If you happen to have been hoping for Microsoft to backtrack on Home windows 11’s stringent security-focused new system necessities, we now have excellent news and dangerous information. The excellent news is that a small handful of 7th-generation Intel Core processors have been added to the support list, and programs that use these chips will formally assist the ultimate model of Home windows 11 when it comes out within the fall. The dangerous information is that they’re the solely processors being added to the assist record, and Microsoft “will keep the minimal system necessities as initially set.”
Intel’s Seventh-generation Core processors, codenamed Kaby Lake, have been launched largely in late 2016 and thru 2017, although many computer systems that use them have been accessible for buy lengthy after that. The precise Seventh-generation processors which have been added to the compatibility record are:
- X-series processors based mostly on the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake architectures, just like the Core i5-7640X and Core i7-7800X
- W-series Xeon processors
- The Core i7-7820HQ particularly, with the caveat that programs with this processor should be utilizing DCH drivers
If the choice to assist one particular Seventh-generation Core i7 laptop computer processor strikes you as odd, you need not look far for an evidence—this simply occurs to be the CPU included in Microsoft’s Floor Studio 2, which Microsoft nonetheless sells however has not updated in three years. That Microsoft was about to cease supporting a PC it’s at present promoting and for which it controls every little thing from the firmware to the drivers earned the corporate some well-deserved scorn from users and the press. Including assist for it’s laudable, nevertheless it’s additionally the naked minimal—Home windows 11 will nonetheless depart behind Floor merchandise as latest as 2017’s 5th-generation Surface Pro and 1st-generation Floor Laptop computer and the most cost effective configurations of 2017’s Surface Book 2 (higher-end configurations used Eighth-generation processors, however the least expensive fashions didn’t).
These processors be a part of the remainder of the processor compatibility record, which nonetheless contains Eighth-generation or newer Intel Core processors and 2000-series AMD Ryzen processors (excluding the Ryzen 2200G and 2400G, which use the identical CPU structure as 1000-series Ryzen CPUs). A lot of the supported processors have been launched in late 2017 or early 2018 on the earliest.
Whereas Microsoft stated back in June that it might examine compatibility with different Seventh-generation Core processors and 1000-series Ryzen processors, that investigation has apparently come to a detailed; at present’s announcement explicitly shuts the door on assist for older chips from both firm. It is possible for you to to put in Home windows 11 on an unsupported system manually if it is one thing you wish to do—however the “official” free frictionless improve path for most individuals remains to be going to be restricted to all however the newest PCs.
If you wish to be sure that Home windows 11 will run in your PC, Microsoft is releasing a revised model of the PC Well being Test app to Home windows Insiders at present. The unique model of the Well being Test app would inform you whether or not your PC might run Home windows 11 however provided no particulars explaining why. The brand new model will inform you the explanation(s) your PC is not suitable and hyperlink out to sources telling you what, if something, you are able to do to vary your settings so you possibly can run the OS.
Replace: Microsoft will allow manual installs of Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. We have tweaked this story accordingly.
