I've finished building my new PC and configuring it to my liking; The Unknown SSD's are 2x500GB M.2 Drives so I can work on LastOS's in VM's much much faster and not have to delete VMs to use the space for other projects like I used to. I've merged my Server to my PC so I have 4 x 4TB just for my Plex Server which I can unplug when I am not using them. There is lots of space left over for me to fill now as data and speed are my main use, this is why I only brought a low powered Nvidia1030 GT to get me by for now. I learned that if you use 1 M.2 Port on some(most) motherboards it removes access to 2 SATA ports, so even though I have 6 SATA ports only 2 are active, else I'd have another 2TB, another 128GB SSD and a Optical disk (which are installed and I can hot swap as needed). I also learned of RGB headers directly on the motherboard, I don't use mine and I disable the built in RGB, my PC set set to run silent, thus the 72 degrees CPU, silent and black is the goal, the loudest thing is the HDD's and I love how whisper quiet it is.
Nice. Yes, definitely something to look out for when buying a new motherboard in the future, the M.2 taking over SATA slots. In my case especially because if possible I would stick to no larger than MicroATX size and then there are suddenly a lot fewer buying options because those tend to have fewer ports and PCI-e slots, etc. How are you experiencing the speed compared to your older systems? I haven't had a newer system to play with so I can't really imagine the real-world differences.
Except for the faster Data transfer, it feels exactly the same. I imagine using it for photo/video editing and converting will be faster and more "real time" but I don't notice the desktop responding any different etc. Still have to wait for USB to spin up if they get bored and go to sleep - especially if you drag a file over the top of the Quick Access (Folder View) on an explorer window. I have dusted (Removed dirt?) from my old PC and put new thermal paste, wonder how much longer it'll run. My kids will find out for me as I'll put in the old 1TB HDD's and the 64GB SSD and see what happens.
I also have the Ryzen 7. Mine is the 2700X paired with the ASRock B450M Pro4 Mobo and 32gb DDR4. I couldnt believe the sheer horsepower this thing has. Building went from 1-2 hours to 20-30 minutes. So glad you got a sweet machine!
YEA, it is so close in parts except GFX and drives, I have the Gaming Pro and the R5 2600, good setup so far for me so I surly know that is working good I hate the fact that they take away from 2 SATA ports for a single M.2, just uncalled for LOL. EDIT: Flash it with a Modded BIOS and do not look back
This is the where I got mine at the time (years ago): https://forums.mydigitallife.net/forums/bios-mods.25/
@Ghost and @Trouba, Since I have never modded mine, nor had any issues with my stock BIOS (that I'm aware of), what benefits have you seen to having a modded BIOS? Is it added features, easier activation, or what? @Ghost, did it help you enable installation of Win 7 on your "newer" motherboard? I thought it was just that you were lucky that your board was still borderline old/new and still had official Win 7 drivers available.
The BIOS mod I used for this Z77 board was for SLIC activation. I requested it in a thread and a few days later it was made for me; it worked well. I think I have since flashed it again with stock. There are also mods for adding NVMe boot support to older boards. There are people who have successfully made a NVMe drive their boot drive using something like this: Vantec M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe x4 Adapter
Yep mydigitallife forum, and the reason is for a modded bios is for the legit activation for Pro versions of OS's, means is not having to mess with cracks and the new KMS Pico gets eat by AV's, but for me I have to take care of like 10 pc's in my family and its easier to use a modded SLIC bios than worrying about me having to drive 4 hours to fix a PC because the crack got ate LOL @bphlpt - back in the day when I was on another forum a modded bios meant you could OC a PC to the fullest max stable potential, but back then XP was the OS, so now we are in a new era of activation, as said I do not need to run a loader or Pico to activate my personal system, or my media system or anyone that I have flashed with a modded SLIC bios, it also auto activates when online. And this comes back to full circle to why I bought my LTSC key for less than 20 US dollars, I actually have 2 Win 10 Pro keys I have not used all for the price of 24 US dollars. EDIT: Also to note that most of these new motherboards are with a Bios crash feature, or a dual bios for that same reason, and some come with it built into the back of the mainboard as a USB port for the flashing of a bios even if the pc is not on, yea really awesome. EDIT 2: I forgot I have actually modded 4 of the bios files myself to inject the SLIC tables and all worked perfectly, the only 1 was my system ASUS Pro Gaming B450 I could not mod as it is a .cap file and I am not that smart to figure it out LOL
You know Ghost, you could use one of the LTSC builds here and use autounattend to put your key in and activate with automated install. I just found someone modded my mobo's BIOS here so I may give that NVMe boot a try one day
@Trouba - Yes I sure could, but the only reason I do not is I got the registry entry as a .reg file and viola done, also I do not want to upload a fixed base and it is in the .xml file or the 'mount image add product key' method, like we did with win 7 to skip and install the correct edition selected from a Home/Pro release, I remember doin it in the win 7 builder, just can not remember why it was useful right now LOL, but it was. EDIT: @Trouba - if that bios works for you then have Serg008 at https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/award-ami-bios-mod-requests.5863/page-3339#post-1681069 add the SLIC table and then have the best of both worlds
Yeah, NVMe and SLIC supermod I'm about to try that NVMe thing. I ordered a bracket and NVMe drive to play with. I have a PCI-e 3.0 x8 slot free and my graphic card doesn't use the full bandwidth of the PCI-e 3.0 x16 slot it's on, so that means I should be able to reach full speed with the NVMe. I got a Gen3 NVMe from SK Hynix, they run a bit cooler and still very fast plus I'm curious about them because they are a huge OEM company that just started making consumer drives. Anyway, I think I'm first going to try a hybrid approach with a Win8 boot/setup and Win7 install.esd (yay, get to use esd again!). Win8 boot will have NVMe drivers included, I pre-installed the NVMe updates by MS in the install.wim/esd, so those will be present already. I'll have to flash my BIOS with the NVMe modded one, and before doing that note down really well my OC settings because I have it running really well now and don't want to have to figure all that out again. If successful I'll install Win7 on this z77 system with superfast NVMe system drive
Now you got me curious @Trouba, I have a ASUS p8z77-m pro mobo. Can this old mobo use that mod to use NVMe with that adapter?
I would say yes, but there can be pitfalls. You'd have to find a modded BIOS for your model motherboard, either use a Win8/10 boot/setup in combination with a Win7 install.wim that has the NVMe driver updates integrated (the last couple of Win7 builds I made have these integrated already). Or else use a Win7 boot.wim with NVMe drivers integrated. One of the most important things is that your motherboard can recognize the NVMe (for using it as a boot drive). Certain NVMe SSDs (certain Intel and Samsung ones) include Option ROMs that provide the data required for a motherboard to recognize the drive. Whether or not a BIOS mod overcomes the requirement of an Option ROM built into the NVMe SSD remains to be seen. Amazon royally screwed up my order and I'm still waiting, the order appears lost, so I have not been able to try anything yet. A good resource can be found here.
