Time had come to upgrade my old processor to something modern, the I7-6700K. New memory and a motherboard are required matching components. Having used ASUS in the past I'm comfortable with their products. Also like the smaller form factor and used of smaller computer case. Not being a big gamer I don't need lots of fans nor huge video cards, so this fits the bill.
However combined with the free Window 10 upgrade the upgrade process turned into a major undertaking. The three following became issues:
1. Windows 10 Clean Install (via Windows 10 media creation tool). Under the free upgrade program this can only be done after a computer is upgraded and activated, which I had done with the old mother board and processor. Re-activation upon install is automatic unless there are hardware changes. A new motherboard constitutes a major hardware change, and as a result the free Windows 10 activation was lost. However, a long call to Microsoft support, along with evidence of a legal Windows 7 license eventually restored activation after I did a clean Windows 10 install using the Microsoft medial creation tool. So in effect transferred the free Windows 10 upgrade to the new hardware under a clean install.
2. RAID. The motherboard had a RAID wizard that was not too smart. I have one 240 mb SSD (non raid) that's for the operating system, and two on terabyte regular disk drives in a RAID mirror. The motherboard wizard constantly tried to create the RAID drive of the SSD and one of the mechanical drives. It does not provide a way to chose which drives to create in RAID. Finally figured out to unplug the SSD then boot to BIOS leaving just the two mechanical drives in place, leaving the wizard no choice.
3. Installing Windows, Choose UEFI. The RAID configuration adds complexity for Windows installation. For some reason, in SATA RAID mode neither the SSD, nor RAID disk would show up in the list of bootable drives. When trying to install Windows, the installation program would fail and report that the motherboard didn't recognize those drives. Switching to ACHI mode recognized all as independent drives and lost the RAID identity. At long last found the problem. The default motherboard choice is to boot off the DVD drive, but this will ultimately cause a fail to install Windows if SATA is set to RAID. Instead, in BIOS, click on the option to bring up a list of boot options. Choose the one for the Windows install DVD that has UEFI in the name. Not the plain DVD burner. This little detail ought to clearly stated in the user manual.
Not all the above are the fault of ASUS, but I'd like have seen their instructions be a little more clear on RAID and how to install windows as their mother boards are probably purchased by folks that will be doing both. As a general comment, I recommend updating the BIOS to the latest version. After updating to version 505 the tasks complete the install seems to go more smoothly.
| Processor | core_i5 |
|---|---|
| RAM | 32768 MB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 3400 MHz |
| Wireless Type | 802.11b, 802.11g |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
