NVMe Drive on GA-h270-Gaming Motherboard and New Install of Windows 7 OS

[walkng]

I just ordered a Gigabyte GA-H270-Gaming Motherboard and am now considering using a SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 2280 256GB for my OS drive. My concern is that the Samsung 950 is a NVMe M.2 drive and I plan on installing my Windows 7 OS onto it. I have read that Windows 7 may have trouble recognizing a NVMe drive but the new Intel 270 chipsets are friendly to NVME.

So I am asking if anyone has had any experience with this situation and if I will have any trouble installing Windows 7 on the Samsung drive. If so, what is the work around.

Most people in this situation are building a new PC and are installing Windows 10 that I'm sure will handle it. But I have chosen to take a less traveled and fraught with danger route. I am upgrading my kids tired and old AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black CPU with an Intell i5-7500 and to save money I plan to use the Windows 7 install disk that we bought for the Phenom system.

I Had ordered a Crucial MX300 SATA originally to go in the new system but after reading the exciting reviews about the new M.2 NVMe technology and all the glorious speed improvement it promises to bring I am compelled to throw one in this new build.

Maybe I can get a free upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 before I start to disassemble the AMD system and then what, download a Windows 10 install from somewhere and install using a USB drive and the use the license from the Windows 10 upgrade to register it? I don't know. Oh to save $120.

Thanks

 

[||Console||]

You should be able to install windows 10 and use the key from windows 7 .

I dont have any idea about your main question with win 7 and Nvme . It is faster in benchmarks but in real world use it is only a bit after . For a budget rig that you are building I would save $ and just get a bigger Sata based SSD.

 

[noxqzs]

I just went through the process of installing Win7 on a 960pro installed in a 270 chipset. If installing Win7 from a CDROM, then you will need to download the NVME drivers from Samsung, burn to CD (not USB). When you get to the point during drive setup in the installer, load the CD driver disc and then proceed with install. Win7 does not have USB driver support for the 270 chipset right out of the box, so if you need to install from a thumb drive, those drivers need to get slipstreamed into your boot stick and that is more work then it need to be. All the time you spend making the boot stick, you might as well just install from the CD. I also ran into another issue because I have a 7700k and Microsoft decided to stop upgrade support for that cpu on Win7. There is a patch to work around the problem as well. Last time I remember Windows gave me this much of a hassle to install was Win98. Everything has been running smooth since the install.