Building a new Win7 Compatible PC

[THRobinson]

My nephew bought a new PC which simply won't work with Windows7 and he's really wanting Windows7 installed. Fair enough, I've tried Win10 for a bit and prefer Win7 myself.

Anyways... looking at components for a build, and saw a few articles about new Intel CPU's no longer going to support Win7/8, and some motherboards when looking at the specs/site mention that it may not work with Win7, or you need to do some sort of USB patch?

Build I have so far for him, that's almost the exact same price as what he spent (which is the goal) is below. I have a GTX960 he can have which is better than the onboard his system had, plus a better power supply because (as with most pre-builts) his was a proprietary 300w. I'd rather this route for him because at least it can be upgraded.

Anyways... looking for some help/advice about what may work better in terms of Win7 compatibility.... though I know it's off support and on extended support for another 3yrs. Or what may be cheaper for him.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/THRobinson/saved/mBvD3C

EDIT - I'm in Canada, so pricing is in CAD.

 

[boosted1g]

The CPU itself is irrelevant to the OS as long as the motherboard vendor has chipset drivers for your OS (which the board you picked for the OS does).
Thus your hardware listed plus a GTX 960 will support WIn 7 just fine.

If your issues wiht Win 10 are just asthetic/menu related items you can get software to modify that to look/feel more like 7 while still having all of the under the hood improvements and modern hardware support.
While I dont like the forced updates and all of the built in spyware in Win 10 you have to di8ssable, I would still recommend that over forcing a new system to run an 8 year old OS on it.

 

[Slow Pri]

Well first of all Windows 7 support will end in the near future, I've hear 2-3 years from now. So you'd want to go to Windows 10, It's only a minor change I'd have to say from Windows 7 so I'd agree with @Boosted1G. However, I do understand why someone would love Windows 7, but once you change to Windows 10 you really won't go back. There are ways to disable those live tiles and other minor things. Windows 10 isn't a whole huge difference between Windows 7 depending on if your just doing the normal browsing and gaming.

Other than that, your parts are more than perfect.

 

[THRobinson]

I was reading this article about CPU support...which would be the same CPU as I was pricing for my nephew (6th Gen)

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/16/10780876/microsoft-windows-support-policy-new-processors-skylake

I think he has problems navigating with Win10... personally I'd get over it and just use what it came with but, without thinking, he ran out and bought a copy of Win7Pro so, hoping to use the disc. At least it's cheap these days. But ya, I forgot about those apps that change the appearance, may be the way to go in his case. Though, if BestBuy will take back the PC he bought, I still say a built system is better long term for upgrades. Especially since he wants it for games... 300w PSU and 0 space for a full sized card kinda limits getting a decent card. I'd suggest a GTX10604GB like I upgraded to... nice card and not too much, but I have my old GTX960 which will save him money for now.

Well, if he can return what he has... for the $40 difference in price, I'd build a better system for him (Aspire ATC-710-EB61).

Prob is I think you have 14 days to return computers, and he may have bought it 3 weeks ago. Hopefully they're not d!$ks about it.

Thanks guys

 

[Slow Pri]

I'm pretty sure best buy will return it, you typically have a 15 day return policy. (USA)

A custom built pc is a ton better because sometimes buying prebuilt gaming pc's usually use crappy parts. I know the IBuyPower PC's are crappy which are sold by Bestbuy. SO! Totally go built by your own! I use the 1050ti 4GB SSC amazing card as well!

Good Luck 🙂

 

[THRobinson]

Sadly, was a week past (3 weeks) and they have a 14-day return policy so, he was outta luck. May try again, guy on the phone hmmm and ahhed a lot, maybe getting someone else will yield better results? But for the most part, I suspect he's outta luck.

I managed to get into Win10 again and run the restore. Instructions were kinda lame... from what I can tell you can run a restore IF you can login to Windows. I had corrupted file errors and such, took a while to finally get in. I was expecting to find a boot disc or USB stick to access the restore partition.

Got Win10 running and updated, installed Classic Shell and I didn't go too far with it, just the basics of the menus and such I made look like Win7. I didn't go as far as editing regkeys and swapping out start buttons and such. Main menus and navigation were changed, about it.

I wish he had asked me before rushing out blindly and buying something... he's very upset now because knowing little about computers, he didn't know about upgrade limitations. 300w power supply and no real space for full sized gaming cards kinda screwed things up a bit.

Ah well, I'll research a little... if it takes a standard sized PSU... at least we have a few options.