Do you all still use your motherboards install disc?

Zigmorph

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 29, 2015
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276
On a new Asus Z370 board and Windows seems to have gotten everything installed and was curious if folks were still using their discs. Seems that Windows might have the latest and greatest drivers, but tempted to download drivers from Asus just in case.

Thoughts?
 
heck no, it's the first thing i throw away, lol. almost all the basic drivers are built into w7/10 these days.. but i will grab the chipset drivers from either the board manufacture or intel/amd's site.. microsofts basic drivers work to at least boot into windows but they can sometimes be outdated or missing certain things.
 
I haven't had a optical drive in a new build, or a build i've built for someone else since 2007.

I thought it was common practice even a decade ago to get the latest from the manufacturer's website?

Hell, these days Windows installs most of what you need on its own. Sometimes I'll grab the latest Realtek driver and always the latest GPU driver but that's about it.
 
Not since I used a Soyo K7M-333 mobo nearly 20 years ago. I've just downloaded everything otherwise
 
I've been downloading mine as well, but it's been YEARS since I last bought a brandy new board so was curious if the prepacked stuff had any redeeming qualities now a days. Looks like a solid "NOPE" still :rolleyes:
 
Not since the Windows XP days. And even then I'd probably just download the drivers.

Since Windows 7, Microsoft's default hardware drivers are just as fast and stable as the ones you can download. And with Windows 10, it will go and get the exact drivers your system needs for you.
 
I never use them when it’s new. Always download latest drivers.
 
I know I had to a couple of times or I could not get online to get the latest ones.
 
Absolutely not.

If anything, installing them stops Windows from auto-updating your drivers.
 
ya I havnt had a optical drive in years.....

and pretty sure windows is capable of installing EVERYTHING now... I mean with the exception of maybe dedicated gpu drivers and some third party add in cards

I mean, 8.1 and 10 both installed everything for this asrock h81m-itx....which I just purchased a new board today ( Asus Gryphon z97 armor edition socket 1150 matx motherboard) ..... had to buy that because...well I jacked up my audio ports on the mini-itx board....I expect that to work just fine out of the box too


that said, I'm sure this wasn't the case many many many years ago... but I'm thinking as far back as like... 1998 or so... lol but yeah, even then it was always standard practice for me to go directly to manufacturer and get drivers from their website rather then the outdated stuff on the disc....
 
I thought those were just fancy coasters?

Windows does NOT have drivers for quite a few things though, or will not give you the best ones. I usually go to the true vendor for those drivers (realtek/intel/amd/broadcom/mellanox/whatever) as they will have the latest correct whqls somewhere.
Either that or the actual OEM will have a specific driver that performs better than the generic microsoft driver; intel or samsung nvme for example.

One time recently I discovered only asrock's own site has the correct driver files for the 5/10Gb ethernet device id chip on their boards, for some reason the aquantia site leaves it out of their public driver infs even though it has all the hardware ids for asus boards and other cards.

The driver on the disc for my Audigy RX is somehow still the newest one..... o_O

Yeah, creative is the literal satan of drivers, I have PTSD about some of their stuff from years ago.
 
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I don't use the disc, but I wouldn't toss it either. I just keep things like that because in my twisted mind it might help with resale value later. Using the same twisted logic I don't even open the SATA cable bag. I use other cables I have laying around from who knows where.
 
I don't use the disc, but I wouldn't toss it either. I just keep things like that because in my twisted mind it might help with resale value later. Using the same twisted logic I don't even open the SATA cable bag. I use other cables I have laying around from who knows where.

Man, the amount of SATA trouble shooting I've done over bad SATA cables... I try and use a new one at any opportunity I can get lol
 
No longer use the discs for newer ones. There are occasions when I'm dealing with retro MB's that I use the discs, usually to establish an internet connection before I can go online an update the driver.
 
Man, the amount of SATA trouble shooting I've done over bad SATA cables... I try and use a new one at any opportunity I can get lol
The last thing I thought I'd ever do is troubleshoot sata cable issues. I have had bad luck with the ones that come with mobo's. Yeesh makes for frustrating times for sure.
 
The disk is useful if you are out on a job and have to do a full board swap with no functioning system. But that is very rare since I always try to bring stuff into my laboratory where I can get latest drivers from Manufacturers site.

Never trust MS for drivers unless it is for their hardware.
 
Absolutely!




Naht.

By the time those disks are made, the drivers are out of date. Windows ones are fine, even the chipset ones most of the time. Gpu drivers are the only ones I install manually, and then I'll usually not update those again unless I have a reason to.
 
I did use one last year to get the killer nic on my msi z170 board working so I could then dl all the rest..
 
Never ever, I always download the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website. Even the standard Windows drivers work fine if I don't have internet access.
 
No, i download the latest from the manufacturers website though.
But yeah, im also one of those who has a couple of spools of mobo discs i keep for no apparent reason....LOL
 
I don't remember ever using the disc which came with motherboard. I have always downloaded the needed drivers before I even take the motherboard out of the box. Nowadays I usually just toss them on a thumbdrive to copy over. Before that was even an option I would copy them to a secondary hard drive or put them on a networked machine and copy them from there.

I've had to deal with slow internet connections for quite a bit of my life (current is 2.5 mbit down and 1.5 mbit up) so I always have drivers, installers and whatever else downloaded and ready for quick transfer beforehand.
 
Every morning.

coffee.jpg
 
hehe. always stuff manuals,cd's and other stuff from the build i got into the box the motherboard came in old tradition for me, it's perfect for it! and the windows cd's though obsolete prety soon i guess, but i still got that there also, from win7 to 10. would need it on a physical storage either way incase something happens. but yeah using discs for drivers is getting old now alrigth. but sometimes only reason i used it that i remember was to get the internet to work. really keep no memory of it so.
 
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