What quirks ?
and are they o/s based or bios/firmware based ?

"without hassles" means Skylake at best as artificial breakage on newer processors are introduced.

I've managed to build the following system:
AMD 1950X@4Ghz/Asrock X399/64Gb DDR4/512Gb Samsung 970 Pro/1Tb Samsung QVS/2Tb Seagate sHDD 8Gb Cache/Radeon VII 16 Gb/Asus STXII/NEC301W

System offers very impressive performance in 3d rendering.

Ps Second generation of Threadripper is not possible due to inability to boot system with new Bios installed.

Davros wrote:

What quirks ?
and are they o/s based or bios/firmware based ?

Fw-bios-based.

leileilol wrote:

"without hassles" means Skylake at best as artificial breakage on newer processors are introduced.

Do not considering Intel at any point, because of low performance/cost ratio.

Maxing out with full compatibility for Windows 7 would be the Z370 chipset, good boards can handle the power requirements of the top spec i9-9900. Although for games a i7-9700k is near identical and hyper-threading usually harms minimum frame times so you may end up disabling that on the i9 which means the i7 is much better value if you're not using productivity software. Some of the latest games suffer from stutter on the 6 core non-hyperthreaded i5 as they're using code from 8 core consoles. Lower end 9th gen CPUs don't get the soldered TIM between the silicon and heatspreader.

The Intel 900p PCIe SSD would represent the best possible storage with crazy random performance but Samsung M.2 drives are still great.
Current Nvidia cards are still getting Windows 7 drivers, maybe the best Windows 7 GPU is yet to be released. The previous gen Nvidia cards are very close in performance to the current ones and allow a wider choice of drivers. Anyone who bought a 1080ti on the cheap from someone with an RTX preorder should be feeling happy.

This stuff is so recent that it's current and expensive so now isn't the best time for prices, high spec DDR4 will come down in price for sure. However, good motherboards hold their value to it might be an idea to pick up a new Asus ROG z370 (not Strix) motherboard while stocks are being cleared, rather than spend the same money on a used one later that might have been abused.

Edit: I started writing this before your post about AMD only, although doesn't change what is the absolute maximum for Windows 7 before major compatibility headaches.

Detailed intructions for intel-based system! Thanks! definitely useful info for Win7 users.

Another reason to hold off on an Ultimate Win7 build right now is Noctua will be releasing a replacement for the NH-D15 likely later this year with all new 140mm fans too.
Given the gains made with the 120mm NH-U12A, I'm expecting there to be a decent upgrade in performance to the successor of the king of air cooling for the last 5 years.

Socket 2011-3 Broadwell Xeon E5-2699A v4 or (if supported) Xeon E5-2699P v4
64GB RAM

an81 wrote:

Socket 2011-3 Broadwell Xeon E5-2699A v4 or (if supported) Xeon E5-2699P v4
64GB RAM

For serious 3D rendering 2699а is almost identical to 1950x. But the price of the whole intel system is pretty much ludicrous

http://blenchmark.com/cpu-benchmarks

Ps but in the future 2699a could be a good buy on ebay for say 10$ or so

BushLin wrote:

Another reason to hold off on an Ultimate Win7 build right now is Noctua will be releasing a replacement for the NH-D15 likely later this year with all new 140mm fans too.
Given the gains made with the 120mm NH-U12A, I'm expecting there to be a decent upgrade in performance to the successor of the king of air cooling for the last 5 years.

Thanks for info!

spacedrone808 wrote:

For serious 3D rendering 2699а is almost identical to 1950x. But the price of the whole intel system is pretty much ludicrous […]
Show full quote

an81 wrote:

Socket 2011-3 Broadwell Xeon E5-2699A v4 or (if supported) Xeon E5-2699P v4
64GB RAM

For serious 3D rendering 2699а is almost identical to 1950x. But the price of the whole intel system is pretty much ludicrous

http://blenchmark.com/cpu-benchmarks

Ps but in the future 2699a could be a good buy on ebay for say 10$ or so

I couldn't find a E5-2699 v4 on that page, the 2nd top result is the 18-core E5-2699 v3 whereas the v4 has 22-cores (44 threads) and 55MB cache. For a productivity workload it's no slouch by anyone's standards. I would pay quite a bit more than $10 if I had a use for one.
I would assume the 7nm Threadripper CPUs will have similar IPC and beat them for core count but they're not out yet and the X99, which came out in 2014, has Windows 7 support; not sure about the server chipsets.

I am pretty sure that any modern hardware you by from AMD or Intel will work fine in windows 7. The only thing windows 7 does not support is directX12. At the moment there are basically zero games that make use of that API. Besides, vulkan support exists in both platforms, and will probably run along side dx 12, if not even eclipse it in future games.

The best possible machine for windows 7 is the fastest computer you can build for windows 10, and I expect that will continue to to be true for several more years if not longer.

mothergoose729 wrote:

I am pretty sure that any modern hardware you by from AMD or Intel will work fine in windows 7.

Peripheral drivers (mostly USB, but not only) are becoming a problem.

I believe you, but that is easily remedied with a 20$ PCIE expansion card. USB Type A, C, and thuderbolt are the only relevant peripherals I can think of, and only thunderbolt might pose a problem now or in the near future... the lack of which is hardly a deal breaker IMO.

mothergoose729 wrote:

I believe you, but that is easily remedied with a 20$ PCIE expansion card. USB Type A, C, and thuderbolt are the only relevant peripherals I can think of, and only thunderbolt might pose a problem now or in the near future... the lack of which is hardly a deal breaker IMO.

Good one!

AMD Ryzen APUs are no go for Win 7. And I heard, that even old boards, that worked before, with Ryzen 3000 BIOSes aren't working anymore.

mothergoose729 wrote:

I believe you, but that is easily remedied with a 20$ PCIE expansion card. USB Type A, C, and thuderbolt are the only relevant peripherals I can think of, and only thunderbolt might pose a problem now or in the near future... the lack of which is hardly a deal breaker IMO.

In practice though, other than running a few benchmarks and saying yeah it works... will it trip you up?
Will you need to fish out a PS/2 keyboard every time you need to enter the BIOS or choose a boot option?
If you need to boot from USB, will that even work?

On the Intel side of things, the only thing the Z390 chipset offers over the Z370 is higher spec USB 🤣. You can find Z370 boards with better power delivery than Z390 boards which is supposedly the reason Intel introduced the chipset, so boards would have guaranteed operation with the i9-9900k. Between those two choices, for Windows 7 use, the Z390 makes no sense.

Srandista wrote:

AMD Ryzen APUs are no go for Win 7. And I heard, that even old boards, that worked before, with Ryzen 3000 BIOSes aren't working anymore.

The bios won't allow booting to windows 7 in UEFI mode? What about a legacy mode?

BushLin wrote:

In practice though, other than running a few benchmarks and saying yeah it works... will it trip you up? Will you need to fish o […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote:

I believe you, but that is easily remedied with a 20$ PCIE expansion card. USB Type A, C, and thuderbolt are the only relevant peripherals I can think of, and only thunderbolt might pose a problem now or in the near future... the lack of which is hardly a deal breaker IMO.

In practice though, other than running a few benchmarks and saying yeah it works... will it trip you up?
Will you need to fish out a PS/2 keyboard every time you need to enter the BIOS or choose a boot option?
If you need to boot from USB, will that even work?

On the Intel side of things, the only thing the Z390 chipset offers over the Z370 is higher spec USB 🤣. You can find Z370 boards with better power delivery than Z390 boards which is supposedly the reason Intel introduced the chipset, so boards would have guaranteed operation with the i9-9900k. Between those two choices, for Windows 7 use, the Z390 makes no sense.

It has been my experience that a lot of bios will work with USB addon cards. You might have to switch to an onboard USB controller, but it shouldn't be necessary to breakout the PS2 keyboard.