The board in question is an ASUS P8P67 PRO

I winced a bit when I read that, its the very one I suffered failures with, both my original purchase and its warranty replacement, taking the cpu out with it. I never chanced a third time unlucky and replaced it with a Gigabyte z77x-ud3h, which has been perfectly stable over the past 9 years. I'm eternally grateful that Intel replaced both the damaged chips FOC at the time too.

There was a hardware bug in this chipset that caused degradation of the onboard sata ports as you had mentioned earlier about having HDD issues which could have been due to something like this. Noticed yours is a B3 revision so this should have been fixed.

Intel P67 - Wikipedia

From what I can tell at a glance, there's no problem running windows 10 on this chipset. Most of the drivers needed are baked in, you should only need to install extra drivers if there's some particularly unusual hardware feature on the board. I tend to run into problems when upgrading laptops which have things like IR sensors or SD card readers built in. Desktop machines rarely give me trouble.

This thread on reddit seems to list the 3rd party drivers that you might need.

Asus P8P67 users and the Creators Update : Windows10 (reddit.com)

Alternatively you could try a utility to do the hard work for you (note I have not tested the software in the link below, just posting it for reference).

Snappy Driver Installer download | SourceForge.net

If you had a spare Hdd available, you could swap out your primary drive, pop in the spare and do a test installation on it to see what's involved. This way you can get right back to where you started by simply putting your primary drive back in if it doesn't work out.

IT used to be a bit of a side hobby of mine. Like most hobbies, once children come about, they tend to fall to the wayside :-( Best of luck and if you have any questions please feel free to ask below.

I was concerned about losing all my data (I have 2 HDDs - one for the OS and regular day-to-day data, the other for 'database' and large video/audio files, etc) if the changeover damages one or both drives because of a lack of device drivers for the data transfer/storage.

if your concerned about HD health I would back up to other drives, the drivers are generic so come with the OS, but wont damage the drive.

but the hard drive internal software can damage a drive that you cannot do anything about, without changing for another exact pcb, a loud clicking is a sign the arm is on its way out which if it breaks will damage the platter and data will be lost due to scratched platter....

My system uses A Gigabyte EP45 UD3L mainboard dated 2010. W10 works fine.

Edited by madf on 11/04/2021 at 11:16

The increased HHD noise after installing win10 could be down to the search indexer. On a new installation, it will run to index your files to allow for faster searching later on. It should calm down after a while once its done.

Search indexing in Windows 10: FAQ (microsoft.com)

If you are getting loud clicking, it might be time to start migrating your data off that disk. As good a time as any to pick up a SSD. 1TB cant be picked up for under £80 these days, or was at least when I bought one late last year for my PS4 (big child I am I know).

In my opinion, SSD's are game changing, by far the best upgrade I've ever made to my PC. Boot up time is comfortably under 10s and general system responsiveness is excellent. I use them in everything now. An old laptop I upgraded over Christmas for our young son to do remote learning on with a 120gb SSD that cost a grand total of £16.32. Transformed it from something slow and clunky into something quite useable even despite it's advanced age.

Edited by moward on 11/04/2021 at 11:54

This thread has developed into a mostly non-motoring subject but still of interest and importance so it will likely be moved to the General forum in a bit. Just so you know it's not been deleted if you can't find it...

It could've been the indexer, but I left the install on for a week or so, so I would've thought it would've gone away by then.

.....

I'm more interested in the reliability and longevity of the components, given what happened with this one's MB. To be fair, the PC has been reliable and long-lasting (far more so than any other previously), as well as being good value for money. Rather like buying a car.

Not sure whether it would be worth me trying to build one myself (the case [very nice Cooler Master tower] and fans are still in great shape), given that buying components myself appears to be more expensive than buying a custom-built PC.

My CPU (Intel 8200 and memory ) were bought s/h in 2010.

They still function fine... (all branded goods)

When prices fall (hopefully sooner rather than later)

Looking like Intel are going to make chips for other companies to the companies spec.

so chips from intel will make it to cars(not sure if they do now but I don`t recall Intel making processors for cars?) and will make them to spec, which could stir it up with prices and should improve performance as they are in competition with AMD only mentioned AMD as they are doing better than Intel at the moment!

AMD as they are doing better than Intel at the moment!

Only had one laptop (Dell) with an AMD processor and it was a costly mistake. I was concerned form day one it was running very hot compared to the Intel laptops that preceded it but a web search confirmed it was normal for that processor. At 2 years old it stopped working and it was confirmed by Dell that the motherboard had burned out. Out of warranty so had to pay almost £200 for the repair (but it did give the laptop another 1 years full warranty). After 2 years exactly the same thing happened.

With help from the Internet (had to plug in the charger and wrap the laptop in a towel for 30 minutes) I managed to get it running and backup some files but never used it again. Too much hassle.

Comes as no surprise when you see the cooling some makers give to a laptop, designed to kill a laptop as warranty runs out, if your lucky.

Comes as no surprise when you see the cooling some makers give to a laptop, designed to kill a laptop as warranty runs out, if your lucky.

We have had 4 Laptops since the 90's 3 of which have been Dells. The first Dell had 128 mb ram and a 10 gb HD - they doubled both when I ordered praise the Lord. Intel processor. Gave up on it in 2001 when we bought the 3rd Dell (see below) but it still worked last year when I plugged it in, slow but it worked. Another Dell is the one I am typing on, 2006 vintage, 2 bg ram, 250 gb HD 4 core Intel processor. Works remarkably well considering its age with Win10. Not a single problem with either of those 2.

The 3rd was a 2011 dell with the AMD processor, seemed OK but in reality rubbish. Way faster that the Dell it replaced but that one was used virtually daily for 15 years, this lasted 4.

Replaced by a t***iba with an i3 Intel processor, 4 gb ram and 500 gb HD. Been fine for about 7 years now.

I think your forgetting the old laptops are bigger than the new ones so have better cooling capacity, the new ones use heat pipes to cool the processor with very small airways and often smaller variable speed fans because of there size, so you are comparing years old tech with new smaller tech, there is no comparison -the old ones were better cooled

I made the mistake of generalising about laptops instead of being more precise about different age laptops

Edited by bolt on 11/04/2021 at 16:13

I think your forgetting the old laptops are bigger than the new ones so have better cooling capacity, the new ones use heat pipes to cool the processor with very small airways and often smaller variable speed fans because of there size, so you are comparing years old tech with new smaller tech, there is no comparison -the old ones were better cooled

The Dell AMD laptop I bought in 2011 failed after 4 years. It was hot enough to fry an egg on when you were using it.

The t***iba i3 I bought in about 2014 stays nice and cool.

Both are physically the same size.

The 2006 Vostro Pentium 4 I am typing this on is quite cool but its a 17" screen thus a bigger box.

Still say its was the fact that the 2011 Dell ran hot with the AMD, when i did a search it was a common complaint at the time. Its why I replaced it with an i3 despite it being twice the price.

The Pi400 does not have a fan, just a big heatsink inside the keyboard. It runs at a constant 32 degrees on the app even when working hard. But even then it uses sod all resources. Its just more efficient.

TBH, well-designed chips/systems rarely should need much active cooling for basic computing work. It's only games and high-end graphics/scientific work such as CAD or STEM work that need any heavy-duty power these days.

I'm quite tempted to go for a basic, heatsink with fins graphics card next time around, although, depending upon the price/compatibility with monitors, I may push the boat out for a NVIDIA Quadro card (basic one with no fans or just a small one) or equivalent, given my engineering/CAD background and that they are highly stable. Depends on the price.

I prefer a quiet computer, so keep my case and chip fans to a minimum and good quality. Just a pain that certain components can't seem to work with the latest software, given my current PC is still plenty quick enough otherwise.

Edited by Engineer Andy on 12/04/2021 at 12:23

AMD as they are doing better than Intel at the moment!

Only had one laptop (Dell) with an AMD processor and it was a costly mistake. I was concerned form day one it was running very hot compared to the Intel laptops that preceded it but a web search confirmed it was normal for that processor. At 2 years old it stopped working and it was confirmed by Dell that the motherboard had burned out. Out of warranty so had to pay almost £200 for the repair (but it did give the laptop another 1 years full warranty). After 2 years exactly the same thing happened.

With help from the Internet (had to plug in the charger and wrap the laptop in a towel for 30 minutes) I managed to get it running and backup some files but never used it again. Too much hassle.

What processor is good seems to run in cycles - from what I've read and seen via YT review videos, AMD is back on top at the moment. I've previously owned two PCs with AMD processor chips - the first, a MESH with a 650MHz single core unit from 2000, which served me very well for 6 years, and an HP (bought from Misco) with another single core unit (can't remember the speed though) which was cheap but not very cheerful - it was underpowered and not reliable, replacing it with my current PC after 5 frustrating years of use.

The things I like about the current AMD platform is that they haven't kept changing the pin arrangement so you don't need a new MB to run the latest processor chips, unlike with Intel's, plus they appear to be better value on the real-world perfromance front.

I'd gladly get a laptop so I don't have to spend ages putting a desktop together and keeping it free of dust (the cabling is a real pain), but laptops rarely last more than 4 years and once one component (inlcuding teh keyboard or monitor) goes, then that it (too expensive to repair without taking out an expensive extended warranty).

At least with a desktop, failed parts can be replaced more easily and cheaply, and you get more computer (performance and especially storage wise) for your money.

At least with a desktop, failed parts can be replaced more easily and cheaply,

Not so sure that will apply shortly as they are altering motherboards to include power supply built in so the power is reduced and data transfer is faster

as for Microchips, looks like the shortage will last longer than expected!

The global chip shortage is a much bigger problem than everyone realised. And it will go on for longer, too | ZDNet

It also depends on whether or when China invades Taiwan, who makes a significant amount of computer chips.

At least with a desktop, failed parts can be replaced more easily and cheaply,

Not so sure that will apply shortly as they are altering motherboards to include power supply built in so the power is reduced and data transfer is faster

as for Microchips, looks like the shortage will last longer than expected!

The global chip shortage is a much bigger problem than everyone realised. And it will go on for longer, too | ZDNet

It also depends on whether or when China invades Taiwan, who makes a significant amount of computer chips.

In this day and age you would expect all countries to get on, not think about invasions ????.

Don't you just love irony? :-)