Yes, the only thing you can do to the system is manually update the Intel CSME FW 8.x latest version: B1. (Converged Security) Management Engine - (CS)ME
Bios should have old mcodes but windows will load the lates ones included, other than that a mod is required and that’s a RISK operation for you.
These 2 are the base of the INTEL-SA-00086 on 2012 old platforms, not updated anymore… but this was mainly for systems using ME Firmware versions 11.0/11.5/11.6/11.7/11.10/11.20, SPS Firmware version 4.0, and TXE version 3.0.
Now regarding the Storage mode… RAID mode is really not necessarily when no RAID Volumes present in the system, single disks SSD or HDD, AHCI is the mode to select, your Windows 7 setup was done previously using RAID mode, that’s why you had to revert it.
Know you know that this is one of the options to setup in a system bios when setting up a new OS installation on your machine or any other future one.