Oz_aka

What brand is your SSD ?

Did you log in with a microsoft account ? Doing so sometimes attach the key to said account and sometimes is interpreted as retail. Check Settings / Update and Recovery / Activation. If it says the key is tied to a Microsoft account, could be that. Few year ago I bought 10 MSI Laptops with Quadro GPU, sold without Windows and with FreeDOS OS. Guess what, a functional W10 OEM Key was still tied to the MOBO, and whith a fresh GPT install, they activated just fine. Licencing works in mysterious ways.

Try to clone again. If your SSD comes with a cloning software (Acronis often) use it. If not, try MiniTool Partition Wizard, worked fine for me at work for 25+ computers

More of the slots ?

That I don't know. Might have come a bit later. Maybe they had to clear old slots stock. TYAN was a bit more "creative" in the past, in an ASRock kind of way

My wife setup is an I7 2700K on a Zotac Z68 ITX WIFI. I upgraded her 760 to a Zotac 1070 MINI. Fine for a small form factor old build. Gained a few FPS and dropped a few watts. Wife is happy, so I'm happy. Got mine on clearance for 190$

You can't use both AGP slots at the same time, but some old mobo had one 3.3V agp and one 1.5V.

Some TYAN mobo had dual AGP and ATX 20. Any good quality pictures ?

DBAN is free, open source and easy to use for a software method. Power drill to the HDDs SSDs is efficient and a great stress reliever

I don't think it works with PCIE / NVME devices, only SATA. Even if it did, it would be close to no improvement Pulled from intel Website : Intel® Optane™ memory can accelerate any type of SATA-based storage media, including SATA SSDs. However, performance benefits of adding Intel® Optane™ memory are greater on slower storage devices like an HDD, versus a faster storage device like a SATA-SSD.