Ryzen 5 5600X compatibility with Win 7 (or just go for 11600K?)

[AndyT]

Hi all, I currently have a first gen Ryzen 1600X and would like to upgrade the cpu/mobo before (if things ever change with the GPU market...) eventually the GPU (1070 GTX).

I was looking at either the Ryzen 5600X or the i5-11600K. My choice based on price/performance would be the 5600X, but I have a dual boot system with Win7 and Win10 which I use for some legacy Win7 engineering software.

Ryzen first gen wasn't/isn't compatible with Win7 out of the box due to some USB driver issues, so at the last upgrade cycle I had to faff around with the Win7 install and can't at all remember at all what I did. I have read that this is the same with the later generations of Ryzen. Is it still difficult to get the 5600X to work with Win7, or should I just go for the intel? I've read that even with some tinkering the Ryzen 5 chips are temperamental with Win 7.

Tbh I'm all for an easy life these days, and just want to be able to fire up the VR headset, some work software or some BF and just get on with it.

I'm happy to do do minimal messing around to get Win7 to work for Ryzen 5 if there is a decent idiots guide somewhere, but on balance what do you think? 5600X or 11600K.

I'll buy a decent mobo for either one, so I guess I have to factor the cost of that in.

 

[AndyT]

No faffing about on my 5900X. Install, set RAM to XMP

I did mess about a lot with my 3600 prior to this CPU, but that was because I fancied overclocking it, which I did very well.

A lot of people end up having issues because they are messing about with RAM, or got the wrong RAM. Either that or messing about with PBO. Oh and a bit of pebcak.

If there was so much issues AMD would not be selling them by the boatload and the issues would be widespread like it was with the 5700 GPU with the black screens which they ****** the drivers up on and took ages to fix.

Hi, thanks for the response, but are you running Win7 with the Ryzen chip?

 

[AndyT]

Ah, sorry, missed that. No, I am on latest Windows 10 and will go 11 later this year after it is out for a few months and patched up.

How comes Win7?

I have a dual boot system with Win7 and Win10 which I use for some legacy Win7 engineering software, now unsupported, which I'd like to keep using.

 

[AndyT]

Thanks all, I'll probably just look into having a second box for Win7 at the next upgrade cycle if I can, or making our aging laptop dual boot instead.

 

[AndyT]

I'm now looking at setting up virtual machine as it seems fairly straightforward, so thanks all for the pointers.

I'll try it with my current setup to see how it goes and delay the upgrade for a while.

TBH I'm fine with Windows 10 as my normal OS, as I'm so used to using it at work.