I purchased an unusual recycled Chinese motherboard, but I'm struggling to locate any drivers.
I purchased an unusual recycled Chinese motherboard, but I'm struggling to locate any drivers.
It's an X99M-G2, apparently with a B85 chipset. He said he purchased it from AliExpress. The issue is, the PC takes a fairly long time to boot, about a minute maybe, most of which is spent on the Windows logo boot screen with the circling dots. Second, the device manager has several dozens of entries for "Base System Device" with missing drivers, presumably for the motherboard. I suppose that's related. The most info I've been able to find online about it is this Russian website: https://xeon-e5450.ru/socket-2011-3/x99m-g2/ Unfortunately, no mention of chipset drivers or drivers in general from what I can tell. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of Chinese motherboards? Will using the PC without any motherboard drivers cause issues in the future? Of course, it seems that for most components, Windows provides some sort of default drivers. Still, I reckon the driverless Base System Device entries in the device manager spell trouble.
Have you attempted to download the Intel chipset drivers package yourself? If it isn’t available on the Intel site, consider visiting another motherboard manufacturer and obtaining chipset drivers that match your B85 chipset. I prefer Asrock because their website lets you filter motherboards by chipset, making it easy to choose a B85-compatible board and then download the drivers directly from their section. For instance, you can browse their collection at https://www.asrock.com/mb/index.us.asp#AllProduct and navigate to B85 boards. Once there, you’ll find several options; I selected the Asrock B85M Pro4-ASM and in the downloads, the INF driver version 10.1.1.8 is listed as a chipset driver: https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B85M Pro4ASM/index.us.asp#Download. For the IME (Intel Management Engine), there are many downloadable versions—explore them and see what suits you. If the installer fails, extract the files somewhere, open Control Panel, locate the affected entries, and click Update to prompt Windows to search for a driver in the extracted location.
The company was established by Shenzhen Mingzhi Industrial Technology Co., Ltd. Their office is located on the 7th floor, BLDG A2, New Era Gongrong Industrial Park, No. 2, Shihuan Rd, Shilong Community, Shiyan Street, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Visit their site at http://www.szmzit.com
Well, that's intriguing if it's accurate. I've never encountered a motherboard without drivers, so why do these Chinese boards lack them? Still, I'm puzzled by all the entries in Device Manager. It seems like an SSD is present, but I removed the HDD to check if that's the problem. Any thoughts? This contradicts what the person named toasty99 mentioned, and I don't really think it makes sense to use drivers from another brand. For clarity, I installed all extra or optional updates before sharing this post.
The drivers come from Intel and similar sources, bundled by board manufacturers into a single installer. That’s completely acceptable.
The chipset drivers are typically provided by Intel or AMD without customization options. There are usually no risks involved. In manual update mode, Windows only selects drivers that match the system, ensuring compatibility. If a driver doesn't fit, you might encounter a blue screen or similar issue. In such cases, switch to safe mode and remove the driver, or reinstall Windows entirely. On laptops, AMD and Intel sometimes supply drivers, but manufacturers later modify them to assign unique hardware IDs. Regular drivers won't function with those custom IDs—only the original manufacturer's custom driver works. On PCs, sound card drivers or apps may fail to install due to licensing constraints, often related to specific hardware features like Dolby Atmos decoders.
I resolved the slow startup by turning off the Intel Management Engine, though I'm not sure what Caroline meant by making changes without permission. I only saw online that home users or gamers usually don't need it. I'm relying on that for now, especially on a PC I don't own. The base system devices remain in the Device Manager, still puzzling as before. Thanks for the support so far—I think I'll stop here unless it causes clear problems. The question is, can we find out if the installers contain unwanted items? If this were my computer, I'd proceed. I'd catch issues over time rather than immediately. Since I'm not the intended user, I won't be able to spot problems right away.