Are there any LGA 1150 or 1155 mobos available anymore WITHOUT a UEFI BIOS?

[Ken90630]

Hey, All,

I occasionally build new PCs for friends, and I need to do one this week. It will be Windows 7 based. I much prefer working with an older-style BIOS over the newer UEFI.

I've more or less decided on an i5 CPU, or an AMD X4 (Socket FM2), and I always use either Asus or Gigabyte motherboards. Looking at the offerings on Newegg this evening, however, every board I like the looks of seems to come with a UEFI.

Are boards with the 'old'-style BIOS pretty much a thing of the past, or are there still some out there and I just need to look harder? This board does NOT need to be Windows 8 compatible -- EVER -- it just needs to run Windows 7 for several years. It will just be a basic home office PC for MS Office, Web surfing, e-mail and Photoshop Elements. Nothing about it will require UEFI AFAIK.

 

[zir_blazer]

Being UEFI does NOT means that you're forced to use the fancy GUI, the manufacturers are the ones that decides to include it to make them look cooler in the traditional Desktop market. You may want to download and check some Motherboard manuals to see if it does have a GUI or is still text based. At least Server Motherboards seems to still be text based, yet are UEFI compliant.

 

[vailr]

Supermicro boards for Haswell CPU's still use the old style (non-3D) bios setup screen.
2 examples:
Supermicro C7Z87-OCE-O LGA1150/ Intel Z87
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=MB-C7Z87OC
Supermicro X10SAT-O LGA1150/ Intel C226 PCH
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=MB-X10SAT
The term "UEFI" may also refer to a certain bios setting that can be disabled within the bios.
The UEFI/Legacy enable/disable setting should be present in most brands of Haswell chipset boards,
including those 2 Supermicro boards.

 

[Maximilian]

If its just aesthetics then every UEFI ive worked with has an "advanced" mode of sorts where you can navigate with the keyboard easily just like the old BIOS. In fact its exactly like the old BIOS with more color. I don't like the new gimmicky 3D crap, having mouse support is fine but the 3D GUI's are just balls in general.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If its just aesthetics then every UEFI ive worked with has an "advanced" mode of sorts where you can navigate with the keyboard easily just like the old BIOS.

I can recommend ASUS UEFI, their advanced mode is very similar to "old school" BIOS. With mouse support, but easy to navigate with a keyboard too.

 

[coolpurplefan]

jane-motherboard on eBay still had socket 775 Asus P5Q SE and Asus P5Q Turbo motherboards the last time I looked. I also saw Intel E8500 processors brand new on eBay. And some new DDR2 RAM is still available.

 

[Morbus]

Yeah, the UEFI advanced mode is very good on the Z87-A, which is what I have, and the easy mode, as they call it, is functional enough to warrant its existence.

 

[Ken90630]

Thanks, everyone. I'll get a board with UEFI and see how it goes. My bad UEFI experience was based on an HP all-in-one PC (Win 8) that one of my friends bought last year. I had a miserable time working with its UEFI, but based on the comments here, hopefully that was a unique experience and not reflective of all UEFI-featured boards. In particular, I had a heck of a time trying to get Acronis True Image to work because it wouldn't work with UEFI. I suspect the problem had something to do with the UEFI and the hard drive's MBR, and I never did resolve it. Gave up after two hours of fighting with it. *shrug*

 

[Maximilian]

Thanks, everyone. I'll get a board with UEFI and see how it goes. My bad UEFI experience was based on an HP all-in-one PC (Win 8) that one of my friends bought last year. I had a miserable time working with its UEFI, but based on the comments here, hopefully that was a unique experience and not reflective of all UEFI-featured boards. In particular, I had a heck of a time trying to get Acronis True Image to work because it wouldn't work with UEFI. I suspect the problem had something to do with the UEFI and the hard drive's MBR, and I never did resolve it. Gave up after two hours of fighting with it. *shrug*

Might have been because the PC used GPT (GUID Partition Table) instead of MBR. The GPT replaces the old MBR, allows larger disks and stuff, some programs dont play well with it though.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

My bad UEFI experience was based on an HP all-in-one PC (Win 8) that one of my friends bought last year. I had a miserable time working with its UEFI, but based on the comments here, hopefully that was a unique experience and not reflective of all UEFI-featured boards.

Oh, that explains. You can rest easy, standalone mainboards have way better implementations.

(actually the "standard" AMI Aptivo implementation is so like BIOS that its very hard to tell it apart from an "old-fashioned" BIOS at a glance...)

Might have been because the PC used GPT (GUID Partition Table) instead of MBR. The GPT replaces the old MBR, allows larger disks and stuff, some programs dont play well with it though.

You can say that again...

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I know the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H has the option to return to Classic style of a BIOS interface instead of the UEFI interface.

 

[Mark R]

Yup. Gigabyte has the option for a text-based interface.

Doesn't do anything to alleviate UEFI boot issues, if you're trying to image PCs. That is a real nightmare. When I tried imaging a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H system, onto a new drive, the original mobo would boot the original and clone. However, No "out of the box" mobo could boot any of the disks (even the original). The OS had to be installed on each individual mobo.

 

[Ken90630]

Maxmillian: Yep, I suspect the GPT was the problem. And I never found a fix.

Insert Nickname: Thanks. I'm less worried now.

BarkingGhostar: Thanks. I was leaning towards getting a Gigabyte board for this build anyway, so I'll probably go that route.

Mark R.: Nightmare indeed. I even contacted Acronis tech support at the time, and they didn't have a solution either. I ended up putting the backup image on an external hard drive, and that worked okay -- presumably because the GPT/ MBR issue didn't come into play. But I could not backup the image to the PC's internal HD.

Update: After a quick phone call to Gigabyte tech support a few minutes ago, it appears I've had the wrong impression about UEFI. *embarrassed* It appears that the problem I mentioned earlier, related to that HP PC that I couldn't get to work with Acronis True Image, was likely due to the fact it's a Windows 8 PC. That's where the GUID/GPT vs. MBR issue comes into play, vis-a-vis Acronis not working correctly. It's not related to UEFI. So ... my bad.

 

[Sheep221]

Early 1156 and 1155 gigabyte boards still came with regular DOS-based bios. But I'm not sure if they are still sold.

To correct you:
Uefi bios does not change behavior or compatibility of OSes you want to use. UEFI is just more graphical and colorful that's all. The Bios thing is still same it just come with redesigned package.

 

[Ken90630]

Early 1156 and 1155 gigabyte boards still came with regular DOS-based bios. But I'm not sure if they are still sold.

To correct you:
Uefi bios does not change behavior or compatibility of OSes you want to use. UEFI is just more graphical and colorful that's all. The Bios thing is still same it just come with redesigned package.

Thanks, and you are correct. After a quick call to Gigabyte tech support, one of their techs named John educated me on this. I had the wrong impression, based on a difficult experience with a Win 8 PC last fall, but the problem appears to have been caused by the PC being Windows 8 rather than the fact it used a UEFI. The UEFI appears to have been irrelevant.

Thank you, also, for educating me.