Motherboards with Win 7 support, what's best?

I am happy to stay with Windows 7 64 bit, but need to upgrade an aging PC. I have seen a "fix" to allow late model processors and boards to fool Microsoft into supplying updates, something called Wufuc... Should I be going there and running an i7 late gen? Or is it a load of hassle finding drivers? My main interest is amateur radio and some of the current software defined radios are have fairly intensive demands. I don't do any gaming at all.



I bought an i5 7400 3GHz CPU off Ebay that's faulty so going back, would I have had issues with that with Win 7? I have Googled but advice varies from "late CPU's are fine on Win 7" to "avoid, stay with earlier CPU's and boards" I am confused, help please :) AMD Rizen worth a look? Thanks.

Wufuc plus the intel beta graphics driver (21.20.16.4508) do indeed give you win7 operability on intel kaby lake cpus like the i7-7700k. But since you are starting from scratch you might as well go with an i7-6700k (sky lake) just in case microsoft figures out how to to stop wufuc from working.

The 300-series intel motherboard chipsets will not work with win7 (i.e. the usb ports) unless you get a usb add-on card. My recommendation is get a Z270 motherboard with an i7-6700k. You are not going to be able to tell the difference and you wil have full win7 support on intel and microsoft.

SIW2 said:

There isn't a great deal of difference between the performance of a quad ivybridge 3570 and a quad 7400. I am not sure that is much of an upgrade

UserBenchmark: Intel Core i5-3570 vs i5-7400


There should be a difference if going for a 6 or 8 core. However, a quad as mentioned above is more than enough for most people. It can also be tricky using win 7 on the very latest gear.

If you are thinking of Ryzen, avoid the apu ( cpu with built in graphics) - people are successfully running win7 on threadrippers with separate graphics cards, but they ain't cheap.

You have a very good hardware so I totally agree with SIW2. Unless you're a hard core gamer, you wont notice the difference.

Can you explain how did you do a RAID1 with a SSD and a HDD? Are them same size?

Hi Megahertz07


I use the SSD for the OS and applications and two conventional mechanical drives for the raid, on which I store just data.

johnhoh said:

Wufuc plus the intel beta graphics driver (21.20.16.4508) do indeed give you win7 operability on intel kaby lake cpus like the i7-7700k. But since you are starting from scratch you might as well go with an i7-6700k (sky lake) just in case microsoft figures out how to to stop wufuc from working.

The 300-series intel motherboard chipsets will not work with win7 (i.e. the usb ports) unless you get a usb add-on card. My recommendation is get a Z270 motherboard with an i7-6700k. You are not going to be able to tell the difference and you wil have full win7 support on intel and microsoft.

OK, understood, thanks to all who have replied, I am much clearer now, cheers!