Windows 10 on Aurora R3

your instructions worked like a charm. I think that the beer part helped also. thank you SO much!

Glad to help a fellow R3 owner.

I have also done some tweaking to the R3 bios, and I have renumbered it A07 Read on, and if you'd like the modded bios, please contact me, and I will be happy to mail it to you.... virus scan it if you like, but I'm a destructive person, but never trust people, and scan it anyway... I have OFFERED this bios to dell MANY times and they have REJECTED it...

WHY DELL REFUSED to make the r3 windows 8-10 compatable is BEYOND me... often they "retire" a machine and it's updates WAY TO EARLY... When I bought my R3, Windows 7 was out, and Windows 8 was a few months away... 2 months after I bought my r3, they stopped selling them and replaced with an R4.... 6 months later, I bought my spouse an R4, fairly similar to mine... other than a PCI 2.0 vs 3.0.. and some issues with win 8-10, the r3 (if u picked the right CPU) is FAR more powerful than the r4

***IF YOU WANT TO SKIP A BUNCH OF TECHNICAL BABBLE, ETC JUST SKIP TO THE SECTION AFTER A BUNCH OF *'s *****


If you get the Intel I7-2700K, you are VERY lucky as that chip can be MASSIVELY overclocked.. HOWEVER BOTH the r3 and r4 have WEAK WEAK WEAK POWER SUPPLIES... Once you have 6 HDs running inside (4 in the normal bays and 2 in the 2nd and 3rd CD/DVD/BD slow), and then try to run nvidia SLI... your machine will just SHUT OFF.... I had a nv 780Ti which I had highly OCed.. worked fine.. in fact it's in my SPOUSES r4 right now.... I replaced it with a TITAN Z (1 card with 2 GPUs)... if I set the power levels to anything from 91%-120%, the instant a game draws 91% from BOTH GPUs, the system just clicks OFF....My spouses r4 did it when I added a second 780TI I couldn't run them over 90%... so I replaced the PSUs with 1000w PSUs.. turns out Dell shoved not even a 750W PSU in these "flag ship machines" they were 525w PSUs... SERIOUSLY? Once I had a 1K PSU, I put another Titan Z into my R3 so I had quad SLI and I could set the cards to 120% AND overclock them as well. I STILL use my R3 today... that i7-2700K runs at 5GHz.. not every chip goes that fast.. Almost any 2700K can go 4.5GHz... if you are unlucky and got a batch from Intel that didn't come out superior, 4.4-4.5 is all you can get out of this chip....lucky people were/are able to clock it at 4.6-5Ghz... heat is NOT the intial issue.... some of the lesser quality ones simple can't run that fast (Google this on CPUs if you are curious...intel often would make 2 identical CPUs and market them differently.. The CPUs that failed to operate properly at the desired speed were locked a lower speed and marketed and sold, often, as a cheaper variant of that CPU line). Once up and running at 4.6.. especially 5GHZ, the CPU will just about overheat from idling and windows booting up... let alone USING it.... and the H20 CPU coolers on the R3/4 and VERY inadequate and can't handle much OCing.... I still use the STOCK r3 cooling system, but added more tubes and water... My home office has a portable 14K BTU AC unit... it just has a vent that goes out the window (sealed of course) to blow off the hot air.. a 14K BTU unit is FAR more cooling power for a 16x16 room (a 6-8K BUT unit would work fine).. plus I have 2 central AC units.. one for upstairs and one for down... but it is useless in the home office... and I've always had a 6-8K BTU window unit in it.. with 4 computers and a bunch of eletronics and tech always runing, the home office could EASILY hit 90F in the dead of winter when it's -5 to 35F outside.... once I realized I couldn't OC my CPU beyond 4.4Ghz without massive heat issues, I got the 14K unit.... I REMOVED the "radiator" from the back of the PC and added extra tubes to extend it....Then I installed the unit right on top of the Evaporator... This way it has air thats about 38-40F passing through it... the fan really wasn't needed anymore, but the system required it as it FREAKED if the CPU's heat pump fan wasn't working... Although the AC air will move the fan FAR faster than what it is set to turn at LOL....Before I mossed the cooling system , At 5GHz, if I so much as loaded iTunes, the CPU would hit 75-77C and the system would shut off to prevent damage.... and it was idling at 62F .. now with the 14K BTU unit, it sends water back to the CPU (and now GPUs) at about 34-36F... once the water left the .....condenser of the cooling system - i just call it the radiator, I split the large plastic tube into about 30 tiny copper tubes which are also welded to the ACs condenser....they weave all over it's surface then combine back to one big copper tube then to a plastic one which is then split in 3 sending cold water to the CPU and 2 GPUs.. all using the pump that was made for the cpu only.... Im sure it doesn't move the water as fast as it could... but that also gives the water more time to cool in the AC unit and absorb the heat.. the temp of the water, in the tube, right before it enters the AC unit is around 190F (when im gaming)... that's near BOILING POINT...The water keeps the CPU from hitting temps in the mid to high 80s C.. and the Titan Z GPUs are actually MADE to operate at 80-84C... with all the OCing of everything... the water is about 86-87C when it enters the Dell/AW system cooler and then my makeshift copper tubes... When im gaming, you can definately notice the AC units air isn't FRIGID blowing out.. but it has more than enough BTUs to cool my PC AND the room.

I'm still on an r3 that's....3 yrs old now? maybe 4? and I can play Rise of the Tomb raider at 2560x1600 with EVERY, SINGLE setting MAXED out, and I NEVER drop below 60fps. If I turn of V-sync the game plays around 70-145fps... note I do NOT use AA except for FXAA at 2560x1600, you don't need much AA.. so anything other than FXAA is a waste of my power.... and the cards run FINE on PCI 2.0 vs 3. The bus speed doesn't slowdown the GPUs at all... it just limits how much/fast data can be loaded into VRAM                                                                                                                                                                                                First off.. hardware wise the raid controllers on the r3 and 4 and virtually identical... yet for SOME reason, Dell has NEVER bothered to update the BIOS for the R3 (The raid bios is NOT stored on the raid controller but as part of the main system bios)...You can update all the drivers in windows all you like, but that will NOT help you to use drives LARGER than 2TB when on the raid controller... 4GB limit is places on the plain controller AND you CAN NOT boot off any drive OVER 2GB even on the standard controller. This was rather ANNOYING To me because I wanted a 16TB RAID 0 array of 4 TB drives for me D: drive, C: has always been 3 1TB RAID 5 drives for 2TB total space

Keep in mind the r3 controller bios can have a massively large raid array, but it just isn't capable of using PHYSICAL disks over 2TB

Also the R3 Lacks internal bays and physical connections to permit more than 4 hard drives.. however, the ports for the CD/DVD/BR drives can be assigned to the raid controller also... AND the r3 does have eSata on the back of the machine (You can plug in eSata, or SataE, I always confuse the two)... and that cable can handle 6Gbps worth of bandwidth for EXTERNAL Drives, but the system will see them as INTERNAL as will windows... so you can put page files on them and do everything you can as if it is internal...

Your other option is a USB 3.0 RAID BOX like Buffalo.. THAT HAS NO SIZE RESTRICTION as it has it's own raid controller and most accept up to 6TB drives... plus usb 3's max cap is 5Gbps.. and rarely can a user raid array large enough and fast enough to actually get  5-6gbps worth of data at once.

FYI 6Gbps = 0.75 GB/s (GigaBytes/s)... or 786MB/s (max bus speeds of about 700MB)
5Gbps= 0.625 GB/s OR 640MB/s (max bus speed about 580-590MB/s)
A 7500 RPM sata 3 drive can R/W at about 50MegaBytes per second... that's actually kind of slow.... a 10K RPM drive can do a bit better and get about 75 if you are lucky...

A Hybrid HDDSD (a sata 3 HD usually 7500 or 10K RPM) with 8-64 GIGABYTES of SSD memory added as a CACHE these drives can get up to about 100MB/s


None of this accounts for OVERHEAD.. even if you ran 4 avg Sata 3, 7500 RPM drives... that's about 200MB/s read and write speed IF you have set up the array properly in RAID 0. RAID 5 would be about 200 read, 100-125 Write... You still aren't even close to maxing out the sata bus speeds...

The controller CAN do raid 10 - if I remember right it's a MIRROR of a raid 0 array...The reads would be blindly fast but the writes          

Now if you chained 3 500GB SSD drives in a 1.5 TB Raid 0 array.....each of those can R/W around 125MB/sec.. You'd get about 375MB read/Write (yes, write back cache would help as ram is still faster). And you still aren't close to the 6Gbps limit... 6Gbps is not only the limit for an individual device but also for the whole sata 3 bus...

which.. and be VERY CAREFULL ON THE r3/4 .. dell does some dirty things to either prevent ppl from overloading it... or to be CHEAP... NOT ALL PORTS RUN AT 6GBPS! Ports 0-1, 6Gbps, Ports 2-3, 3Gbps, Ports 4-6, 1.5Gbps (192MB/sec)... so no real worried unless you run 6 SSDs in one array.. then ALL Of them are limited to 1.5Gbps They still run at various speeds but an array is only as fast as the SLOWEST elements... but still if you could run a 192MB*6.. you would move data at...1,152MB/sec which would be limited by the over all BUS speed and youd only get about 700... so a 6 disk arry would be about performance but more about SPEED.. you'd be better off with 2 3 disk arrays because both won't always be going all out... :)
                                                                                                                                                                                                         

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The problems with the R3 and what I did to help fix the bios with the help from an R4 :)

They didn't even make the r3 windows 8 compatible... It'll run, but you are limited to drives NO LARGER than 2TB ON THE RAID CONTROLLER... WARM boots WILL ALWAYS CRASH while Windows 8-10 are loading the kernel and ring 0 drivers.

People have already posted links to update the USB drivers and the chipset drivers to STOP the crash... but if you are installing windows or going through repairs.. or even windows updates, you CANT EVER let the machine warm reboot.. so u must baby sit it and every time it goes to reboot , you must power it off on the BIOS screen. HOWEVER, BE CAREFUL with those drivers! At times I have gone back to the OLD drivers and now allowing warm reboots.. they are not 100% compatible with the HW. Sometimes the whole USB system will STOP until you do a complete shutdown... I also starting getting BSOD crashes about once a week on avg... I finally did find some drivers that DID work just fine.....: The R4 drivers :) The chipset and usb systems are virtually identical. Dell just never bothered to check and certify them for the r3...


This is NOT just an annoying issue... this warm boot crash can actually damage the NTFS file system... often it will correct itself without even telling you... but if it forces a chkdsk and you end up with crosslinked files, orphaned files... that means you have lost some files on your C: drive... in this case they are almost ALWAYS window files because nothing else has run yet

1) Extracted the RAID controller BIOS software from an R4

2) decompiled the BIOS software

3) Removed the Raid bios software on the r3 A06 bios and INJECTED the R4 RAID software absolutely AS IS.. and why not? The HW is absolutely IDENTICAL!

4) Manually altered the BIOS to allow more freedom of OCing and access to settings the stock bios wouldn't allow. Also REMOVED some OC settings that WERE NOT applicable to the r3 (at least R3s that didn't have intel graphics on the mobo.. I removed any reference to OC  that as to not confuse people)

5) PROPERLY ENABLED UEFI :) NOTE! The r3 WILL SUPPORT UEFI but Dell never added a seperate UEFI bios that you could boot and run diagnostics. That wasn't added until the r4, and the r3 wouldn't support me injecting the code into it (the r3 has less physical ROM for the bios vs the r4)

6) This allows PROPER Windows (or other OSes) to install using UEFI and make the proper UEFI partitions on the hard drive, etc, etc... If you have a problem, you are limited to the Windows recovery partition, the bios, raid bios, and any other 3rd party software


7) All of these changes ALSO lets the r3 BOOT from a GPT partition of up to 4TB.... 6 CAN be done but it's not very... stable.. 6TB drives on the modded r3 bios that I call A07 should only be used as DATA drives as the raid controller has no issue there. However 6TB IS THE LIMIT. (but you could make RAID 0 30TB D: drive out of 5, 6TB drives)

8) This WILL change the BIOS version number of the raid controller on BOOT UP :)

9) You can now PROPERLY run the most current version of Intel Matrix Storage THATS APPROPRIATE for an R4 AW/DELL PC... Keep in mind what intell offers to download is NOT compatable with these PCs... I have tried it.. It SEEMS to work... but then suddenly your arrays can't read or write more than 128KB/s to 1MB/s.. yes.. THAT SLOW... usually if the system has been on for more than 48 hrs... a simple shutdown and start up will fix it.... just stick to v12.7 and its drivers.

10) There ARE SOME LIMITATIONS when making a Raid 5 array..It will NOT let you make a raid 5 array with 3 (or more), 3-6TB drives. If you want R5 then u MUST use 2TB drives... OR use a USB 3.0 raid system. Raid 0 has no size limitations... you can use up 6TB drives...I could probably fix this if I had a r5 bios as the intel raid controller didn't change much until fairly recently....

contact me at <ADMIN NOTE: Email id removed per privacy policy>

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MORE BABLING:
The r3/4 raid controller is really just a dummy raid controller.. it's controlled by the BIOS, the system CPU, and the windows drivers.It does NOT Have it's own CPU like a TRUE raid controller...BUT it's better than letting Windows do it! And you can get some lighting speeds (if you set the stripes to the proper side and then format with the proper cluster size)


I know many people don't like raid 5... BUT... Its read speeds are virtually as fast as raid 0.. but the WRITE speeds are about 1/2 that of raid 0... but the write speed can be made up for if you turn off write cache buffer flushing in windows disk manager AND in the intel RS software you set the cache to WRITE BACK.. This can be used on ANY type of array... and for solo drives, you are limited to just altering the windows cache.... DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE 2 THINGS!!!! 1) A UPS BACKUP SYSTEM tied into your USB system. If you loose power, windows MUST shutdown, hibernate or hybrid sleep (normal sleep is NOT OK because if the UPS dies it's just like killing the power to windows....Sometimes 10 power offs won't do more than a few minor things chkdsk can fix.. and sometimes just ONE can make windows not even boot or scramble the NTFS system beyond repair.... USE WRITE THROUGH caching if you lack a UPS.. It still uses memory to buffer the write but here's the massive difference... If you copy a large file using explorer, while in WRITE BACK MODE, windows will use up to about 2GB of ram for a write cache (shows up as modified memory)...on an 8GB system  and about 4GB on a 16-32GB system.. This will cause the write speed to be MASSIVE at first - the speed will be as fast as the source drive OR array can handle....once the buffer is full.. speed will slow down to the capabilities of the array.. however once there is no more source data to copy, the HD subsystem tells windows and explorer the file has been copied, moved, etc, and the progress box goes away.. yet there is STILL 2-4GB that has yet to be written! If you CRASH or loose power during this time, that file would be LOST or damaged - especially if it were a MOVE operation..... with WB caching, the HD and Memory management system tells windows the write operation completed ok - eventhough it is still going on...


This also allows MULTIPLE programs to write to the drive all at once... and what windows does is write the data as efficiently as possible with minimal read/write head thrashing about because it DOES NOT have to write the data in order


Also other minor writes, can often sit as modified ram for 5, 10, 15.. 30 minutes.... if windows sees a bunch of small reads and writes to the same data... it will just do it all.. virtually, in ram, then write those changes when it is less busy


Write THROUGH uses the SAME buffering, but two differences... when copying , moving, modifying a file, it does NOT tell windows the operating has completed ok UNTIL all off the data has been written out off the buffer....be it explorer or any other program that writes data.. if the program can not continue until the write operation has finished it willl sit and WAIT

This also has an impact on chance to the MFT and other NTFS structures stored in RAM... Rather than hold on to the data to be read and written to and sent to the HD(s) later, it will send them sooner than later...


Then there's the final option: WRITE CACHE BUFFER FLUSH (enable or disable).. for Write BACK this is an EASY thing.. you can NOT enable WB until this option is disabled.... but with WRITE THROUGH..  you have 2 options.....


WT + WCBF disabled = just about what I said above about write through caching

WT + WCBF enabled = Windows constantly FLUSHES the buffer.. this does not let gigabytes of data pile up in ram... it only allows a few hundred mega bytes then flushes it...this STILL allows windows a LITTLE bit of control of how data is written so it can optimize the writes better... but not by much.... This is the SAFEST form of write caching.. in the event of a system lock up, power failure... there's a good chance the data in RAM has been written to disk


Any finally.. if you employ ANY kind of write cache.. especially WB+WCBF off OR WT+WCBF off, then you better have a GOOD backup system in place with regular full and incremental backups... windows file history is a joke.. don't bother with it unless that's all you can afford to do....You should still have a backup system even if you HDs/arrays are in READ ONLY CACHE....Even Raid 5 won't protect you from a deleted file, or a corrupt file system, or corrupt file data...It only protects you if ONE drive fails

I have also done some tweaking to the R3 bios, and I have renumbered it A07 Read on, and if you'd like the modded bios, please contact me, and I will be happy to mail it to you....

Thanks for the post. Sent PM to you.

Even if not running any RAIDed drives ... do you still recommend running Intel-RST? Or, is it better to just use the bundled Microsoft Windows SATA drivers. In this example, lets say you are running a single SSD for C: and a spinner HDD for D:.

If yes, what version of Intel-RST have you found to be most stable, and for what version of Windows (7, 8.1 or 10)?

why do you say that? Far better OS than Vista and Windows 7, best version of remote desktop so far for connecting to work server's etc.

Anyone tested Hawthorne Clubs bios update?

Only issue I have with Windows 10 and Aurora r3 is Alien Command centre goes nuts every now and then,  even if one runs it in Win 7 compayability mode.  I makes PCI and HD fans go high revs on the Master I/O board, but simple fix is just to reinstall the software, ( do not uninstall it first, as when you try to install Windows blocks access to a system file,

Ok I'm on Windows 10 Pro right now latest version v1511 (on my Aurora R3) and I've had countless problems with the fans and with experience I've got it under control with two methods, note for both methods it's highly advisable that you when you finish working on your PC that you put it into SLEEP MODE via the Window Start menu for example NOT a POWER SHUT DOWN either via the hardware button OR that same Power Windows menu option as that  has a good chance of messing up the fans again, also under the Windows 10 Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Power options settings I have Balanced and under "Change advanced power settings" link I have "Alien FX" set to OFF (I dunno if that really makes a difference with all of this but here goes:

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(1) METHOD ONE TO FIX THE FANS GOING AT 100% AND GET THEM TO A MORE NORMAL LEVEL (MORE CONVENIENT OPTION):

 If for whatever reason the fans constantly whirl at 100% don't panic, wait for Windows 10 to boot or if you are in Windows 10 and have just woken the machine put the machine into SLEEP MODE via the Windows 10 Start Menu -> Power options, then bring it out of sleep and it should fix it. If this doesn't work power down the Aurora R3 using the hardware power down switch (press of 5 seconds) then wait 8 seconds and press the power switch again (you may get the fans at 100% still but don't worry boot to windows 10) - then when Windows 10 is open go into SLEEP MODE, then come out of sleep mode and the should be normalized at 8%-18% or whatever the standard setting is. I am running Alienware Command Center dunno which version (it doesn't state in the software) but I know that I installed App_DT_AWCC_W7_X04_Setup_TD4C0_ZPE.exe from the official Dell site, it sort of half works some of the sensors are not picking up temps. and the lighting no longer is controllable via this app but you should get some reading.

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(2)METHOD ONE TO FIX THE FANS GOING AT 100% AND GET THEM TO A MORE NORMAL LEVEL (SLIGHTLY MORE INCONVENIENT OPTION):

Ok, this is a slight pain but it works, try it if method 1 is not working... power down your Alienware Aurora R3 completely .. and make sure that you UNPLUG THE POWER from the Aurora R3, press down the Power switch at the front of the Aurora R3 for about 1 minute to ensure that all power is drained. Then find the Aurora R3 MIO sister board which controls the Lighting / Fans inside the case (should be near the front of the case). then unplug the power lead on the MIO Sister board which powers it (I think I remember that it's a white plastic headed 4-pin not 100% on this - wiggle it out gently if it's stiffly locked in). Next Power Up your Aurora R3 into Windows 10 (the fans will be belting at 100%) and when you fully enter Windows 10 wait about 1 minute or so and then quickly Power down (do not leave the fans running at 100% with no control !). Next replug the power lead that on the MIO Sister board in the Aurora R3, close the case and boot up your Aurora R3, the fans should have normalized at the usual 4%-18% whatever the normal is for your environment, I suggest from now on you put the Alienware R3 into SLEEP MODE when you don't need it and DO NOT POWER DOWN as powering down and then up seems to trigger the fan problem..

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enjoy

Just wanted to follow up with you on your experience as of late with the R3 and Win10.  Any new issues to report?  How is it?

None of the above REALLY fixes these issues because Dell NEVER properly fixed the A06 Bios..... *I* took the A06 bios, and injected THREE THINGS into to make A07 unofficial bios.. 1) I took the RAID controller bios from the R4 and inserted into the r3 a06.. what does this DO? Allow for 4 and 6TB drives in RAID MODE.. 2) I took the UEFI part of the R4s bios and injected it.. this will allow a FULL UEFI installtion of windows but will NOT give you the UEFI boot manager bios..

The reboot issue is EASILY fixed by installing the USB 3.0 drivers from INTEL that are made for the r4

Lastly the FAN issue.. I also changed the model number in my a07 so ANYTHING will think it's an r4 and NOT an r3...

What does this do? Lets you install the R4 command and light center which works 100% FINE on an r3.. WHY dell didn't let the r4 CC go on the r3 is beyond me.

You can email me at david @ athenon . com and I i will email you my bios back

As a precaution, you should virus scan anything not official. And as a disclaimer, use at your own risk.. but I have had ZERO problems...

switching from a old style boot to the UEFI will require 100% re-installation of windows...

I can easily email reply to anyone with screenshots of my hard drive sizes, UEFI partitions.. etc .etc..

If you simple want to fix the REBOOT issue, ALL you need are NON DELL USB drivers from intel...

If you want to fix the fan, HD size issues, etc, then you need an UNOFFICIAL bios... modding the a06 to "a07" is actually VERY easy.. I was able to do it because I got myself an r3 and my partner an r4 a year later... I still use my R3 and it has 16GB ram and a nv gtx 1080 in it with a 12TB raid 0 D array (3 4TB drives), and a 2TB C: boot... and I use a USB 3.0 20 TB raid array for backup....

I modded the bios in 30mins.. WHY dell couldn't do this, I have NO idea.

I have tried to send them my modded bios over the past few yrs, and they just REJECT it..

My signature is a bit out of date as I run windows 10 64bit professional and Ive increased a few other things to my HW line up

Hey would love to get a hold of that modified bios file you have but can't find your email anywhere on here.  Could you add it and I'll email you asap?!  Thanks in advance this will fix all my issues.

-CMAX

Would love to get the A07 BIOS you are offering. Whats your email? I can't find it on here anywhere! BTW thanks for all your hard work in advance!  Its pretty amazing you went through all of this and found a solution.

-CMAX

I too would like the A07 file, surely it is available somewhere for download?

I have tried the above email address but with no luck (Bouncing back)  PLEASE contact me with a way to obtain this Bios .

david @ athenon . com Does not work , even without the spaces  ; )    

Hs anyone got this Bios update kindly done by hawthorneclub etc above. Where can one get it to try?

Thanks

Phil