How good is EVGA X299 Dark Mobo

[bruceb]

Thinking of using this board: EVGA X299 Dark ... it is kind of pricey at $490 or so but it is only one of who knows how many that still have support for Windows XP ... I would be using an Nvidia video card GTX1080 .. would use the on board audio outputs and would like Serial / Parallel ports for some old hardware I use once in a while. Would want a DVD DL/Blu-Ray Reader - Writer drive and 3 hard drives of 2 to 3TB each. I could do the build myself, but would like to team up with someone that has done this in the past. I would like to clone my old XP PRO SP3 install to the new machine and then on seperate partitions, clone the XP to another partition & do an in place upgrade to Vista / Win 7, then clone Windows 7 to another partition and upgrade to Windows 10 ... Can you do an inplace upgrade from say Win 7 32 to Win 10 64 or does it need to be a clean install ? .. It is a bit of a kludge but I would not need to reinstall everything from scratch ... I only need Windows 10 for TurboTax and for any web browsers in the future that may be needed for certain sites (banks, financial)

 

[UsandThem]

I think Foxconn makes them for EVGA, and from what I've seen they are a good quality motherboard, but not any better than the high-end boards from the competition.

My biggest concern over the years with their motherboards is they don't seem to update the BIOS for very long, at least not anywhere near as often as the true motherboard manufacturers. It's kind of a similar situation to the NZXT motherboards they launched in the last 6 months or so.

It's just my personal opinion, but I would rather stick with Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI when it comes to buying a motherboard.

 

[bruceb]

Perhaps, but I do not know if all other mobo makers will support XP drivers for the mobo ... EVGA does and says so right in the product description. I know if you go with a prebuilt like Dell you probably will not get XP mobo drivers. Worst case is when I do get a new computer it means about 1 or 2 days installing programs, moving data and files over and then tweaking everything for the proper look and feel I want. Most of my programs will install to Windows 10 and I have all the Licenses ...I also have legit licensed versions of Office Pro 2007 and Office Pro 2016 to use if needed.

 

[Fir]

That's an extreme OC board.
I thought about it but only four DIMMs = instant dealbreaker for X299.
Interesting about XP support.
Why not run virtual machines?

 

[aigomorla]

I have a x299 dark, and its a extreme OC board.

Its not your typical gamer board with rgb's all over the place.
It doesnt even have 8 dimm slots, because having them all populated can sometimes affect overclocking stability.

It is over engineered, has shorter and thicker traces on the cpu to ram, aimed at one thing, stability when overclocking.

I use the Dark on my test bench, but my main rig uses a Giggy, because i wanted that RGB. :T

 

[bruceb]

Thanks for the opinions. Now I need to decide if I really want to spend time to build a new computer or just buy something off the shelf and reinstall all my programs on a newer computer. Most stuff I have can run on Windows 10 it is just getting the "look / feel / customizations" just right that takes time.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's not possible (to my knowledge) to do any sort of in-place upgrade, between a 32-bit and a 64-bit version of Windows.

 

[bruceb]

Unfortunately, you are quite correct. I can do an in place upgrade to Vista, then to Windows 7 and then to Windows 10 32 bit ... But then when / if I get a computer with Windows 10 64 bit, everything has to be reinstalled all over again.

 

[Fir]

On sale at Microcenter for $299. I guess they want to get rid of them since no one is buying them.