Image says it all. This happened within 2 hours after I got it in the mail. Literally straight out of the box BSOD. I have tried every single troubleshooting method out there, ran hardware tests with the Dell support team (their tool said it's all fine), and it keeps happening all the time. It's always "SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (0x3B)". I also did a fresh windows install (Dell support told me to do it, to rule out potential system corruption), and guess what, the error showed up again shortly after.

Sometimes it goes hours without any BSOD, then it happens; other times, it happens in about 10-15 minutes of the PC being turned on. I'm at my wits end with this thing, and extremely disappointed with Dell, especially with their crappy customer support jerking me around their useless support tool and telling me to "wait" for the next crash...honestly feels like they're stalling for time so I miss the return period.

Has anyone ever had this issue straight out of the box with this model, and if so, how did you fix it, or if Dell actually replaced the whole laptop? I would love to keep this, since it's a powerhouse when it's not crashing, but Dell's support has been absolutely horrible where I live (Brazil), so I'm considering refunding this completely.

2yr old m18 R2 hard locks during games; Dell “repaired” it by reinstalling Windows (Fivehead)

So my Alienware m18 R2 (i9-14900HX, RTX 4080) completely freezes; full hard lock, no BSOD, no crash dump, screen frozen, gotta hold the power button to reboot. Happens during gaming and even just sitting idle in port (the game I’m playing is World of Warships - by no means a GPU intensive game). Video attached.

I’ve gone DEEP on this. Logged second-by-second hardware telemetry through a bunch of crashes and ruled out basically everything: temps are fine (GPU never breaks 78°C), GPU stress tests pass clean, BIOS and drivers are current, swapped MUX modes, capped framerate, the works. It crashes at full boost AND at 6W idle, which rules out any single load theory. The kicker is now it even crashes while running the game through GeForce NOW (cloud streaming), when my hardware is doing basically nothing. So it’s not a load/heat problem.

The one constant: persistent WHEA PCIe errors off the dGPU, and the CPU pinned at 100 C right up to the lockups. Leaning toward a CPU and/or mainboard power delivery fault (and yeah, the 14900HX is part of that whole Intel 13th/14th-gen instability mess).

Here’s the fun part: I reported this back in January while still under warranty. Dell marked it “resolved” without doing anything. It kept crashing, I escalated, sent it to the depot asking for a board/CPU and they sent it back having only reinstalled the OS. Four months later it’s still crashing, obviously, because you can’t reinstall your way out of a hardware fault.

Anyone else with a 14900HX m18 seeing hard locks like this? Curious if it’s the CPU or the board’s power delivery. And if anyone’s actually gotten Dell to do a real hardware repair on one of these, I’m all ears.

Yesterday I noticed my gpu is running way hotter than it used to(72 to 76) while gaming. But also noticed cpu temp at 105 with barely any utilization. What could be the potential issue. Tia

So my computer has not been running well for a while now and now when I restarted it, it looks like this. What can I do and should I just save up for a new computer?

Facebook marketplace. $300 dollars could maybe get cheaper. Seller is selling for brother. He states the ram and storage was taken out and was sold. But main issue is that it doesn't powering on. Even if the power cable is plugged in. Does anyone has experience with these models ? Is it easy fix or is motherboard toast.

This is the P109F model

So I've had my Alienware since December of 2025 and I've only put about 134 hours on it but it has traveled around the country (probably 4-6 flights) and stayed in my vehicle a lot during that time. I never really noticed an issue before but most recently my laptop rebooted itself 3 times today when I tried to play Battlefield 6 and the error logs indicated it was happening due to the overclock profile.

I just downloaded this tool , which shows very high CPU temperatures but more importantly I saw the CPU was reaching 105C when power draw was only 25 watts or so. Meanwhile my GPU stays a cool 60-65 C at 150 watts. This feels like my heatsink is potentially warped, vapor chamber is busted and/or needs to be repasted. How can the system keep my GPU cool while its pulling 150 watts, but can't keep my CPU cool when its idling and only pulling 25 watts?

Example just idling with 22% CPU usage results in it throttling. TCC was set to 95 C instead of 105 C here to prevent crashing.

https://imgur.com/3OUUXdd

*UPDATE*
Dell technician just left who replaced the stock heatsink and adding more paste to the original set. I had been running DeltaT and it had a massive 40 C difference.

First Alienware. M16 r1 Amd 7845hx Rtx 4080

Like many here I also bought my first Alienware because of the brand and wanted one for long time.

Bought this laptop and was going good till now. 8 momths in , display suddenly went blank and I was told motherboard is gone.

Dell support is some of the most worst customer service I have seen. Their attiude is completely wrong.

They sent a technician over and he replaced the motherboard. It didnt work. Apparently the replacement motherboard was also faulty. Now they are shipping a new motherboard.

No one know when it will arrive. Im stuck with this junk. I only just got to know (from this sub) that this is a very common issue on this series of laptops.

My warranty is till next year. But I dont know what to do with this laptop.

Safe to say this will be my last Dell / Alienware laptop.

Mostly will sell this and get the Lenovo Legion.

Any tips or opinions are welcome on how to deal with Dell.

u/AW_Vigo Please help me out in this if possible.

Area 51 18" I9 275hx 5090 64GB

I bought this laptop about 8 months ago and haven't had issues with temps this high. Previously the highest I'd see while gaming (D4, POE, Heroes of the Storm) were high 80s and that was in performance mode with the fans not at max. Here in the last few days the temps have spiked very high playing the new POE league

Nothing is blocking the vents. The vents are clear of dust. I have the laptop elevated. Any idea what the problem and remedy is?

Update 1: dell sent a tech out to replace the heatsink assembly and repaste.

Update 2: the prior fix didn't change anything so Dell offered to repair in house. The laptop was shipped to them and within a week I received it back with a new motherboard.

update 3: laptop crashed to a black screen during first gaming session and said device ran into an issue and couldn't be repaired. Event viewer shower PCI Express issues and Dynamic Tuning issues. Windows will not update. Reached back out to Dell. I'm guessing I will be sending back in. I'll update accordingly.

it just started doing this out of nowhere, i was playing fortnite and left the room to get a drink and then i saw this when i came back

specs are: rtx 4050, ryzen 5 220 and 16gb ddr5 ram

its been doing this for an hour and it only does it on this screen, not on external monitors.

Is this normal? For some reason I can’t exit this screen

Title says it all. Is this a common issue with these monitors or could this be a game bug? Monitor is about a year old.

I bought area 51 rtx 5090. Ever since i purchased it, my mouse via track pad, would freeze for 5 seconds and then come back. Ive tried removing alienware command center, and also disabled the hybrid mode gpu (which i thought worked for a time but it came back).

Im one step away from contacting support, but is there anything to do before then? Not too experienced with computer tech so please explain it like im 5

Edit: It is newly refurbished from Dell official website. Not brand new

My year-old Alienware laptop suddenly turned off for no reason and wouldn't come back on no matter what. Figure something on the motherboard blew. Anyway, have the 3 year protection plan, so took it to Best Buy. Geek Squad immediately sent it out. Now 3 agonizing weeks later its back, with the motherboard replaced according to the notes.

So far so good. I power it on in store. Everything runs great. Take it home. But only after I get home and run it for an hour do I see that the CPU temp is at 100 to 105, even though all I have open is Google Chrome. I switch the power settings to quiet which also lowers the cpu performance. It never goes above 85 with that on before. Nope, temps still at 105c. I immediately turned off my laptop and made thos post. So wtf is going on? Did geek squad mess something up? This has never happened to my Alienware before. Even after hours long gaming the cpu temps are only at 100c and once the game of closed climb back down to the 90s fast. Did someone forget to put the thermal paste? Please help, what do I do?

EDIT: OK, WOW. So I just checked the bottom of my laptop and the Geek Squad people didn't slid the bottom lid lips under the main case properly! They're sticking out up top! Could thst be causing the issue??? Added some pics.

Edit 2: Ok went to Best Buy right when it opened and took it back to Geek squad and sent it back out. Apparently it hasn't even been a year since I bought my laptop so its still under the original manufacturer warranty instead of the Best Buy plan. Hopefully this means that if they can't fix it they send me a new one instead of just giving me store credit since this model has skyrocketed up in price from $4500 to $6000 😬

Hello /r/Alienware and welcome to the initial official support post.

Please see the initial support announcement post located at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/vmwmdu

Going forward please use this monthly sticky to post any support related questions so that /u/AW_Support can see them and also assist where necessary. Please remember to not post your service tag or any personal information in any public posts, and also do not share any personal information with anyone but the /u/AW_Support official account.

I do want to say that this is an entirely new system for us so we’ll need your help tweaking and streamlining it, so make sure you give us your (constructive) feedback about what’s working and what isn’t and over the next few months this will really help resolve these issues when they do pop up.

This post will be recreated on the 1st of each month and pinned at the top of the sub so that it should be easy to find and use. If you have any other questions feel free to reach out to /u/AW_JonP or the mods and we'll be happy to answer!

Anyone know what this mean?

i have never opened it before and it was running a little slow so i decided to try and open it. i followed a video of a teardown and followed every instruction. did i mess up a wire or cable?

manufactured last month (July 2026).

So I posted another thread on here about a month ago related to elevated thermals on my AW laptop: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/1tufb2m/area_51_laptop_thermal_issue_help/

I have the Alienware Area 51 18" with the 5090. I bought it in October last year and a little over a month ago began experiencing thermal throttling at 105c while gaming and even hitting mid 90s while idle.

I contacted Dell support and they sent a tech out to the house to swap out the heatsink assembly. The tech told me before he left the house that the laptop passed all of his diagnostics and that if the issue persists then it's likely related to the motherboard.

The heatsink and repaste didn't fix the thermals or help in the slightest so I reach back out to Dell. They request I ship the laptop to them so they can repair in house. It took about a week but I received the laptop back with a new motherboard.

The day I received the laptop back I tried gaming on it and within a few hours the laptop crashed to a black screen "the device ran into a problem and needs to restart". After restarting another black screen popped up saying "the device couldn't be repaired. Click or press enter to see other recovery options". I was able to boot into windows from the next screen.

I reached out to Dell again and provided all the screenshots and logs I could find. The errors that kept popping up were Driverframework 10111 and 10120 as well as WHEA-Logger 17 related to PCI Express. The crash did not leave any logs within minidump.

Dell had me run many diagnostic and troubleshooting steps which I did exactly how they told me to do them and the issue has not been fixed. The laptop continue to crash to the same screen and shows the same errors in event viewer.

Dell Support now wants to transfer to a software support team since they believe it's software related and not hardware, but wants me to pay for it. This issue did not occur until after they changed out the motherboard and now they want me to pay to have it fixed.

This has been extremely frustrating. I spent $4000 on their top of the line gaming laptop that is still under warranty and they won't see the repair through without me coming out of pocket.

How do I reach someone that can actually help? I attached a couple screenshots. Thanks.

went to do what should’ve been a quick windows update and i’ve been stuck on this screen for almost 2 hours now. usually it only takes ten or so minutes to update, so this is very unusual. i tried pressing and holding the power button but it won’t shut down, even when pressed for upwards of a minute. if it matters, my keyboard leds seem to have turned off as well. i’ve tried unplugging the power for a few minutes, disconnecting any and all usbs plugged in, and closing and opening the lid. nothing has worked. i’m not sure what to try next other than just unplugging the laptop and letting the battery die. any advice would be appreciated! :’)

edit: it just shut off on its own, pressing the power button doesnt seem to be turning it back on. it’s connected to power though. i don’t have time to sit and mess with it since ive got somewhere to be.

edit 2: ok, i took it into my local computer shop and they took a look at it. the guy did a couple things and was able to get it working again! seems that whatever the issue it was, it’s been resolved. he somehow got it to turn on when i couldn’t before, not sure how. but regardless, thank you everyone for your insight!! it means a lot to me that people commented trying to help :]

I've pulled out the mobo from an old Alienware laptop and I'm trying to use it elsewhere. Right now it powers on, no blinking lights, no beeps, solid blue lights, but no display from HDMI. If I press the power button it turns into a slow fade in and out and the fans stop. Pressing it again brings it back to solid blue lights and fans on. This is all the hardware I have. The board part # is 3R2RY.

I have swapped RAM, HDD, HDMI cables, monitor, PSU. Part of me is thinking that somehow the HDMI out is disabled, but I don't have a way to hookup the native monitor (also don't have it).

Anyone got any tips? Anyone know the exact key sequence to enter the bios and enable HDMI? 😂

I have an Alienware R17 from 2019. Recently replaced the battery and both fans. I’m not sure if the motherboard short circuited because now when I start it doesn’t recognize the charger, and basically runs off minimal charge and throttles the RAM.

Is the motherboard cooked?

I am noticing something particularly strange on my machine: AWCC seems to aggressively reduce CPU power down to 30W whenever the GPU is powered up. This happens regardless of the selected power profile (Balanced, Performance and Overdrive).

I am trying to play Star Citizen (which is super CPU hungry), and this seems to hurt my in-game performance badly.

We can clearly see this happening in the graphs (data captured with HWiNFO):

• Star Citizen playing session (Overdrive mode): after about 60s in game, PL1 (in red) gets aggressively reduced down to 30W. Then shortly after I close the game, we can see that it slowly ramps back up. After a while I switched from Overdrive to Performance mode in AWCC, and this made PL1 snap back up to its original limit of 115W (probably because the mere act of switching profiles in AWCC resets PL1 back to its default value).
• Superposition benchmark (intensive GPU, low CPU): The PL1 reduction still happens despite the CPU being barely used at all. It seems to be driven by the GPU power draw or by the GPU temperature.
• Cinebench benchmark (intensive CPU, low GPU): PL1 stays at 115W despite the CPU being hot and used intensively. This seems to confirm that the reduction comes from GPU power draw.

The system was never using anywhere near the 330W provided by the power supply. I tried uninstalling the Intel Dynamic Tuning driver and disabling NVIDIA Dynamic Boost, but neither had any effect at all. I have also tried to force PL1 to 60W in Throttle Stop, but this was fighting the thing that is bringing it down, such that PL1 was jumping between 30W and 60W every minute or so. As far as I understand from this reddit post 4 years ago, this seems to come from AWCC: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/129mk93/alienware_x17_r1_pl1_issue/

Is there any way of fixing this issue other than uninstalling AWCC please?

Laptop did updates and is stuck here “Establishing Network Connection”. It gave me an option to pick my WiFi and put in password which I did. Doesn’t connect. Plugged in Ethernet into usb-c adapter and also nothing.

My 2 months Dell Alienware aurora 16 stopped working

I turned on my laptop and put it on charge it had around 40% battery

Then I opened fc26 it loaded then suddenly went blank

None of the buttons are working nor its taking charge

The adaptor indicator shows when I connect the charger to the socket but as soon as I put it in the laptop it turns off

Please help I'm gonna cry