Alienware area51 18 laptop
I’ve tried several linux distros installations, no sound on either. I’m now on EndeacourOS and ssame.
It first appears “pro audio” off, when I turn it on then appears 4 slots but no sound at all on speakers nor jack…
I followed the installation with nvidia for new cards and online
Can you post inxi -Fza on console ?
Can you start alsamixer on console ?
Is the sound muted ?
inxi -Fza
System:
Kernel: 6.18.4-arch1-1 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 15.2.1
clocksource: tsc avail: acpi_pm
parameters: initrd=\ef7d25e9d33545dc85932574041ee861\6.18.4-arch1-1\initrd
nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw
root=UUID=e74e8ab3-bd5e-4f09-8ff1-c62b130dd3c4
systemd.machine_id=ef7d25e9d33545dc85932574041ee861
Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.5.4 tk: Qt v: N/A info: frameworks v: 6.21.0
wm: kwin_wayland vt: 1 dm: SDDM Distro: EndeavourOS base: Arch Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Alienware product: Alienware 18 Area-51 AA18250 v: N/A
serial: Chassis: type: 10 serial:
Mobo: Alienware model: 0M66RF v: A00 serial:
part-nu: 0CCD uuid: Firmware: UEFI vendor: Alienware
v: 1.9.0 date: 11/03/2025
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 84.6 Wh (100%) condition: 84.6/94.7 Wh (89.4%)
health: good temp: 20 C volts: 13.1 min: 11.7 model: SMP DELL 6CK5K575
made: 2025-07-07 type: Li-poly serial: charging:
status: not charging cycles: 7
CPU:
Info: model: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Arrow Lake
level: v3 note: check built: 2024+ process: Intel 20a (2nm) family: 6
model-id: 0xC6 (198) stepping: 2 microcode: 0x11A
Topology: cpus: 1x dies: 1 clusters: 12 cores: 24 smt:
cache: L1: 2.4 MiB desc: d-16x32 KiB, 8x48 KiB; i-24x64 KiB L2: 40 MiB
desc: 8x3 MiB, 4x4 MiB L3: 36 MiB desc: 1x36 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2053 min/max: 800/5300:5400:4700 scaling:
driver: intel_pstate governor: powersave cores: 1: 2053 2: 2053 3: 2053
4: 2053 5: 2053 6: 2053 7: 2053 8: 2053 9: 2053 10: 2053 11: 2053 12: 2053
13: 2053 14: 2053 15: 2053 16: 2053 17: 2053 18: 2053 19: 2053 20: 2053
21: 2053 22: 2053 23: 2053 24: 2053 bogomips: 147456
Flags-basic: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Vulnerabilities:
Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected
Type: ghostwrite status: Not affected
Type: indirect_target_selection status: Not affected
Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
Type: l1tf status: Not affected
Type: mds status: Not affected
Type: meltdown status: Not affected
Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
Type: old_microcode status: Not affected
Type: reg_file_data_sampling status: Not affected
Type: retbleed status: Not affected
Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected
Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via
prctl
Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer
sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB:
conditional; PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected; BHI: BHI_DIS_S
Type: srbds status: Not affected
Type: tsa status: Not affected
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Type: vmscape mitigation: IBPB before exit to userspace
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Arrow Lake-S [Intel Graphics] vendor: Dell driver: i915
v: kernel alternate: xe arch: Xe2-LPG process: TSMC n3 (3nm) built: 2025+
ports: active: none empty: DP-4 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:7d67
class-ID: 0300
Device-2: NVIDIA GB203M / GN22-X11 [GeForce RTX 5090 Max-Q Mobile]
vendor: Dell driver: nvidia v: 590.48.01 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm
non-free: 550-580.xx+ status: current (as of 2025-11) arch: Lovelace
code: AD1xx process: TSMC n4 (5nm) built: 2022+ pcie: gen: 2 speed: 5 GT/s
lanes: 8 link-max: gen: 5 speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: eDP-1
empty: DP-1, DP-2, DP-3, HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:2c58
class-ID: 0300
Device-3: Realtek Integrated_Webcam_8M driver: uvcvideo type: USB rev: 3.2
speed: 5 Gb/s lanes: 1 mode: 3.2 gen-1x1 bus-ID: 4-4:2 chip-ID: 0bda:559a
class-ID: fe01 serial:
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.21 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.9
compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: modesetting,nvidia
alternate: fbdev,intel,nouveau,nv,vesa dri: iris
gpu: nv_platform,nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch display-ID: 0
Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: AU Optronics 0x96b1 built: 2024 res:
mode: 2560x1600 hz: 300 scale: 125% (1.25) to: 2048x1280 dpi: 168 gamma: 1.2
size: 388x242mm (15.28x9.53") diag: 457mm (18") ratio: 16:10
modes: 2560x1600
API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: intel iris drv: nvidia platforms: device: 0
drv: nvidia device: 1 drv: iris device: 3 drv: swrast gbm: drv: iris
surfaceless: drv: nvidia wayland: drv: nvidia x11: drv: nvidia
inactive: device-2
API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 25.3.3-arch1.1
glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop
GPU/PCIe/SSE2 memory: 23.33 GiB display-ID: :1.0
API: Vulkan v: 1.4.335 layers: 6 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu name: NVIDIA
GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU driver: nvidia v: 590.48.01
device-ID: 10de:2c58 surfaces: N/A
Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor gpu: nvidia-smi wl: wayland-info
x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Audio:
Device-1: NVIDIA GB203 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
pcie: gen: 5 speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 8 link-max: lanes: 16 bus-ID: 01:00.1
chip-ID: 10de:22e9 class-ID: 0403
Device-2: Intel 800 Series ACE vendor: Dell
driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-mtl
alternate: snd_sof_pci_intel_mtl,snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 80:1f.3
chip-ID: 8086:7f50 class-ID: 0401
API: ALSA v: k6.18.4-arch1-1 status: kernel-api
tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.4.9 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
4: pw-jack type: plugin tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
Network:
Device-1: Intel Wi-Fi 7 AX1775 /AX1790 /BE20 /BE401/BE1750 2x2
vendor: Rivet Networks driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s
lanes: 1 bus-ID: 83:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:272b class-ID: 0280
IF: wlan0 state: down mac:
Device-2: Realtek Killer E5000 5GbE vendor: Rivet Networks driver: r8169
v: kernel pcie: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 1 port: 3000 bus-ID: 84:00.0
chip-ID: 10ec:5000 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp132s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac:
Info: services: NetworkManager, systemd-timesyncd, wpa_supplicant
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel BE200 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0
speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 bus-ID: 3-14:6 chip-ID: 8087:0036
class-ID: e001
Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: disabled
rfk-block: hardware: no software: no address: N/A
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.86 TiB used: 66.9 GiB (3.5%)
SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Samsung model: PM9E1 SED 2048GB
size: 1.86 TiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 126 Gb/s
lanes: 4 tech: SSD serial: fw-rev: 88320259 temp: 35.9 C
scheme: GPT
Partition:
ID-1: / raw-size: 1.86 TiB size: 1.83 TiB (98.37%) used: 66.64 GiB (3.6%)
fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
Swap:
Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) zswap: yes
compressor: zstd max-pool: 20%
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
file: /swapfile
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 57.0 C mobo: 41.8 C
Fan Speeds (rpm): cpu: 1769
Info:
Memory: total: 64 GiB note: est. available: 62.25 GiB used: 4.9 GiB (7.9%)
Processes: 452 Power: uptime: 22m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: s2idle
wakeups: 0 hibernate: platform avail: shutdown, reboot, suspend, test_resume
image: 24.86 GiB services: org_kde_powerdevil, power-profiles-daemon,
upowerd Init: systemd v: 259 default: graphical tool: systemctl
Packages: pm: pacman pkgs: 1127 libs: 320 tools: yay Compilers:
gcc: 15.2.1 Shell: Bash v: 5.3.9 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.40
and for alsamixer yes I can run it, I have 2 options: default with 100 volume no sound and Nvidia 0 volumen no sound either
Welcome to 
forums!! Hope your issue gets resolved soon by our community members.
Based on my web search, as you say the issue exists in other distros like Fedora and Mint with other users pointing out that it might be a kernel issue.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=445682
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=445682&start=20
It seems that the issue persists on the latest kernel too. Is the audio working via HDMI and/or bluetooth?
thanks for replies!
Yes, I even tried downgrading kernel in other distros with no success.
I dont have access right now to BT devices since I just moved and all my stuff is in boxes. I also need to buy a jack adaptor to try an USB external soundcard I have.
I’ll post the results as soon as I can try those things.
In the meantime, can someone translate this for me?
they fixed it on kernel 6.15.11 and broke it later or what?
Sound thru USB works with external sound card.
Most likely a kernel issue, I’m in touch with linux kernel email…
