My near ultimate windows 7 gaming build

WiscoMetro · February 15

I had started this quest to move off my 2011 Phenom II 1100T build when I bought Cyberpunk in 2022, as that was the first game I came across that it couldn’t launch (Ran things good enough like the Witcher 3, Dying Light, Plague Tale, and even Metro Exodus). I had initially tried using a gifted corporate cast off Precision T3600 as that had the SSE 4.2 instruction set, with my K4200 it also couldn’t launch. So my GPU was a problem too, so I tried a GT 740 I had available. Which despite being far weaker, being a generation newer did launch Cyberpunk in a slideshow mannered 6 FPS, but proved that a new GPU was needed too. Settled on a RTX 3060 bought just as it became possible to buy at MSRP once again. It strangely was flawless for Cyberpunk but everything else had serious stutter problem on the Precision in a way that my prior build also exhibited trying the 3060 but not a Quadro K4200, or its original Radeon HD 6970.

The news that the RTX 3000 series was the last NVIDIA generation to support windows 7 (and that ~~ATI~~ AMD was also dropping win7 support with their RX 6000 generation) made it a superb time to decide to make an ultimate build. I chose the 3060 because it was the lowest power x16 card, with frames per watt beating out the rx 6700, at least with the information I found at that time. The CPU was a clear choice seeing as Ryzen didn’t have support and I knew that AMD FX really wasn’t any better than my old top tier six-core Phenom II. Sure some 8 core Xeon better than the 6700K that has support probably exists, but this was planned to be the ultimate performance per watt, in a relatively low power package. For that 14nm Skylake was the clear choice.

My first take at making one was in a Full ATX case I painted seafoam green with a ASRock z170 Extreme4 + 6700K combo I bought off EBay. Despite being listed as win7 compatible I couldn’t for the life of me get it to install, Mint would install without issue however so it wasn’t like it was defective… So later when a good friend offered me the 6700K and ITX board from his 2016 build that he had since upgraded I said sure, as I knew he briefly had win7 on that initially. I’d still much rather have a full ATX board, but the point came that I just wanted a working gaming computer upgrade as I had a useless 3060 for over a year at that point, as I had sold the Precision on Craigslist.

He had also sold me a 240x120mm radiator and CPU water block assembly for it, with I’ll be able to use with the first 6700K build’s case if I can ever get that figured out, but for this I used the intel stock cooler I had bought for that. But in a previous mishap with a SATA cable touching its shockingly brittle fan while it was running, 4 of the 7 fan blades immediately shattered off of it. NEVER had I heard of such brittle craptastic fans. In contrast my Radeon HD 6970s fan just about ground through my fingernail in a moment once when dusting it out with compressed air, and not a single blade had broke off…

I had a Dell Vostro 220 which could boot, but bluescreened under much of any load(and acted the same with multiple PSUs). So that would be my case, and CPU fan coincidentally. Just had to cut the stock coolers fan off with some cutting pliers and twist tie the salvaged fan onto the block. It was a rather a garbage heatsink to begin with mind you, struggling to keep temps under control under high load, but I had planned from the get go for this to be an energy efficient build so it would suffice. In contrast the stock cooler from my Phenom II could easily maintain 120°F(49°C) under maximum load, so this fact surprised me. So a weak cooler, gave me all the more reason to turn hyperthreading and turboboost off unless I find a need to turn it on, and run the bios in “maximum battery” mode. Better performance per watt we’ll see.

Had to beat a stamped standoff behind where the Vostro’s Core2Duo had been down with a hammer to get the ITX board to mount. Also had to snip out the integrated I/O panel area out with the cutting pliers. My friend had lost this boards I/O shield anyways, so having that rough was no big loss. Of yeah and I had to angle grind the other side panels rivets to oblivion to change the PSU! The casefront USB won’t work since this motherboard has no USB2 headers but oh well. I use the USB3 hub on my monitor instead regardless.

Windows 7 installed flawlessly, but once to windows I had neither a USB driver (nothing except the mouse and keyboard would detect) nor networking. So for the first time in a over a decade I burned the LAN driver to a CD. More precisely 3 CDs, as the blank disks I had on hand hadn’t exactly been treated nicely since I never thought I was going to use them again, and the 3rd finally proved readable after burning… Then I copied the rest of the drivers to it normally.

So I present to you my ultimate windows 7 build. I played some Cyberpunk for the first time since selling the Precision, and its running a smooth 60 FPS 1920x1200 on my color accurate ASUS PA248Q. Too bad I never grabbed the 1.6 update's installer files (last version to support win7)… I also look forward to replaying games which my previous computer had limited me to playing at medium settings, and at 1280x800 in the case of Witcher 3.

Parts used:
Case:       Hacked into a E-waste Dell Vostro 220
PSU:       Thermaltake - Toughpower GX2 600W 80 PLUS Gold
CPU:       Intel i7-6700K
Motherboard:   ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Impact
Heatsink:   Intel K69237 cooler block, with Vostro 220 CPU fan twist tied on
RAM:       2 x 16 GB Kingston DDR4 2133 KVR21N15D8/16
GPU:       EVGA RTX 3060 12 GB
SSD:       2.5” Samsung 850 PRO 1TB MLC (reused)
HDD:       3.5” WD Blue 2TB (reused)
DVD:       Random DVD-RW drive (reused)
Case fan:   bgears b-Blaster 90mm (reused)
SD card drive:   Koutech USB 3.0 Internal Card Reader (reused)
SATA cables:   Random 2x blue, 2x red (reused)

Cost to have a fresh power supply and not be gaming on a Phenom II 1100T and Quadro K4200 anymore: $548.64! 60% of which was just the graphics card. Kinda nice I think that if someone was ever to break into my house they’d only see a 15 year old prebuilt, Sleeper!

While I’m at it why not show my entire current setup. Two USB extension cords and one coming out of my monitor hub of peripherals, along with HDMI/Displayport sound lets me switch between desktopified laptop and gaming desktop with a quick unplug replug.

TheLANguy · February 16

Really nice!

Now for the real question...

Did you install Windows 7 Ultimate on the near ultimate Windows 7 build?

WiscoMetro · February 17

On 2/15/2024 at 6:50 PM, TheLANguy said:

Really nice!

Now for the real question...

Did you install Windows 7 Ultimate on the near ultimate Windows 7 build?

Thanks!

Believe me that thought crossed my mind. But no, it is only but Win7 Pro, I just moved one of my 3 codes to it.

thrasher_565 · February 17

you need an updated iso to have all the updates as you cant download em anymore.

i dont no what the last supported w7 pc is. i have a 3090 and could not get it to work thow there some one on here that did.

w7 wont install on an nvme ether.

im building an Ultimate windows xp build

anyway nice build.

WiscoMetro · February 17

30 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

you need an updated iso to have all the updates as you cant download em anymore.

i dont no what the last supported w7 pc is. i have a 3090 and could not get it to work thow there some one on here that did.

w7 wont install on an nvme ether.

im building an Ultimate windows xp build

anyway nice build.

The latest security patch for the 3060 wouldn't install for me either, but the first version of the driver did, weird but good enough. For sure a 3090 would be THE ultimate choice, but I was looking to keep my GPU TDP firmly below 200W, hence my pick.

Actually what you need is to manually install a windows update update. With that I was still able to download and install everything normally a few weeks ago (minus the telemetry ones mentioned here, thanks to Delicieuxz for compiling the list). Now, sure that doesn't include the paid extra support years, but I would've never paid for that so I shouldn't have it.

The no NVMe to boot was a disappointment, as I had specifically bought a 970 Pro with this eventuality in mind, but this board has neither a M.2 slot or spare PCie slot to use the adapter I have for it in my prior rig.

Have fun with your ultimate XP build!