Alienware Area-51 THREADRIPPER EDITION
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,053 words · ~5 min read
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one week ago at our first ever LTX
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2017 we previewed for real AMD thread
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Ripper performance thanks to Alienware
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but come on lonus that was just a preview you only did one Benchmark
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you're such a teeth I
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know but that was then and this is now
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Alienware has arranged for their system
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to be exclusively reviewed before the
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formal embargo lift for ryzen Threadripper so let's uh rip it
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open Tunnel bear for teams makes it easy
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to secure your Wi-Fi on any network and comes with priority support and easy
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Team Management try it for free at the link below
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now we usually focus on pre-built desktop PCS where there's something
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truly standout about them otherwise we'd be reviewing every Best Buy special that
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hit the shelves back in 2014 the cool
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thing about the all new Area 51 was the
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rotated motherboard tray and the Triad
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design with RGB lighting and design wise
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not much has changed if you liked it then you'll like it now and vice versa
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what stands out now though is the internals so let's pop the panel and
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show you around the irony of a DVD burner on
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something that's trying to look like alien technology isn't lost on me but
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the rest of the io is what I would describe as suitably futuristic we've
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got dual usb3 audio and a card reader at
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the front with lots more usb3 at the back in including a type c Port opening
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up the other side reveals that these aliens are the type to cram everything
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under the bed when their Alien Mom asks them to clean their room and we also
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find a trio of 3 and 1/2 in hard drive mounts and a companion dual 2 and 1/2 in
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Mount for SATA ssds perfectly adequate
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for future upgrades what's not perfect
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about the case is its unwieldiness the
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chat itself makes generous use of Steel
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which makes it strong sure but also super heavy considering that there's
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only a single hard drive and a single 120 mm aiio cooler in there and there
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aren't any obvious handholds making it quite difficult to get a grip on it a
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combination that um totally has no
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relevance whatsoever to instances in the
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past wherein things may or may not have escaped my grip through no fault of my
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own anywho all of these systems come
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configured with AMD ryzen Threadripper
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in the 1950x variant we're talking 16 cores and
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32 threads on this CPU that also happens
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to have 40 megabytes of cash seriously
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it has more cash than the 286 era hard
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drive that a fan brought to LTX for me to sign it also features 64 PCI Express
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Lanes allowing it to run up to three graphics cards at full pcii express 16x
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gen 3 speeds for three-way Crossfire or
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for workstation use with plenty of PCI E
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Lanes to spare for the onboard Wi-Fi SATA controller for hard drives and an
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m.2 slot that houses a 256 gig SanDisk
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a400 NVMe SSD so so now then let's meet the
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challengers our x299 test bench with its
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core I9 7900x Skylake X CPU is the most
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obvious analog from The Blue Team given its similar price but we'll be including
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results from our mainstream platforms as
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well kicking things off then are our gaming tests which should surprise no
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one this is an Alienware after all with rise of the Tomb Raider we're looking at
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pretty similar but slightly worse performance overall while our synthetics
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put it pretty much on par with the core I9 we are planning to run more thread
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Ripper gaming benchmarks but those will have to wait for the full review moving
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on to productivity we see pretty much what we expected to see major wins in
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multi-threaded workloads the biggest victories though come in blender it's
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time to render beats out the core I9
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test bench by 37 seconds in the the BMW test and by over 2 minutes in the
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classroom sample damn I don't pull that off very well do
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I anyway we do have to note though that
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we found that our centu X cooler really
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struggled to keep Threadripper fully chilled and running its best and after
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swapping in our own with a fresh application of thermal compound so then
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who is the area 51 Threadripper Edition
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four at $4,000 aspect to be brutally honest
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we're not quite sure I mean there are actually a lot of exceptions to the
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conventional wisdom that it would be cheaper to build your own gaming PC like
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Dell's own also AMD-based inspiring
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gaming desktop that will be reviewing soon but the area 51 costs like a
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boutique system with some significant
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drawbacks and an unexceptional motherboard with only four dim slots
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rather than eight and limited overclocking options unsightly Exposed
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pcbs on the RAM and exposed bare Steel
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on the to alien wees credit beef and modular 1500 W power supply along with
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and this is by far the worst one frankly inadequate cooling the area 51 runs
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almost as hot and loud as a laptop under
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synthetic load and at this size and
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weight there's no excuse for that bottom
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line then if you really want the area 51
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as a status symbol Alienware is the
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first place you can get your hands on a pre-built thread reper system but
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understand that the early adopter tax you'll be paying is in more than money I
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am fully expecting Boutique systems built around this platform for this
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price with better Cooling and cable management
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in the coming months so thanks for watching guys if
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you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit the like
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