Replacing Motherboard (and much more). Should I Reinstall Windows?

QuantumAbacus77 · April 21, 2020

Hey y'all! New user here. I apologize in advance if this question has been asked before. I have a budget gaming pc with an old ASUS motherboard (about 7 years). Right now what's sitting in it is an AMD-8350 and GTX 1060. I was planning to upgrade to a Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 2070 super, till I saw that the Ryzen needs a board with an AM4 socket. So now I'm looking at replacing almost every part of my computer. I've replaced my processor and GPU before, and windows obviously seems to handle it no problem. But now I'm essentially putting the hard drive into an entirely new setup. I've heard people say that windows 10 is very good at recognizing and accepting new hardware, but that even it apparently has its limits.

So my question is can I get away with simply sticking my SSD into the new motherboard, or should I just wipe the drive and reinstall windows? I do know that if I decide on the former option I'll still have to uninstall all of my current drivers. My other question is will I need a license key when I reinstall it? I started with windows 7 and upgraded to 10, and I lost that windows 7 key years ago. I have my windows 10 OS backed up onto a usb, so I'm hoping I can use that to just reinstall windows 10 onto the new setup without needing an activation key.

I'm sticking with an ASUS and AMD combo, which I hope will make the transition a little smoother, but I'm still not sure. I'd prefer not to reinstall windows, but it's not the end of the world if I have to. What do you guys think? Am I safe to just swap over, or should I bite the bullet and reinstall?

Vandorlot · April 21, 2020

Usually when switiching CPUs from different generations you would reinstall windows so there wouldn't be any driver errors. Sometimes you can get away with it if its from the same manufacturer but I would reinstall windows to avoid the headache.

Slottr · April 21, 2020

Reinstall windows.

It's fine at replacing drivers, but it's not perfect. It's less of a headache to just reinstall and re-establish yourself than figure out you'll have to do it anyways when there's driver conflicts

You acn use the same activation key, but considering you lost it- tie it to your microsoft account and activate it that way.

RadiatingLight · April 21, 2020

I'd reinstall.

Not strictly needed but it really helps to eliminate it as a troubleshooting issue. If you don't, you'll always have that nag that any issues might be caused by your old drivers or something.

QuantumAbacus77 · April 21, 2020

Wow! Wasn't expecting to get replies so quickly. Re-installation it is! I also linked my windows 10 OS to my microsoft account (thank you Slottr) so I can easily reactivate it in the new hardware.