Will Windows 7 64 bit run on this modern hardware OK?

[Chris Wilson]

I want to build a new, more powerful PC for streaming amateur digital TV to my transmitter, I'm one of those sad old radio amateurs

.

It has to on the fly encode and decode H264 and H265 from live camera or files stored on the hard drive.

I am looking at an Intel i9-12900K processor, a Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X motherboard, 32GB DDR5 RAM, a Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCIE 4.0 SSD, running off a Corsair 750W PSU.

I haven't decided on the graphics card but it will support hardware H265. I believe the processor will also support internal CPU operation?

I am unsure if such specs preclude the use of my favoured OS or if I *MUST* "upgrade" to Win10?

Aside from updates and potential security issues does Win10 do such encoding and decoding any better than Win 7?
Thanks.

 

[therealdippy]

You shouldn't have problem with the OS but you might want to check driver support. Once MSFT dropped support for Win7 it opened the window for component suppliers to consider dropping support too. Right now if you buy new components there is no guarantee that you will find drivers which are supported on Win7 and you'll just have to try it.

 

[rare]

It should work, a quick Google search reveals. Though you could well run in to some driver issues for the motherboard. Biggest issue outside of the obvious lack of ongoing security updates for Windows 7 is that the scheduler might be a bit broken. I wouldn’t even bother with Windows 10 personally, Alder lake was really built with Windows 11 in mind.

 

[Rroff]

You might have some USB and chipset drivers issues - not insurmountable but can be a bit tricky to resolve, certain CPU performance features might not work.

Windows 10/11 can be a bit of a pain when it comes to longer term streaming and decoding tasks, etc. the developers really are a bunch of ******* idiots but a cocktail of programs like Shutup10 and Windows Update Blocker can mostly alleviate that albeit it leaves you dependant on how trust worthy those program developers are.

As for security pffft while those in 10/11 will generally get sorted and/or patched fairly quickly there are so many vulnerabilities in 10/11 which shouldn't be there, so many new ones found all the time and/or go unfixed for months it unfortunately doesn't make as much difference as it should.

One of the reasons I stuck with building an older X79 based system for unattended encoding/decoding type tasks, etc. so I could still run Windows 7 on it.

 

[JollyJamma]

I want to build a new, more powerful PC for streaming amateur digital TV to my transmitter, I'm one of those sad old radio amateurs

.

It has to on the fly encode and decode H264 and H265 from live camera or files stored on the hard drive.

I am looking at an Intel i9-12900K processor, a Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X motherboard, 32GB DDR5 RAM, a Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCIE 4.0 SSD, running off a Corsair 750W PSU.

I haven't decided on the graphics card but it will support hardware H265. I believe the processor will also support internal CPU operation?

I am unsure if such specs preclude the use of my favoured OS or if I *MUST* "upgrade" to Win10?

Aside from updates and potential security issues does Win10 do such encoding and decoding any better than Win 7?
Thanks.

Would it not make sense to run Win11 native and then run Windows 10 or 7 in a Virtual Machine?

Looking at this, https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...e-Decoding-is-Supported-in-Premiere-Pro-2120/
You could just get the 12900K and using the iGPU and it should be powerful enough.

AMD enables full hardware passthrough on Virtual Machines and Nvidia offers partial passthrough now.

Not sure what the exact best solution you have is but I wonder if you wouldn't just be better off using Win11 for it all.

Are your apps only able to run on Win7 or 10?

 

[Chris Wilson]

Thank you all for taking the time and trouble to post such good replies. I did some more research when the seller I was in touch with, the owner of a big PC and peripherals company that I sold a fancy car to, and have remained friendly with since, warned me that some of my oddball, specialised apps may have issues with Win11, and was it worth the risk?

I had a rethink and concurred as with two apps the developers have moved on to other things, so there may well be no updates should win 11 prove an issue. I believe others have already had some issues with the current version of 11 and this oddball stuff. I know they run fine on Win 10. I also got told Win 10 does not fully support all aspects of threading with the higher end i9 processors, so running 10 and not 11 would currently cripple some processor threading capabilities. All a bit over my head...

I ended up with an AMD Gigabyte board, a Ryzen 8950X, 32 GB Corsair RAM, a new case, Corsair 750W PSU for future GPU upgrades, some fancy air to air CPU cooler and a Samsung 980 PRO SSD. Apparently this stuff will still run Win 10 OK. I appreciate this AMD CPU has no on board graphics capability but I have a used 1070 GTX graphics card which I hope will work for the time being, and I can upgrade it when I feel prices are as low as they are likely to get. In time this can migrate to the workshop, so hopefully I can get some good mileage from it.

So not what I was envisaging, and I have not had an AMD machine for a very long time, but when I did I can't recall any issues. Time will tell. He did try and talk me into some mega expensive graphics card (3090?) that had come back faulty and scratched up, but wasn't, IYSWIM, but even with a hefty discount I had to give that a swerve.... if anything proves terribly incompatible I was assured something could be done, which reassured me.

Thanks again.