So I saw a recent post that a board I own, an MSI Max AC Z97, will support a Windows XP install, so long as you use "older chipset drivers." Now call me old fashioned, but this sounds like an awful thing to do to a machine. But maybe I just don't understand what I'm talking about.

From what I understand, the Z68, and by extension Z77 were the absolute last chipsets to support XP for intel. And really, X58 is the reasonable end for XP support. However this is tantalizing to me, because I did want to build an XP machine for supersampling, EAX and XP problematic titles like Crysis and Doom3. Right now, my Z97 box is for Vista, 7, 8 & 10. Almost everything is in 10, but a couple scraglers live in the other boots until they find ports, stable patches etc. I do not want to emulate EAX when I can run it directly on XFI hardware. That is my purpose for the XP box primarily.

If I'm going to have another box, I'd prefer I have a cutting edge RTX box and then this Z97 setup which would go from XP-10, with a GTX780ti SLI setup. The XP boot can only handle one of them, but that's PLENTY. And for the 7+ stuff, having SLI GTX780ti is no slouch setup.

But this all comes down to how hacky using a Z97 board is. I have a Z77 Sabertooth, but again, the less machines, the better. That being said, I don't like switching hardware. I always prefer to run KVMs and multiple boxes.