New W7 Gamer

[Agent Orange]

The ASRock X570 Tiachi is on the truck and should be delivered at anytime today, and I'm always excited about new hardware. One of the things I hope to accomplish with this new board is to get W7 up and running. Unlike other top end boards, the X570 Tiachi still has a PS/2 mouse-keyboard adapter. If you are patient you can use the keyboard like a mouse while installing W7. The big problem here for me is in finding another valid retail license for W7.

Although you can, as has been demonstrated, load and run W7 quite effectively on some modern motherboard systems, one shouldn't expect all the tailored apps concerning the CPU to work properly, as they are just not intrinsically capable by design. You can consider yourself fortunate if the there are W7 manufacturer supplied drivers. One person on the Overclocker forum identified all the discrete components on his X570 Tiachi and searched out somewhat compatible W7 drivers wherever he could find them. Not an easy task when there are no guidelines.

[Agent Orange]

ASRock X570 Tiachi

W7 Install Attempt

The first attempt to install W7 failed. I used a working NVme SSD cloned directly from my Aorus X370 Gaming-K5 and it BSOD'd immediately. Since my new X570 Tiachi has a PS/2 jack, I will attempt to go that route which simplifies the procedure somewhat by not having to prepare a slipstreamed ISO version on a USB drive, and also ensures a clean install. I haven't figured out what driver issues but I don't think it's going to be a problem.

A little about the ASRock X570 Tiachi. The physical aspects of the board are outstanding, and I really appreciate the steel backplate. The risor bezel is permanently affixed to the board but 'floats' and fits any ATX case opening. The BIOS is the fastest that I've seen getting into W10 and the 'fast boot' option isn't even turned on. The stock fan on the Zen 3700X is silent as well as the chipset fan, which is guaranteed for 50K hours of use. The main ingredients for this build remain the same as the RMA'd Asus ROG Strix X570 Gaming-F; i.e., GSkill 3200 32GB 4x4, Nvidia RTX 2070, and the Samsung 970 EVO 1TB, as well as the WD 6TB Black storage drive. The WD 6TB is default formatted GPT which presents no access problems.

At this time I consider the Gigabyte Aorus X370 Gaming-K5 with W7 build complete. W7 loaded perfectly and all of my games this side of DX12 run perfectly. I'm still tweaking the OC and will try to get some benchmarks together. If you are contemplating a Rizen W7 build and don't want to put out a bundle, I would highly recommend this board.

[Agent Orange]

ASRock X570 Tiachi

W7 Install Attempt

The first attempt to install W7 failed. I used a working NVme SSD cloned directly from my Aorus X370 Gaming-K5 and it BSOD'd immediately. Since my new X570 Tiachi has a PS/2 jack, I will attempt to go that route which simplifies the procedure somewhat by not having to prepare a slipstreamed ISO version on a USB drive, and also ensures a clean install. I haven't figured out what driver issues but I don't think it's going to be a problem.

A little about the ASRock X570 Tiachi. The physical aspects of the board are outstanding, and I really appreciate the steel backplate. The risor bezel is permanently affixed to the board but 'floats' and fits any ATX case opening. The BIOS is the fastest that I've seen getting into W10 and the 'fast boot' option isn't even turned on. The stock fan on the Zen 3700X is silent as well as the chipset fan, which is guaranteed for 50K hours of use. The main ingredients for this build remain the same as the RMA'd Asus ROG Strix X570 Gaming-F; i.e., GSkill 3200 32GB 4x4, Nvidia RTX 2070, and the Samsung 970 EVO 1TB, as well as the WD 6TB Black storage drive. The WD 6TB is default formatted GPT which presents no access problems.

At this time I consider the Gigabyte Aorus X370 Gaming-K5 with W7 build complete. W7 loaded perfectly and all of my games this side of DX12 run perfectly. I'm still tweaking the OC and will try to get some benchmarks together. If you are contemplating a Rizen W7 build and don't want to put out a bundle, I would highly recommend this board.

Late edit:

Another thing of some interest concerning the X570 Tiachi, was the ease of transferring the W10 install from the Asus X570 Gaming-F to the new board. All of the previous drivers worked with one PCI exception which cleared upon the BIOS update to 3.80. Also, Microsoft didn't whine about reactivating Windows due to a major hardware change. I suppose this is a result of Asus & ASRock are basically on in the same.

[Agent Orange]

. . . Microsoft didn't whine about reactivating Windows due to a major hardware change.

"Open mouth, insert foot" as the old adage goes. I no sooner posted the above thread when I logged off and went up stairs to play with the Tiachi. The setup had been running for over 2 days and then that dang watermark appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. Microsoft servers were down for most of the evening and finally came back up around 11 PM or so. In the meantime I tried to do a 'chat' and even called their HQ in an attempt to get legal again, both an exercise in total frustration. Finally, after Googling MS servers there was a thread stating that all was well again. So, it was a 2-click deal and I was activated, no questions asked.

[Agent Orange]

ASRock X570 Tiachi

W7 Install Attempt

One of the more interesting features of the Tiachi is that it retains PS/2 capabilities on such a modern board. Here's a crude representation of the I/O shield:

IO2.JPG

The integrated PS/2 keyboard/mouse jack fully supports a "Y" dongle such as this:

PS2.JPG
The above is on order and should be here later this week. I don't anticipate any problems with the W7 initial install as I think I've rounded up most of the drivers. The main problem with the project is finding a legal non-OEM license for the install at a reasonable price.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

Overclocking

I had a jolt last night while attempting different OC profiles on the AX370. I manually tweaked the memory to 3200 and it looked like it was going to be stable - at least for 3 or 4 minutes. Then boom - a BSOD indicated an attempt to 'access memory that was not found'. Upon reboot, I got to the desktop then it locked up good and tight. All attempts to to recycle or just power up left the system completely unresponsive. It was dead and not even the fans or the mobo RGB's would come up. It was late and I was tired so I left it for this morning. So, I pulled the side panel and removed the battery, waited a few minutes and reinstalled. When I pushed the power button I almost did a Snoopy happy dance - - - Snoopy.JPG as the mobo lit up like Christmas morning, but it took a good 2 or 3 minutes to get to the desktop. All of this is par for the course but the bottom line is the OC option prospects for this board seem to minimal. I'm leaving the Zen 3600 CPU at 200MB boost and let the memory be handled by the XMP option. Bottom line is this system runs W7 very well and all of my games this side DX12, including Cyberpunk 2077.

[Agent Orange]

ASRock X570 Tiachi

W7 Install Attempt

The holdup on the W7 install for The Tiachi is the USPS. The PS/2 dongle only took 2 days to arrive at the Detroit regional mail center from the west coast and that was on January 27th. According to the tracking info it was supposed to be delivered on the 31st, which was Sunday. Hopefully, it will be here today and I dan get this project back on track.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

Overclocking

It looks like my X570 Tiachi W7 project is over before it got started. I received the PS/2 "Y" adapter today and it works fine. I'm getting a STOP: 0x0000007E BSOD and I'm sure it's BIOS related. At this point I'm not happy about the prospects of downgrading my BIOS from 3.80 to 3.00 or 3.20.

This box is my main PC and gamer which is now fairly well tuned and I don't want to disturb the setup. I have the dedicated Gigabyte Aorus X370 Gaming-K5 with a Zen 3600 and a Nvidia GTX 1080 which runs W7 Pro just fine. So, I hate to be quiter but I'm going to have to leave it as a W10 machine and continue with the W7 project on the AX370.