Question ASUS TUF GAMING B450M-PLUS II Windows 8 support?

[andrepartthree]

I know I know, Microsoft is ending security updates for Windows 8 come January 2023 .. I'm holding off until the bitter end , it would be a pain to transfer all my programs to Win 10 though I know I'll have to do it eventually.

In the meantime I was wondering if anyone had successfully swapped out their motherboard with a ASUS TUF GAMING B450M-PLUS II on a Windows 8 installation? Asus's support page only gives drivers for Windows 7 and Windows 10 ...

On a different note , I have an ancient Ultra Defender Two model PC case (here's the pc part picker stats for it to give you an idea of the size of the case - looks like it's defined as an ATX mid tower case) which I'd like to hang on to for my daughter's nostalgia value if nothing else (she's emotionally attached to it ) and also to save some money despite it only in theory having one usb 3.0 speed port (that kind of thing isn't important to my daughter, it's her PC)

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9v...zAUdtKqed2PbFpIzApjrrgQbOSvhVeyWkUmQn-dlJCo3g

I was wondering if anyone had installed this motherboard into a similar sized computer case and if so if you had any problems with the installation.. I posted a thread earlier on where the dumb motherboard was built in such a manner that it blocked a 120 mm sized case fan from being installed near the top of the case

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...st-part-of-motherboard.3668885/#post-22101347

and I'm hoping I don't run into a similar situation with my ultra defender case with this motherboard ... I have two fans installed at the top of the ultra defender case, two fans in the front, one fan in the back and one fan in the bottom (yes I am very paranoid about my fans and cooling ) all 120 mm sized. I know pics are helpful here's a pic of a case build someone on pc part picker did but I can take pics of the inside of my own computer too if that helps any

https://pcpartpicker.com/b/ZTZRsY

I should point out that I'm still waiting for the PC parts to arrive in the mail so this is a question I'm asking in advance.. very excited that I actually got a hold of a AMD Ryzen 3 3300X Processor from Walmart at retail price (Walmart has had it going in and out of stock given the enormous demand for CPU's , Taiwan's drought conditions and lack of silicon as a result and covid in general messing things up, if you sign up for Walmart's in stock alert they'll let you know when it's back in stock if this is of interest to anyone - that's how I got my hands on one ... it fits my "not much more than $100 for a CPU " budget , I know there are more powerful CPU's out there

https://www.walmart.com/ip/AMD-Ryze...ith-Stealth-Cooler-100-100000159BOX/859645678

Thanks so much to anyone who reads this and responds

 

[kerberos_20]

hi, new platforms arent compatible with windows 7 due to missing drivers, im not sure about windows 8...many peoply didnt like that version, but windows 8.1 should be compatible out of the box if you use official iso
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8ISO

 

[alexbirdie]

You should be able to update windows 8.1 to win 10 with microsoft update assistant.
An if you download the current win10-ISO-file and make a bootable USB-stick wiht microsoft media-creation-tool, there are 2 possibilties after booting with it.
1.new installation and 2.keep current programs ( which is used for update, where your programs are kept).

I used it for update from windows 7, and it worked flawlessly.

 

[andrepartthree]

Thanks to you both so much for your replies .. and sorry for my late reply (slaps head - forgot to click the "watch " and "receive email notifications" button ) .. kerberos that's great news I am definitely running the official version of Windows 8.1 (it's from many years ago , purchased the official Microsoft Win 8 upgrade CD at the unheard of price of $30 after rebates .... deal of a lifetime , man if they would only do that kind of thing now with Win 10 ) .. my apologies I should have specified that in my first post, that it's Win 8.1 not Win 8 ...

Alexbirdie thanks for that, I've actually done that too with old Win 7 licenses with a clean install and the product key - actually my daughter's computer dual boots between Win 10 and Win 8 (each Win installation "lives" on it's own SSD drive) but I'd like to keep Win 8 around for older games I'm predicting won't play well (pun intended ) with Win 10 and the upcoming Win 11 plus of course the pain of having to migrate all the Win 8 programs to Win 10 (putting it off for as long as possible ) ..

I will try to remember to post back here and let you guys know what happens with Win 8 when all the hardware arrives (got the motherboard and memory in the mail already just waiting on the CPU now ) ... thanks again you guys

I know this is a long shot but - on the off chance anyone who's dealt with this exact motherboard ( ASUS TUF GAMING B450M-PLUS II ) or a close cousin of this reads this and can verify they got Win 8.1 to cooperate with it that would be fantastic ..

 

[andrepartthree]

Edit and update in case this helps anyone else... man these new motherboards are a LOT of work ! ... but happy with the results , it's a lot faster than the ancient 10 year old MB that was in my daughter's PC (the motherboard/CPU/RAM that is)

These two links are important (the second link mainly)

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...nblocks-windows-7-8-1-updates-kaby-lake-ryzen

https://github.com/zeffy/wufuc

which lets you bypass that annoying " Windows cannot update on Windows 8 " error message you're greeted with due to the fancy AMD processor (I believe that's the culprit) ... when you download the zip file there's a file called "Restore_wuauserv.reg" , right click on it and select "run as administrator", follow the prompts and let it reboot... and sure enough the annoying " Nope can't update windows " error message stopped popping up and it immediately let me run a required windows 8 update... though as pointed out in the first article link you need to reapply the patch from time to time apparently and Microsoft might find a way to get around this (on the other hand if I make it to Jan 2023 then MS stops pumping out security patches for it anyways ) ...

Kerberos and Alexbirdie are absolutely right, Win 10 gives a far better performance.... I rarely use Win 8 to be honest but I like having it around for older games and my rather old (but still very functional) color printer that does not "play nice" with Windows 10 and for some other stuff too ...

It's worth pointing out with Win 10 and this particular motherboard paired with an AMD Ryzen CPU (or at least this was the case for me with the 3300X) that it's absolutely worth downloading the chipset drivers and installing them.. I admit I'm an absolute newbie at this in that I just expect Win update to do most of the work for me far as installing drivers not natively found in Win 10 , but from what my meager research online indicates that chipset really does help and you should basically just say "yes" to all the stuff it asks you to download

TUF GAMING B450M-PLUS II｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global

TUF Gaming series distills essential elements of the latest AMD and Intel® platforms, and combines them with game-ready features and proven durability. Engineered with military-grade components, an upgraded power solution and a comprehensive set of cooling options, this motherboard delivers...

www.asus.com

I did get the endless spinning white dots thing at first and when I ran that chipset the spinning white dots appeared to go away I will update this thread accordingly if they come back in case this helps somebody else .. in all fairness that also could have been due to my dual boot being messed up by the new hardware installbut I ran the super helpful instructions here for Win 8 which is the ssd drive that the PC boots from first since I set up dual boot on there to begin with .. so not sure which one solved the problem

Fix the MBR – Guide for Windows 10, 11, XP, Vista, 7, 8

This guide shows you how to fix the Master boot record (MBR) in any of the Windows versions: Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows XP, Vista, 7, or Windows 8. What is the MBR The MBR (stands for “M…

neosmart.net

Surprisingly Win 8 gave me not nearly as many issues as Win 10 as far as reactivating after the hardware change.. Win 8 had me do the annoying listen to the cheerful robot on the phone give you a long list of numbers then the robot gives you an equally long list of numbers to activate and the bot warns you to make a record of said numbers (I did ) ... Win 10 , which was linked to a microsoft account which in theory should let it reactivate automatically, refused to reactivate Win 10 after the hardware change at first.... then I clicked on the change product key or whatever thing, just entered my old product key number and Win 10 was like " Oh okay you're activated now " ... which is strange you'd figure Win 10 would have that product key in it's computer brain anyways

Trying to decide if I want Armory Crate (which I downloaded when prompted to by Windows 10 ) to stick around or not... did some research and opinions vary, some say " Keep it or your PC will run into problems! " others say " Dude, totally unnecessary ! "

 

[andrepartthree]

Also in case this helps anyone I though I should document my (mis)adventures with trying to get the BIOS in the motherboard to recognize the higher speed RAM , " G.Skill RipJaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 DDR4 3200 CL16-18-18-38 1.35V Dual Channel DesktopMemory Model F4-3200C16D-16GVKB " (two sticks each 8 GB) (which I should note is NOT on the list of supported memory sticks in Asus's documentation for this particular motherboard so that could be part of the problem , or at least not that particular model of G.skill memory sticks) ... faithfully put the ram sticks in first and third slots as the motherboard manual instructed, went into the BIOS and followed the instructions this helpful gentlemen gave here on youtube

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvX6Rk4eNz8


except it looks like with my motherboard it automatically adjusts the voltage and so forth doesn't give me the option to change it ... which might have been the problem, regardless I got the scare of my life! The PC kept trying to start up after that and kept stopping , did that a few times and eventually defaulted into what it called a BIOS safe mode, which I booted into by pressing F1 as prompted to see it had defaulted back to the previous RAM speeds... the PC started up okay after that but the RAM was still stuck at the 2133 or thereabouts speed rather than the 3200 that the CPU and motherboard (see my first post for what the CPU and MB models are ) is supposed to be able to support (according to my online research anyways).

So did some more google research and the helpful folks at tom's hardware's forum came through again .. I can't recall the exact links to the tom's hardware forum threads but basically people suggested switching the ram sticks to the second and fourth slots instead (A2 and B2 instead of A1 and B1) .. and the PC was able to start up with no problems at all after that.

Now here's where things get strange.. the "title/intro screen" in Asus's BIOS on the motherboard still lists the memory as 2133 (going off memory here might not be that exact number but definitely lower than 3200) speed.. but when you click on the AI tweaker and the memory part the BIOS shows that it's been adjusted to 3200 speed ram .. and when I use task manager in both Win 8 and Win 10 installations they both report 3200 ram speed... so I'm hoping the BIOS is just confused as far as what to display and I'm really able to enjoy the 3200 ram speed that I paid for ..

Backing Win 8 and Win 10 installations up NOW using Acronis True Image and already set restore points for Win 8 and Win 10 on top of that .. will cross my fingers and hope that it's smooth sailing after that for this PC upgrade ...