Aurora R10, very disappointed with the software and more

Question

I have always been a fan boy of the Dell line up, but now that I own a $4000 Aurora R10 I will never buy another and will never tell people to buy one.

First, the software is garbage, AWCC is junk. It shows me 000 on my CPU and I was told the next BIOS update will fix it. Well I got that the other day and same thing.

The fans are junk in a PC that cost $4000+. When you go to change them to something better to get better cooling you get errors everytime at bootup. The fact you would lock people to use those junk fans is a joke.

There is so much more to go off about but there is just no point and I know they won't care.

But I'll tell you now, I will never buy another Dell product and will never tell friends and family to buy this garbage. As soon as I can efford to buy a motherboard, tower, and power supply, I'll be pulling the CPU ram and GPU and moving to a real PC. Then running this garbage over with my truck. I'll send the garbage back to Dell.

I saved for over a year to get this thing and its was a waste. Thanks Dell.

PCRead · Answer

As regards Alienware Desktops and other Dell consumer desktops, I'd probably agree with you.
But our company has a PowerEdge and several OptiPlex micro form factor machines and laptops and they're all really great.
And the XPS laptops consistently receive very good reviews.

I'll be doing a transplant of my R10 in the near future, certainly before the 1 year "Premium Service" expires in July.
Dell certainly have dropped the ball when it comes to consumer desktops in order to concentarte on their corporate business.

Vanadiel · Answer

The issue with AWCC is with AWCC itself, not the bios. New version should be resolving that.

As for the fans, yes, they are loud. But they can be changed to aftermarket fans, but you are limited in options to a few (good) brands like Noctua.

But overall they could and should do better for $4,000, you are correct on that.

sm56 · Answer

I have the AWCC Service disabled... No reason to run it unless I need to change the lighting or fan profiles.

I have the original version R10 with the Ryzen 3000 series and BIOS 1.0.8. Replaced the stock 2080 ti blower with a Founder's Edition 2080 ti last year before all the crazyness with GPU shortages.

For the most part, the R10 (first generation of R10) is a pretty reliable machine after replacing the GPU, disabling Dell Data Vault, Support Assist & AWCC. I made sure when I ordered mine that it did come with an AIO Liquid cooler, 850 watt power supply etc...

I am wondering if shortcuts are being taken due to all the shortages? That said I plan on keeping my (knock on wood) reliable 1st gen R10 for a few more years.

If I buy a new system in a few years, it might be from a vendor like i-buy-power or PowerGPU.

PCRead · Answer

No. there's a problem with the BIOS on my machine (R10, 5900, 3080). If it upgrades (and it will try to as soon as it boots, unless you F2/F12 it first) from 2.1.3 to 2.2.1 or 2.2.2 it will not get past the operating system start. Alienware logo, spinning dots. And no, it's not a boot disk error, it does the same from a USB with a bootable Zorin Linux etc.
And you can't downgrade from 2.2.1, so...

I'm on my 3rd mobo as of today and it had the engineer stumped too. It's obviously getting the latest and greatest version from a hidden partition on the bootdrive.

Obviously the only option is yet another mobo and making sure it doesn't auto-upgrade on its first start. Which also means I won't be able to upgrade until Dell release a BIOS that doesn't brick my machine. And how will I know which one is safe?

Now I'm waiting for Dell to come up with a solution on how to fix my expensive paperweight.

mako64 · Answer

Yikes ! sorry to hear that ! 3 mobos! dang I think thats the worst I have read in here. You have all the right to be mad.

JagodaMoskal · Answer

I got exactly same situation R10 (ryzen 9 5900, RTX 3090, 64gb ram). Just today mobo (1st time) changed to new one and after maybe 5 minutes, its updated to 2.2.1 from 2.1.2 (leave pc for paperwork on windows login) than stuck. Trying to rollback it change bios to 2.2.2, restore bios change to 2.2.1. Nothing helps, got stuck. I think new mobo won't change anything.

mako64 · Answer

So the Noctua fans work with no Bios Error with the R10/Ryzen but not the R11/Intel ?

Vanadiel · Answer

I have 2 Noctua fans in the front of my R10, 3000 series. No issues, using a splitter to connect 2 to 1 fan header.

PCRead · Answer

Same here I have the 5900 and 3080 and BIOS 2.1.3 is fine until it automatically fetches 2.2.1 (presumably from a hidden partition on the boot drive) and installs it.

Then it's Alienware and spinning dots.
It's not the mobo, it's the BIOS, but 2.2.1 won't rollback ("security reasons"), so you have to replace the entire board to get a fresh BIOS version.

PCRead · Answer

Quietly seething.

I might be on my 4th (including the orig) when Dell can figure out their next move.
What I currently have is an expensive paperweight and what Dell have is another 8 months of Premium Support to find out what's wrong.
My money's on a BIOS update that I can flash to bring my R10 back to life. 2.2.2 didn't help, so 2.2.3?

JagodaMoskal · Answer

Yeah, that's correct, but Im not sure when it was updated, cause I leave PC on login screen on windows, do paperwork and when get back it was rebooted with updated BIOS. That's why I mean changing mobo won't do the work here, it will be constantly updating, so only fix here is to get new BIOS update, at least 2.2.3 hoping that'll fix it or get money back and buy something different.

JagodaMoskal · Answer

Im on line with support, and about BIOS on mobo there 3 of them with some version and if one fails it getting restore from other one (hidden), that makes the update. So... thats terrible fail... Trying to solve that issue...

Vanadiel · Answer

To turn off automatic firmware updates pushed by windows update, you need to turn off UEFI capsule firmware updates in the bios.

This will prevent windows from automatically updating bios and drivers pushed by windows update.

PCRead · Answer

At least it's not just me then. Which model/CPU/GPU do you have? I'm on R10, 5900, 3080 with 32GB of original RAM

PCRead · Answer

One of the first things it does on boot is check for newer versions of its BIOS, presumably from a hidden partition on the boot drive. It'll brick itself faster than you can shout 'What the Flip just happened?'

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Aurora R10, very disappointed with the software and more

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