R4 3DS Firmwares
The Firmware (or Kernel as it is more commonly called) is the heart and soul of the R4 3DS. Without the firmware files, your r4 will not be recognized when you insert it into your DS, DSi or Nintendo 3DS system. You can think of it as the bootloader or menu system for your ds game flash card.
Different R4 3ds cards have different firmwares or kernels, if you download and install a wrong firmware to your R4 card, it can't work. The r4 3ds firmware is always a zip file after you download it to a computer, then in order to install it to your console, you must decompress the file.
The current hot R4 3ds firmwares are all supporting Nintendo 3ds 11.9.0 and DSI 1.4.5, it means no matter what you have which 3DS XL/2DS XL/NEW 3DS XL/NEW 2DS XL/DS/DS LITE/DSI XL machine, the R4 card can work on it.
Usually, the firmware or kernel for R4 3ds card will be updated regularly when 3DS is updated, but recently, because the Nintendo isn't blocking any R4 3ds for nearly 6 years, many R4 teams are not updating R4 firmwares as well.
For short, R4 3ds firmware makes the R4 card work on Nintendo 3DS, plays DS games&homebrews, free to download from different official R4 teams.
Which is the best r4 3ds firmware or kernel for 3DS 11.9?
Currently, there are 6 R4 3ds firmwares are common to use by 3DS system console users. They are listed here.
R4i gold 3ds plus | r4ids.cn | wood 1.64b | No Timebomb |
R4i sdhc 3ds rts | r4i-sdhc.com | r4i 3ds 1.85b | With timebomb |
R4i gold pro-2019 | r4isdhc.com | r4i 3ds 4.0b | With timebomb |
R4i dual core 3ds | r4isdhc.com | r4i 3ds 4.0b | With timebomb |
R4isdhc rts lite | r4isdhc.com | r4i 3ds 4.0b | With timebomb |
R4i gold eu 3ds | r4i-gold.eu | r4i 3ds 1.74b | With timebomb |
The best r4 3ds firmware or kernel is the wood 1.64b for R4i gold 3ds plus flashcard, it's Without Timebomb, never be updated since from 2013 but supports every 3DS update includes the 11.9. so No doubt, the best R4 3DS firmware is the wood v1.64b for R4i gold 3ds plus card.
Where to download r4 3ds firmware and how to install it?
R4 3ds firmwares are free to download from each R4 official site as I listed above, remember to choose the corresponding firmware or kernel to your R4 3ds card, after you finish downloading the firmwares, here is the guide to install it to your R4/R4i.
- Unzip the r4 3ds firmware files.
- Copy and drag all files in the R4 3ds firmware folder to your sd card root directory.
- Insert the sd card to your R4/R4i card, that's all.