security update details

actually there was a 1.10.12 version available around middle or late July but the 1.10.13 version followed few days after v1.10.12 was released; I use this site to obtain different versions of the Nahimic app

Posting this here because there does not appear to be a dedicated AA18250/2025+ Area-51 notebook subforum yet. I came up with the following help from good bud ChatGPT. $6k machine - you bet I am going to do what I can to keep this thing until the solder joints break. I ran into something tonight that may be useful to other AA18250 owners, especially anyone who prefers to control BIOS/firmware updates manually. My machine is an Alienware 18 Area-51, currently running BIOS 2.4.1. I noticed Windows Update had suddenly installed/staged the following and was asking for a reboot: Intel SoftwareComponent Driver Update 3.4.1007.0 — several instances Dell, Inc. Firmware Driver Update 2.5.0.0 Intel System Driver Update 2.3.20304.7 Intel Platform Monitoring Technology 3.2.0.22 several other Intel components The Dell firmware entry was the one that caught my attention because I intentionally do not want Windows Update deciding when my BIOS gets flashed. I had previously configured Windows not to include drivers with Windows Update, but checking the registry showed: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate REG_DWORD 0x0 So somewhere along the way that protection had been reset to 0. I restored it with elevated PowerShell: reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate" /v ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f and verified: reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate" /v ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate which then showed: ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate REG_DWORD 0x1 The more interesting part was checking what Windows had actually staged. Running: pnputil /enum-devices /class Firmware /drivers showed: Device Description: System Firmware 2.5.0 Manufacturer Name: Dell, Inc. Status: Problem Problem Code: 14 (0x0E) [CM_PROB_NEED_RESTART] Driver Name: oem79.inf and: Driver Version: 06/09/2026 2.5.0.0 Driver Status: Best Ranked / Installed So this was not just some harmless Windows Update listing. The 2.5.0 firmware package had been bound to the System Firmware device and was waiting for a reboot. Since I did not want Windows flashing the BIOS automatically, I removed the staged package before rebooting: pnputil /delete-driver oem79.inf /uninstall After that, running: pnputil /enum-devices /class Firmware /drivers showed: Device Description: System Firmware 2.4.1 Status: Started Driver Name: oem43.inf and the 2.5.0 firmware package was no longer the active firmware driver. I then rebooted directly into BIOS and confirmed the actual installed BIOS was still: BIOS Version: 2.4.1 So the 2.5.0 flash had not occurred. While I was in BIOS I also checked for some kind of UEFI Capsule Firmware Updates toggle. On my BIOS I could not find one. Searching for “UEFI,” “firmware,” etc. only returned things like Secure Boot, BIOS downgrade, BIOS recovery, firmware tamper detection, and related settings. BIOSConnect was already OFF on my machine. After exiting BIOS and returning to Windows, Windows Update showed “You’re up to date” with no pending restart. The only offered update was the optional July preview cumulative update, which I left alone. A few takeaways: Windows Update can absolutely stage a Dell BIOS update as a firmware driver. If you rely on ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate, periodically verify that it is still set to 1. The relevant check is: pnputil /enum-devices /class Firmware /drivers If you see a newer System Firmware version with: CM_PROB_NEED_RESTART then Windows has likely staged the firmware for the next reboot. If you want to remove a staged firmware package, identify the exact oemXX.inf first and only then remove that specific package. In my case it was: pnputil /delete-driver oem79.inf /uninstall Do not blindly copy that oem79.inf number from my machine; yours may be different. The Windows firmware-driver label is not necessarily the same thing as the BIOS physically installed in the machine. The BIOS setup screen is the authoritative check. I still do not know what caused ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate to revert from 1 to 0. I am not claiming Dell changed that policy. It could have been Windows servicing, a configuration change, an updater, or something else. For anyone who likes to manually vet BIOS releases before installing them, this is probably worth keeping an eye on. In my case, the machine remained on BIOS 2.4.1, and the staged 2.5.0 package was removed before Windows got a chance to flash it. If anyone else with an AA18250 sees BIOS 2.5.0 being offered through Windows Update, I’d be interested to know whether Dell has also posted it publicly for manual download yet, and what the release notes say.

Time Spy with 150W power limit (effectively no limit). Also, the power slider does work. Only Nvidia Inspector (NOT Nvidia Profile Inspector, you need Nvidia Inspector from ~2017) can control it, but it works.

If no one cares about anything older than 1.5.0 we don't need to do it. I am fine with 1.50+ whatever newer versions you guys use

Yep, I'm working on the copper plate at the moment, trying to dig some slots for R22 composants (they are higher than the GPU die), so everything fit well and the plate can sit on the die. And when done, i will solder some high performance heatpipes on it (minimum 2)to keep the card cool. Will share some pics later.

Raising the TDP does work though. This is 125w vs 110w in firestrike: systeminfo doesn't work, but this is on a P150EM with a 3920xm at 4.3ghz that is modded for direct dGPU display output.