[Electronic M]

Where do I begin?...

I've always been a cheap bastard a when it comes to computers... The only one I got new was given to me by my almamater, and my others have been sub 20 buk garage sale scores...my laptop has been getting on in age, buttons failing usb ports dieing.... heck I had to replace the graphics card when it melted while running some video editing software that works that machine hard.... Since that machine has some valuable engineering simulation software licenses on it left over from college and is also still decent for net browsing I decided I need to offload the video editing to my desktop.

My desktop is a 2002 TOTL Dell desktop that I have been primarily using as a media player for saved and internet video. It's PCIe graphics card having both DVI and S-video allowing me to drive my Sony HD CRT set with HD video.AND best of all feed my 60 year old NTSC TVs in standard definition. But that Dell is dying of cap plague and if I push it too hard I know it will die again (I've already changed caps in it twice so next time it dies I'm not going to fix it).

I decided my best bet going forward is to.replace.the Dell desktop with a new desktop running the graphics card currently in the Dell... that means using Windows 7 on the new rig since Windows 7 is the newest OS with drivers for that graphics card.... Also I have a preactivated win 7 ultimate install disc.

So I build up a nearly 1.5k system by specing out parts on Newegg, and come up with a good combination of parts i7-9700K, Z390 Mobo, 32GB ram, enough SSDs for a RAID, and the case cooler and PS from Be Quiet (a media PC should not make noise), and grossly oversized the cooler and PS so it would not get hot even running demanding software on it, and have capacity for over clocking and any future add-ons.... The idea that it would both replace my old Dell media PC and be a all around solid main rig for the next roughly 10 years.

It was fun building it and I was really glad everything fit together, but when it came time to install the OS things got frustrating fast.... after most of a day messing with BIOS settings and trying different USB ports and failing to convince the OS installer to recognize a keyboard and mouse (needed to opperate the installer and OS) I started googling.and discovered that there is no windows 7 driver support for my new motherboard USB chipset....(to say I felt like visiting intel and Microsoft and slugging some engineers and bean counters is an understatement).

Now I'm left with a difficult decision: return the MoBo and get a Z370 that some have reported.sucessful driver hacks for, go to windows 10 get a HDMI to composite video adapter and and pray it works as well as the old graphics card S-video out does, try to find some Linux flavor with support for a new motherboard as well as an ancient video card and has good free video editing software, or just say screw it and return all the.parts.I spent a week specing out, and just run my old crap till it dies (which probably won't be long)....

What would.you do?