If you are using Intel CPUs you will need a CPU no later than Skylake and I am not sure about Skylake. It was during the Skylake series that Microsoft announced Windows 10 only. Some Skylake processors support Windows 7 but others do not.
I would recommend you purchase a CPU in the Broadwell (5th generation) or Haswell (4th generation) series. The 5000 series (Broadwell) would be a modest upgrade.
@USAFRet,
You do not know what the Rossdorn is wanting to do with his system. Not everyone is enamored with Windows 10. Personally I am preparing to build a system using a Celeron 1850 (Haswell) exclusively for recording television shows using WMC and transferring them to my NAS. The system will cost me about $400 (mostly due to the SSD) and will save that much in electricity (according to power supply calculators) per year by letting me turn off my main system when I am not using it. I currently run my main system and NAS 24x7x365. I am only home and awake about 6-10 hours per day.
Thank you for the answer.
I am using a Haswell i5 right now, and as I wrote I am looking for a new = faster "engine". As I am familiar with the Intel problems for Win7, I began looking at AMD. That has been made very complicated by the lack of information and support from AMD. There is NO clear information which of their CPUs has NO APU, as these will no work with Win7.
I would prefer not to have to add drivers to m Win7 iso, because I know from experience that such modification usually bring further problems for a non-programmer like myself.
That is why my question was "Basically I am looking for an
i5 or AMD equivalent, plus a fitting motherboard. But it needs to work with Win7!"
This has nothing to do with being "enamored with Windows 10". Like so many others, I have a huge dislike for spy ware and already more than enough discussions about the subject behind me.
I like the set up you are planning to use, but being an old man, I prefer to keep it simple.
Which is probably the reason why I do not play games. I live near the beach, so a lot of humidity, which means oxidation of contacts (on my by now 6 year old home-built)