Should I Update Drivers for my chipset & motherboard

I had a computer made for me in 2017. Should I try to update the drivers for my motherboard or chipset? I'm not experiencing any problems that I'm aware of, but have heard that you should keep your drivers up to date.

Under System Information, I get this:



Pursuant to Brink's tutorial at
Find Motherboard Brand, Model, Serial Number, and Version in Windows

I ran Get-WmiObject win32_baseboard | Format-List Product,Manufacturer,SerialNumber,Version

& got this:



The box that housed the main components says:
GIGABYTE
Z170X-Gaming 7 Motherboard
Intel Z170X/Socket 1151/rev.1.0
4 DDR4 2-CH/PCI-Ex 16/ATX
TYPE-C/5.1 -CH HD Audio/SATA
& then the serial number

I don't really know the difference between the motherboard, chipset, & BIOS.

If I should try to update the drivers, do I go to Gigabyte or American Megatrends website?

Thank you in advance. (Sorry for the duplicate image. I don't see how to get rid of it.)

Rule of thumb .... If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it.

Windows 10 does a pretty good job with drivers, in its own right.

idgat said:

Rule of thumb .... If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it.

Windows 10 does a pretty good job with drivers, in its own right.

Thanks. I was definitely thinking about that. Do you know if there's a way to determine whether the drivers for the chipset or motherboard are the same as on their website...and would that be Gigabyte website?

bobkn said:

My motto, if it ain't broke, tweak it until it breaks.

phrab said:

Thanks. I was definitely thinking about that. Do you know if there's a way to determine whether the drivers for the chipset or motherboard are the same as on their website...and would that be Gigabyte website?

I use 2 freeware tools ...

SDI (Snappy Driver Installer)
SnailDriver(can be a bit persnickety when trying to download)

Both will check the drivers installed and give details of update drivers available.

USE JUDICIOUSLY - both can get a bit carried away and want to update every driver on your device. You can prevent this, just be careful on what you want, and what you click on.

bobkn said:

My motto, if it ain't broke, tweak it until it breaks.

You probably don't need to update the chipset drivers. If there was anything critical needed, it would probably appear through Windows Update, if you haven't disabled driver updates. (Which I have. Control freak, I guess, speaking relatively.)

Latest drivers: Downloads for Intel(R) Z170 Chipset

The chipset drivers on the Intel site are newer than the ones at Gigabyte. The MEI drivers are slightly newer at the Gigabyte site. Strange. I doubbt that the drivers at Gigabyte are customized. They use the same version number scheme as Intel, whic implies that they are the Intel drivers, without any signifcant modifications.

I have never had chipset or MEI drives give me any problems. (Not using Intel hardware at the moment. Over the past year, I switched to AMD Ryzen for both my primary and secondary PCs. (I'm not a fan of either company, but I have had Intel exclusively since the early days of the "core" CPUs. I had a brief dalliance with AMD Athlon 64 X2 back in the Socket 939 days.)

Thank you for this information & link. I downloaded their Intel® Driver & Support Assistant (Intel® DSA). It did say there was a latter version, but also warned that I should check the chipset manufacturer first. Since I'm not having any known problem, I think I won't update.

idgat said:

I use 2 freeware tools ...
SDI (Snappy Driver Installer)
SnailDriver(can be a bit persnickety when trying to download)
Both will check the drivers installed and give details of update drivers available.
USE JUDICIOUSLY - both can get a bit carried away and want to update every driver on your device. You can prevent this, just be careful on what you want, and what you click on.

Thank you for this information. I think I'll take your advice in your first post & "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I would check Gigabyte's web site for newer motherboard related drivers and install the latest NVidia GPU driver without all the bloatware. Also check for Gigabyte BIOS updates which may be important for security. Gigabyte give up providing drivers after about 3 years so you will then need to rely on Windows to update the motherboard related drivers. You can get the best IRST disk drivr from here Forum - Intel RST/RSTe Drivers (latest: v17.9.1.1009 WHQL/v6.2.2.1006 WHQL)

Steve C said:

I would check Gigabyte's web site for newer motherboard related drivers and install the latest NVidia GPU driver without all the bloatware. Also check for Gigabyte BIOS updates which may be important for security. Gigabyte give up providing drivers after about 3 years so you will then need to rely on Windows to update the motherboard related drivers. You can get the best IRST disk drivr from here Forum - Intel RST/RSTe Drivers (latest: v17.9.1.1009 WHQL/v6.2.2.1006 WHQL)

Thank you for your information & advice, Steve. I have Nvidia GeForce Experience installed, which checks for the latest graphic drivers; so I'm ok on that issue.


I went to the Gigabyte website & put in that I had GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 & Intel Z170/Socket 1151/rev.1.0, which information was on the motherboard box. However, it gave me so many choices that I became confused & also wondered if I should install anything from their site, since you said they stopped providing drivers 3 years ago. Here are the choices they provided:




I went to the Intel forum, whose link you provided. I honestly was thoroughly confused by what to do. I also downloaded & installed Intel Driver & Support Assistant Downloads for Intel(R) Z170 Chipset. This tells me that there's 1 update available. Should I install it?

Thank you again for your advice!

phrab said:

Thank you for your information & advice, Steve. I have Nvidia GeForce Experience installed, which checks for the latest graphic drivers; so I'm ok on that issue.


I went to the Gigabyte website & put in that I had GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 & Intel Z170/Socket 1151/rev.1.0, which information was on the motherboard box. However, it gave me so many choices that I became confused & also wondered if I should install anything from their site, since you said they stopped providing drivers 3 years ago. Here are the choices they provided:




I went to the Intel forum, whose link you provided. I honestly was thoroughly confused by what to do. I also downloaded & installed Intel Driver & Support Assistant Downloads for Intel(R) Z170 Chipset. This tells me that there's 1 update available. Should I install it?

Thank you again for your advice!

On thr Gigabyte site, just peruse the BIOS and drivers. Ignore the utilities which are mainly bloatware. The latest BIOS is F22m. The only way to choose the 'best' driver is to go through all the items in device manager and note which driver version Windows has installed, then compare those with the version numbers on the GIgabyte site. I put these in a spreadsheet and only update with the Gigabyte version if that is newer than the version used by Windows. There are some quite new drivers from 2019-20 on Gigabyte's site so you may well find some newer drivers there.

Instead of trying to understand the Winraid site you could install this IRST driver from Gigabyte:

Attachment 284816

Steve C said:

On thr Gigabyte site, just peruse the BIOS and drivers. Ignore the utilities which are mainly bloatware. The latest BIOS is F22m. The only way to choose the 'best' driver is to go through all the items in device manager and note which driver version Windows has installed, then compare those with the version numbers on the GIgabyte site. I put these in a spreadsheet and only update with the Gigabyte version if that is newer than the version used by Windows. There are some quite new drivers from 2019-20 on Gigabyte's site so you may well find some newer drivers there.

Instead of trying to understand the Winraid site you could install this IRST driver from Gigabyte:

Attachment 284816

Thanks again, Steve. Sorry to appear so helpless, but I've been searching on the Gigabyte site for over an hour & can't find what you've posted. This is what I see:



Could you please tell me where you found the IRST driver?

Also, in screwing around with Device Manager, I updated one of the Intel Processors...have no idea what that will do.

And, I used the Intel Update Manager, which is going to install:

So I hope that's the same.

Edited: After installing & rebooting, under Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers > Intel(R) 100 Series/C230 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller: driver was updated from 14.8.0.1042 to 14.8.16.1063. I don't think that was the same one you suggested, but I'm lost.