Help an AMD guy figure out what Intel build to put together for Win7

what would be a recommendation for an mITX motherboard that would support an 7th gen or 8th gen Win 7 build? Still not sure what chipset I should be looking for, for 7th Gen would be a z270 chipset, correct?

sluggerb said:

What chipsets support 8th gen CPU's and have Win7 drivers?

For Gigabyte motherboards. Chipsets Z370, B365 (9th Gen capable), H310 (9th Gen capable). Probably true for ASUS and others.

F22 Simpilot said:

For Gigabyte motherboards. Chipsets Z370, B365 (9th Gen capable), H310 (9th Gen capable). Probably true for ASUS and others.

So for those chipsets I could go 9th gen Intel and still use Win 7?

I guess I can always find the motherboard support page and see if they offer Win7 downloads.

SIW2 said:

Should be ok if you use a separate graphics card that has win7 drivers.

I got that covered, I have a video card I plan on keeping and it has Win 7 drivers, so that should be good. I guess it's just a matter of finding the latest motherboard I can that offer Win7 drivers, and then matching that up with whatever the highest gen CPU that motherboard supports?

I was looking at 8th Gen mATX board and saw this one: ASRock B365M PRO4 LGA1151. The download page for this board from the manufacturer is here (ASRock > B365M Pro4) and it lists drivers for Win7 64 bit, so that means it should work for Win7, correct? I would pair it with an i7-8700.

I despise having onboard video but it looks like if you go Intel there's just no way to avoid it. I would be disabling it and using my own video card.

Edit: According to the the Asrock webpage that board supports 9th Gen Intel, since they have Win7 x64 driver downloads, could I go 9th Gen with that setup?

- - - Updated - - -

So I checked PCPartpicker for every mATX motherboard that supports an i7-9700 CPU that was under $100, then checked the manufacturer website for the existence of Win7 x64 drivers, and got this list:

• ASRock H310CM-DVS
• ASRock B365M Pro4
• Asus PRIME H310M-K R2.0
• Asus PRIME H310M-K

Each of those motherboards is available from Amazon for sub $100 and all have Windows 7 x64 listed in their driver download section, so I should be good with any of those and an i7-9700, correct? The sites did warn that I would need an external GPU since the onboard GPU would not work, but I am using an external one and will be disabling the onboard graphics anyway so that is a non issue.

Any recommendation from that list? The B365M Pro4 has the best ratings, but I have had good luck with ASUS boards in the past. On advantage of the AsRock is it is the only one on that list that supports 64 gigs of RAM, and seeing as I use Virtual Machines extensively, having more RAM is always a good thing.

SIW2 said:

The 310 chipset is very basic and doesn't include for example pcie3

OK, so that leaves just the Asrock board I was looking at anyway

I am using gigabyte b365m ds3h

Amazon has that for $140, the AsRock is $97. I am leary about buying off eBay, given my experience most people who sell computer parts on eBay are just using it as a dumping ground for faulty/returned products. Looks like that board runs around $100 on eBay and I'd rather deal with Amazon in case I want to return it