Buying new PC - what hardware won't allow Windows 7?

[Marty McFly]

I'll soon be buying a new PC and while I'll be considering other operating systems, I do want to make sure I have the option of installing Windows 7, which I love.

Does anyone know:

1. Which items of hardware (eg motherborad, GPU) have the ability to prevent Windows 7 being installed?
2. Within those categories, do the majority still support Win 7, or is it now the minority?
3. Is there a list/guide anywhere to what specs I'd need to look for?

 

[SIW2]

I am not sure a "new" pc will fit your requirements.

perhaps think "newish"

for example 300 series ( b360/b365/z390) motherboard with intel 8/9 gen is easy to run win7 without necessity for a graphics card

or am4 motherboard with 3400g is fine for win7 without necessity of a separate graphics card. You could go for the more powerful amd cpu starting with 5 but they need a graphics card that has win7 drivers.

I have heard win7 can run on intel 12th gen but it doesnt understand the e core p core thing so it shows as two cpus and probably isnt handling them efficiently. In addition if the mobo comes with the wifi card it probably doesnt have win7 drivers so needs to be changed or use a dongle, And no igpu drivers so a separate graphics card is required. Something like the i3-12100 doesnt have those extra weird e cores but the more powerful i5 and i7 do.

 

[Marty McFly]

Thanks for your reply, SIW2. Everything you said seems to be based around the idea of avoiding a graphics card. Am I to infer that modern graphics cards are one of the biggest barriers to using Windows 7?

For me, a graphics card is absolutely essential as I do a huge amount of video production, editing, and high-end special effects with software like Adobe After Effects. (I have about a dozen different YouTube channels planned for the future.) So I absolutely need powerful graphics capabilities.

For the record, I don't want Wi-Fi, or a built-in modem. I use ethernet to get online.

 

[SIW2]

You could probably get an am4 motherboard and one of those amd 5600 5700 5700x or whatever they are called and a separate graphics card that has win7 drivers.

I am not aware that anybody has win7 working with am5 stuff.

check win raid forum for how to go about it.

 

[Clippy84]

Not sure that you need a 'new' retail PC for what you want to do. If you're on a tight budget then an older Intel Xeon 'workhorse' workstation PC from HP, with a large SDD and plenty of RAM, should be fine for video production at 720px for YouTube channels. Even a well-specced old HP Z800, for instance. Look on eBay. Built like a tank and highly reliable.You may be limited to Photoshop CC 2018 and Adobe After Effects 2015. Both perfectly adequate. Though AE 2018 is also said to be able to work if certain Windows updates are present(?).I think the highest you can go with graphics cards would be an NVIDIA 3090 Ti 12Gb. As far as I know, the NVIDIA 40 series cards are not supported by drivers for Windows 7.If you want to do locally-generated AI Stable Diffusion images for your YouTube channels, you can use the free InvokeAI 3.0.0 with a small workaround (replace a .DLL) for Windows 7. The standalone installer is on the Internet Archive. Otherwise you'll be reliant on online services.

 

[Malneb]

Yeah i agree with above you don't need the newest tech to edit videos. Further when you are talking about pairing with windows 7 as you will get worse parity to that new hardware and in some cases no driver or broken driver support.

As long as the card can do Nvenc then its good enough. So around GTX 7x cards on wards.

Some editing software out there are bad on older hardware because the actual software is just bad but there is actually a few that will work on old hardware no problem. Vegas pro is one that can work on really slow computers and produce rendering times that are fast so it means that any old computer is good for editing.

I would say around 6th gen going back as far as about 4th gen you going to get the sweet spot of compatibility for windows 7 while buying used parts that are cheap or cheeper, while also having parts that are still fast and can crunch stuff like video editing fast if you get the right parts.

 

[Marty McFly]

Thanks so much guys, great advice. I appreciate that you're saying I don't need the latest tech.

However, I do want to use the latest and best video codecs used by my cameras (HEVC, AV1, or even VP9), which I believe are supported natively by modern GPUs (or APUs). That's why I'm leaning towards the newer systems - to keep seek time as fast as possible.

By the way, I use Adobe After Effects exclusively to edit videos (I can get After Effects 2019 running on Windows 7). I'm also working with 4K video (typically edited down to 1080p, but still working with 4K footage). Oh and unusually for me, my budget isn't too tight this time!

 

[Malneb]

Yes which is why i said Nvenc compatibility as that is HEVC on the GPU, you cannot beat Nvenc because graphics cards are way faster than CPU which CPU is HEVC and slower.

Literally you can slap in a 10 year old GPU and do video editing the Motherboard and all that other stuff does not really matter as long as its got Sata 3.

6th gen / Skylake so since around then you got all sorts of computers you can make for cheap you can go back way older than that even.
Why recommend older parts? Because you probably not going to get the best support for a modern system on windows 7. If you really want a modern PC then you would need to use windows 10 imo.
6th gen is probably the newest parts i would recommend comfortably past that gen support for 7 starts tapering off. Where 6th gen is still plenty fast for video editing slap the right GPU in and you got plenty of power for video editing.

 

[Marty McFly]

Thanks so much, Malneb!

 

[SIW2]

Thanks for your reply, SIW2. Everything you said seems to be based around the idea of avoiding a graphics card.

No.

There is no point in buying anything earlier than 8th gen or the am4 equivalent because earlier systems have a very limited life. Soon there will be miilions of them in landfill. A few people will use older systems in the garage for their car programs only, and a few people will put linux on them. Most will be dumped.

Win7 runs perfectly on 8th gen cpu with 300 series motherboard ( b360, z370, b365, z390) and it has a much longer life than any earlier systems.

 

[Malneb]

Anything is still viable before 8th gen if you are going to use it on 7, 10 or Linux. Considering they want to use 7 i disagree there is a whole range of options, 6th gen is the sweet spot and the last officially supported generation.

You get older parts but they are still good Skylake is still a solid generation plenty of power there for video editing. You could go back as far as 4th gen and still have a solid rig. If all they doing is locking to window 7 then the 8th gen lock out does not matter.

4th gen x99 or x79 quad channel is a powerhouse and in the right market it would be a cheap build. On paper they wont bench like a new computer but on a actual real workload like video editing it will be a fast system if you got the right setup .

 

[samuria]

Thing have moved on I run Youtube sites and make video I got a geekcom compare the price and specs against a pc and you save £500 I got amd 7 but you can get I9 half the price and they go like a rocket with 32 gig ram support 3 screens Micro PC | Intel & AMD Micro Computer Sale From lb249