New W7 Gamer

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

Out with the old and in with the new. Installed the AX370 this evening using the Samsung 950 M.2 with Windows 7 Pro. Some anxiety as it takes over a full minute to present the desktop on this board. I have the Asus app to stripout the old Asus drivers and I'll do that in the morning or so. Hope to have it up and fully operational very soon.

The Asus Crosshair VI Hero is a good board for W10 and is feature rich. The problem with it is Asus has just forgot about updating the BIOS in order to keep up with current events. My conversation with the Asus tech folks last summer was futile, as they said there would be no further BIOS support as far as they knew at that time. So, I'll run this new Gigabyte board all night starting now, and hopefully the W7 BSOD's are a thing of the past.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

Windows 7 Specific:

The AX370 ran all night long without any errors. Whether it be Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI, if you are going to run W7 with a Ryzen chip you will most certainly have to deal with the USB 3.1 issue. This time around it turned out to be a snap. Firstly, it is not often that you can transplant your system hard drive from one PC to another with any great success. In this case, it worked perfectly. The system booted to the desktop sans Gigabyte drivers. The next thing was to run the Asus driver removal app and reboot, then implement the AX370 driver DVD. All of the required drivers installed with no issues with the exception of the USB 3.1 set.

The USB 3.1 installation issue is not well documented by the big 3 because they want to keep peace with MS. MS does not want you to be messing around on a modern system with their old software and don't look to them for any help whatsoever when it comes to USB 3.1 support. ASMedia is here to help. If you search the install DVD you will find the ASMedia 3.1 driver setup routine tucked into some obscure folder. Just run the setup app and then reboot. Next, bring up Device Manager and scan down to the few USB & PCI drivers that haven't loaded. Right click on 3.1 drivers and request an update when the window appears. For the PCI driver update right click also, then change the search to C:> when the window appears. You are now done with the setup and I would like to add that this time around it was a "piece of cake".

The next step is to slightly OC the memory and CPU. I'll use some AMD software for the chip and then manually tweak the memory in the BIOS. Hopefully, I'll be able to report some benchmarking before the week is out.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

Windows 7 Specific:

The question of activation. After a period of a day or so a Microsoft pop-up offered several choices for (re)activating Windows 7, as the system is now on a new motherboard. Since I have a legal retail copy, not OEM, there was no problem. The AX370 was 'online' and that was the mode I selected. The confirmation came back almost instantly and I was rewarded with the tiny MS 'seal of approval'.

Concerning memory:

The memory for this build are the leftovers from my old Intel Z170 6700k dating back to 2015, and the specs are as follows:

GSkill Ripjaws 4
F4-300015Q-16GRR
DDR4-3000 4Gx4
PC4-2400 - XMP Ready

This memory set has always setup satisfactorily and never presented a problem. However, it is a little older now, so I decided to run MemTest86 for well over 24 hours it and passed.

I did a simple BIOS tweak and the memory is now manually clocked at 3000. I will try to OC the 3600 though a desktop app sometime today, and if all goes well I should see 4.1 or even 4.2. This all makes for a very sweet running W7 gamer and it's nice to still be able to recycle parts for a quality build.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

System Specific:

Overclocking the Ryzen 5 3600 CPU is not going to be automatic through your usual apps as I found out today. Neither AMD's AI Suite II or III will load. The included Gigabyte OC software does not work on this level Zen chip either. I tried a few other apps and nothing worked. There was mention of older versions of 'Ryzen Master' that seem to work on 1700 chip, but I'm reluctant to get involved with that. So, what's a gamer to do? Well, this calls for manual touch-and-go tweaking. I managed to turn on the 200MHz CPU boost, but that's it for now. I need put together some figures and do a manual tweak and this may take a little time to get it right. The memory seems stable and the GTX 1080 updated okay today.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

System Specific:

I've been gathering info on the OC and I have enough figures to go ahead, but I don't know if it will be worth the effort. I can go with PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) and achieve basically the same actual gaming performance as in OC'ing the 3600 to 4.1 GHZ, benchmarks notwithstanding. When this chip was running in my X570 it was OC'd to 4.1 or 4.2, and anything above that was unstable. Another angle is "unparking cores", which by the way is recommended for W7, but you would have to do manually though the registry. The MS hotfix for this, KB2646060, is no long available unless you can glean it off some site somewhere and I'm already tired of looking.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

System Specific:

The X370 is the duty gamer for now. My X570 has a BIOS problem that won't get past "Press F1 new CPU detected" I'll have to tear it down and re-seat the CPU as well as completely flush out the BIOS. It's a known major problem and most of the time requires an RMA. So, we'll have to see on that one. Anyway, the X370 is up to its gaming duties and performs very well. Only problem with the setup was the X370 does not have a 'Display Port' jack so I had to swap it out for an different 27" monitor.

The WD Black 6 TB came in yesterday. Take note that W7 will only see 2.2 TB max under MBR. It's no problem and if you are pursuing a similar build - use this as a guide. I find it strange that my small portable USB Sony 4 TB shows up as 4 TB, both, W7 & W10.+

Sample:

cmd (as administrator)

diskpart

list disk (#)
select disk (where # is the number of the 6 TB disk)
clean
convert gpt
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs label="Storage" quick
assign letter x

Most of this works in W7 with the exception of the format line. Simply close out and go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management and format from there. I see 5.45 TB on my HD.

[Agent Orange]

Aorus AX370-Gaming K5 Update

System Specific:

The X370 is the duty gamer for now. My X570 has a BIOS problem that won't get past "Press F1 new CPU detected" I'll have to tear it down and re-seat the CPU as well as completely flush out the BIOS. It's a known major problem and most of the time requires an RMA. So, we'll have to see on that one. Anyway, the X370 is up to its gaming duties and performs very well. Only problem with the setup was the X370 does not have a 'Display Port' jack so I had to swap it out for an different 27" monitor.

The WD Black 6 TB came in yesterday. Take note that W7 will only see 2.2 TB max under MBR. It's no problem and if you are pursuing a similar build - use this as a guide. I find it strange that my small portable USB Sony 4 TB shows up as 4 TB, both, W7 & W10.+

Sample:

cmd (as administrator)

diskpart

list disk (#)
select disk (where # is the number of the 6 TB disk)
clean
convert gpt
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs label="Storage" quick
assign letter x

Most of this works in W7 with the exception of the format line. Simply close out and go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management and format from there. I see 5.45 TB on my HD.

Correction:

I said "Take note that W7 will only see 2.2 TB max under MBR" and it should have been NTFS.

[Agent Orange]

Just a few lines about my Asus Strix X570 Gaming-F. It finally took a dump and it went in increments. So, the X370 has will be the pinch hitter until I get a new board. The X570 is still in warranty and when I get it back it'll just go on the shelf or maybe I'll sell it - haven't decided. I was going to order a Asrock Taichi X570 from B&H Photo today, but they were closed for a Jewish holiday (a devout group and I have a lot of respect for that). I am definitely done with the pricey high end boards.

[Agent Orange]

Just a few lines about my Asus Strix X570 Gaming-F. It finally took a dump and it went in increments. So, the X370 has will be the pinch hitter until I get a new board. The X570 is still in warranty and when I get it back it'll just go on the shelf or maybe I'll sell it - haven't decided. I was going to order a Asrock Taichi X570 from B&H Photo today, but they were closed for a Jewish holiday (a devout group and I have a lot of respect for that). I am definitely done with the pricey high end boards.

Turns out B&H Photo doesn't have the exact Asrock model that I want, so I went with Newegg and it's now on the way.

[Agent Orange]

There seems to be some pretty good interest in this W7 gamer project. If you haven't already, there's a real nice thread going on over at 'Overclocker.net' where one person has built a new ASrock x570 Tiachi system dedicated to W7. So, just do a search at the top for 'ASrock x570 Tiachi'.