Aurora R13, BIOS 1.6.0 released, still no XMP support

That is unfortunate. Hopefully a few other owners chime in with their experiences.

I know sometimes a hard reset is needed to enable new settings. If you feel comfortable with that you could try that and see if XMP becomes selectable. 

I was wondering if you could do me a favor, since you have an R13 with the original OEM memory installed.

Do you know if that memory contains XMP profiles? Reason why I ask is because I could have sworn someone said it did, but I am having no luck finding the post. You should be able to check it with CPU-Z, or if you want to go all out thaipoon burner. (The freeware version can read SPD data)

I can confirm that the Hynix RAM in my system does NOT contain XMP profiles, since the SPD Ext field is blank in CPU-Z. I did a power disconnect reset after updating the BIOS (and, as I always do, I made sure that overclocking was disabled in BIOS before the update). After the update, XMP is still not selectable in the BIOS setup advanced screens.

The CPU-Z report for my 32gb modules looks like this (identical for slots 2 & 4) 

I am sticking with bios 1.2.1, everything seems to work fine with good enough performance, and all the intel extreme tuning options work including power override.

For the stock Hynix ram (I have 2x 16gb modules), CPU-Z does report several profiles available in the spd: 

Default runs at 4400mhz with a 36 clock timing quad channel

Jedec5 shows 4000mhz with 32/32/64/96

Jedec6 shows 4500mhz with 36/36/72/108

Jedec7&8 shows 4800mhz with 39/39/77/116

I read somewhere the stock ram overclocks decently to 5200mhz easily.

Interesting. Even if they end up bringing out the by now famous XMP Fury memory, you already have a JDEC profile that is rated for 4,800 MHz in the existing OEM memory.

I believe that Dell made the decision to adhere strictly to the Intel parameters for RAM in Alder Lake systems. There is this explanation about RAM specs that sheds a bit of light on the parameters for 4800 DDR5 RAM. DDR5 RAM & Alder Lake 

Interesting but that article has me more confused than I was before:

"The company specifically concentrated on DDR5-4800 memory, which is the baseline standard for Alder Lake. These are non-ECC memory modules that stick to JEDEC's guidelines, including a 1.1V DRAM voltage and mediocre 40-39-39 timings."

According to that quote from the article, the standard is 4,800 Mhz. This begs the question why the R13 runs at 4,400 Mhz, outside the quoted standard?

It has to do with number of MOBO memory slots and how they are populated. I think this may clear it up a bit:

"DDR5 memory support on Alder Lake depends on the number of populated memory slots. On a dual-slot motherboard, Alder Lake supports DDR5-4800 regardless of the configuration. However, DDR5-4400 is the maximum data rate when you fill two slots on standard motherboards with four memory slots. Populating the four slots with single-rank or dual-rank memory reduces support to DDR5-4000 and DDR5-3600, respectively."

Ah, I see. That is interesting. So confusing, I switched to AMD years ago due to Intel's often confusing configuration options.

I have read others have had the same issue but if i update the BIOS past 1.2.1 to any other version my R13 is bricked as far as Overclocking is concerned. If I go into the BIOS/Performance Options/Overclock options I get a "Your System Configuration has changed" (which it hasn't) "Please revert back to original memory" error message.

Another reason i wont be buying another Dell product.

Same issue with overclocking as you after updating the Bios, but in all honesty overclocking on this machine doesn't actually help and in same instance's makes the R13's performance worse. 

That's odd.  I've tested all the currently released BIOS files from 1.2.1 to the latest release and haven't had any issues.

Hey, I'm very new to this. I just got my r13 yesterday turned off OC and updated bios to 1.6.0. Can I turn OC back on? When I turn it back on in the bios it says something that it might not be supported or that it's not supported. Am I ok to turn that back on? Thanks a bunch for your time!

You should be fine to re-enable OC in the BIOS. There is a message displayed about no support for XMP memory and to revert to the original memory. I ignore this on my system as I haven't made any changes to the RAM. I've re-enabled overclocking on my R13 with no problems.