Does an i7 7700K on "Z170" motherboard work with Windows 7. Help Urgent

Folate · Aug 7, 2017

I have been searching for over a week for an answer to my question.
Ok so we all know that Kabylake Z270 is no longer officially supported by windows 7. Skylake Z170 is Officially supported since that is what I currently have. I have a friend that bought a brand new Kabylake i7 7700K in anticipation for the Z170 board he plans to buy at the end of the mouth. My brother needs an i7 for his soon to be built Z170(he loves windows 7) and I can sell him my 6700K and then buy a 7700K with $40 loss.

My Question is will installing the Kabylake CPU in my Asus Maximus Z170 board cause issues with Windows 7. My basic understanding and assumption is that Windows 7 support ending with Skylake Z170 is more of a motherboard chipset issue rather than the CPU.

I tried Googling this and was not able to find an answer. So does anyone here know if the Windows 7 support is only specifically for Z170 with a Skylake CPU even though Z170 Motherboard fully support's KabyLake CPU's and the Intel drivers for windows 7 support are only for the chipset so I thought maybe the CPU will have no effect on the Z170 driver compatibility for windows. What I hope to do is install a KabyLake I7 7700K into my ASUS Maximus Alpha.

mdd1963 · Aug 7, 2017

Good question!

(I've not run across that set of circumstances before...)

You could always try it....

If it blue screens during install, we know why

Folate · Aug 7, 2017

Yeah I was hoping there might be someone out there. I know there is cause I saw a few people on the Asus Rog Forums running Kaby on Z170. Thing is they were using Windows 10 Ultimate SpY Edition

mdd1963 · Aug 7, 2017

It's time to bite that proverbial Win10 bullet.....; todays Win10 desktop is just as easy to use as WIn7, but with a quick, easy to use Search bar....

TerryLaze · Aug 7, 2017

Windows 7 will install on kaby lake CPUs and any motherboard be it 100 or 200 chipset.
You just have to make sure that your win7 installation media is made for uefi since most disks back then only had mbr/bios support.Also because of the new mobos showing all devices as usb3 you will have to integrate appropriate drivers that can deal with usb3.

The real problem is that it will only update to a certain point, after that a message will come up stating that the CPU is not supported and it will not install any new updates,so it's still usable (till the end of times) but without the proper security updates it might be somewhat risky.

Saturnity · Aug 7, 2017

Okay so yes it will work most likely, but its really not recommended. If you are getting an i7-7700k its better to buy a z270 instead of a 170..

Folate · Aug 7, 2017

Here is what I was just told from another forum. Windows 7 works perfectly fine with Skylake. The problem is if you put a Kabylake CPU in a Z170 Motherboard then Windows 7's update after March 2017 will refuse to download anymore updates since it detects the kabylake CPU.

However there is an easy work around. Just download the Windows 7 updates, manually. Since Win 7 updates are essentially 1 package file, it's really not a big deal. Windows 10 is Cancer and my setup is geared towards Windows 7. Old saying goes if it's ain't broke don't fix it.

I got to say, I was amazed how many forums I went to and how in only 1 forum someone knew the answer. Point being is that I am sure many other people will find themselves in my shoes looking for the same answer with the same question and hopefully my post will help solve there dilemma by coming up when they google the issue.

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