What modern hardware is good for upgrading my Win7 rig?

you will have to check them individually or look on win raid forum and see what the users there have done As far as I know all consumer motherboards up to at least 600 series have csm ( not oem boards ). Some have other issues with acpi, find out at win raid forum.

for example canonkong gives plenty of info here
[Solution] Win7/8.1 Drivers for USB 3.0/3.1 Controllers of new AMD Chipset Systems - Windows 7/Vista/Server 2008 - Win-Raid Forum

BlueBonnett said:

What makes you think I'm a guest? I've been here for 10 years. :)

All I see in your signature is an ad for an alternative to Windows Search and "Windows 7 laptops" which I don't need. I'm seeking a desktop.

I don't mind using hacked drivers as long as they work, but I need to know whatever I need to know in advance before just impulsively buying hardware, paying expensive shipping fee only to find out that it's unusable for reasons I could've found out if I just bothered to ask, so here I am.

So far, I'm getting the impression that anything after 11th gen is to be avoided due to Win7 not recognizing E-cores properly and that I should avoid motherboards without CSM/legacy boot support, but how do I know in advance which mobo has CSM and which doesn't? Does this only apply to installing Win7 as opposed to just booting into the SSD that I already have my Win7 OS installed on?

If you are going for intel 8/9 gen avoid oem machines such as Dell because they dont have csm. Consumer motherboards do have csm

What is the exact model of the laptop ?

BlueBonnett said:

That would've been useful to know a week ago. Too late now.

post #11

As far as I know all consumer motherboards up to at least 600 series have csm ( not oem boards )