Aurora R12, Unacceptable BIOS/Z490 configuration, 11th Gen Intel CPU's (RocketLake)

@Rabbitdude 

"You apparently have no clue what you are talking about when the issue is Gear modes and your response is ok well CAS 16 is good"

I know exactly what I'm talking about. 

Too many people are being fooled by the Mhz Myth which is marketing not performance.  Increasing the ram Mhz while also increasing voltage and wait states makes for statistically insignificant performance increase on the order of 5 percent or less.

You get what you pay for.  Both AMD and INTEL warn against overclocking.

They make no claims of warranty or fitness for a particular purpose.

CAS 14 15 16 ram will always be faster than CAS 18 19 20 22 24 ram.

XMP is not guaranteed which is why faster ram needs more voltage which can lead to damage at some point.

4266 Ram @  1.45v ,1.5v, 1.6v is not recommended.

I tried waiting for Dell to come up with a better bios.  But after looking at the physical specifications and doing testing even with OEM Ram I have come to the conclusion that there are more factors including VRM Cooling and AMPS as well as chipset variations and case design.

I have 50 years of hands on engineering experience starting with INTEL 4004 1971 and the Apple II 1977.

I also know systems that came well before MSDOS IBM PC 1981 or the PC's Limited Turbo PC 1985.

I have nothing to say to the derogatory false statements that I don't know what I'm talking about nonsense.

I actually took the Aurora R10 AND R12 board out of the case and added very good 3rd party cooling and power supply but was not able to get the same results.  Thats why I don't recommend that as a fix.

This led me to look closer at the B550A chipset and Trying B450 Asrock motherboard and Z590 Asus motherboard.

I didn't pay full retail price for the Aurora's but after checking the other design parameters I have concluded that for both AMD and INTEL DELL OEM boards a bios fix is not going to resolve the issues. Much more physical things need to be changed on the board and case.

I do realize that I make more money than half of the 7 billion people on earth so unfortunately I can't recommend a solution that is affordable.  This is also why I gave the Aurora's to my Nephews rather than trying to resell them.  I had planned on re using the parts to save some money but that's really not practical when you consider the time and effort as well as needing to toss the Dell OEM motherboards and Buy a new copy of windows 10 Pro. 

If you have a system with 1000W power supply and Liquid Cooling then I would suggest selling the system on ebay without the GPU as others have.

Use the money to buy a new CPU.   If you already have I9 Intel CPU or Top end AMD CPU then sell the system without GPU/ CPU /PSU .

EVGA 850BQ is fine and stable even with XMP overclock and RTX 3XXX series.

The other parts in my build are listed.  Clean Case and New PSU /Motherboard are easier to retrofit than trying to make an oem model with very short cables work.

In other words, to sum it up: 

AMD:  R10 v1 = R10 v2 + microcode update. 

Intel:  R11 = R12 + microcode update. 

AMD lastest = R10 v2 

Intel latest = R12

MHz myth? Gear modes have nothing to do with MHz, 3400mhz is still 3400mhz in both gear 1 and gear 2. Gear 2 is a 1:2 ratio hurting latency in a big way when the ram speed isn't high enough to counteract the increase in latency. Geez that's only been repeated by everyone else on this thread multiple times.

@Stocklaw 

"But if Speedstep is correct, then this was all false marketing"

 derogatory inflammatory rhetoric is personal attack and merits a ban.

10th Gen has the 2933 limit.

11th Gen supports XMP and specific Ram.

The problem is that even if you have the correct Ram and CPU it doesnt work on the Dell boards with 400 series chipset.

You can't blame a guy for trying to find a solution. I'll let you know what I find using the "acceptable" speed from Intel's perspective. If this turns out to be a true bait and switch, well...I guess we'll cross that bridge.

But if Speedstep is correct, then this was all false marketing. The 11th gen CPU only supports up to 2933mhz at 1:1 and the 3200 or 3400 claims were just fabricated to upsell the ram. This means downgrading to lower speeds could increase performance and remove the latency problem. Is this what I'm supposed to understand? Because I have 2933mhz ram in my R8 I can try...

@Vanadiel 

The Screen shot is not from a DELL OEM motherboard.

There are other issues than just a bios update including expensive VRM with lots of heat sinks etc.

The mega expensive boards I looked at use DUAL 8 PIN CPU connectors because they use more power than the Dell boards do that don't even have heat sinks.   Adding heat sink to the dell board doesn't make 400 series chipset suddenly become 500 series chip set and

Intel® Core™ i7-11700KF unlocked cpu.

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-11700KF-Desktop-Processor-Unlocked/dp/B08X6NXNX7/

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/meg-x570-godlike.html

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GODLIKE-Motherboard-Triple-Extended-ATX/dp/B07T5QDRFN

The R8 does not support gear modes. The gear mode is an independent setting from the memory frequency.

The gear mode only affects the IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) on the CPU.

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I think I have found a very basic and good explanation of Gear 1 and Gear 2 mode that illustrates the latency effect.

I put in bold what causes the latency increase. In gear 2 mode the memory controller runs at half the memory frequency, which is obviously not good for latency, but very good for higher memory frequency if you plan on overclocking your memory past the embedded XMP profiles.

The Gear 1 mode runs the memory frequency and memory controller frequency in 1:1 sync, while the Gear 2 mode runs them at 1:2, meaning that the memory controllers run at half the memory frequency, allowing you additional memory overclocking headroom. At lower, more stable, memory frequencies, it should be logical to use Gear 1. 

Here's a screenshot  to illustrate this in an MSI bios.

No, I know the R8 doesn't support it. The Ram I used for the R8 is aftermarket. I was thinking of transferring the 2933mhz "allowed gear 1" speed memory to the R12 and shut off xmp.

AMD uses different design.  They call it Fabric not GEAR mode. From my testing Team Red AMD does a better Job with performance at a much better price.

The Infinity Fabric consists of two separate communication planes - Infinity Scalable Data Fabric (SDF) and the Infinity Scalable Control Fabric (SCF). The SDF is the primary means by which data flows around the system between endpoint.

One of the reasons I chose the B450M Pro 4 board was to see if the issues were with the Chipset.

AMD’s B550A OEM chipset belongs to the company’s Promontory-LP family (B450) and therefore supports 2+4 PCIe Gen 3 lanes, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 links, and six USB 2.0 connectors.Be aware there are several versions.

You do not want the PRO4-F version.

I have also decided for myself that I prefer the I/O shield to be built onto the board Like it is with Gigabyte B550M Aorus boards.

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/B550M-AORUS-PRO-rev-10#kf

https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-B550M-AORUS-Motherboard-Renewed/dp/B091G3K1RM/

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B450M%20Pro4/index.asp

Havent found a sub $100 Z590 board with PCI-E 4 and massive 100 amp VRM's and cooling.

If someone finds that let everyone know.

MSI MEG Z590 GODLIKE Motherboard works but at a very steep price

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144381

I agree, I was just trying to explain as simply as possible what gear 1 and gear 2 mode actually do.

The problem is that users think the BIOS patch is a panacea and work with all processors and all chipsets and all ram.

If you oversimplify users will read more into what can or cant be done.

2933 ram on the 11th gen is the max supported JEDC speeds for Intel. Gear 1 runs up to 3200mhz XMP per intels gear specs but board partners have enabled Gear 1 on up to 3600mhz XMP