Motherboard Swap

[Mr.Mittenz]

Hi everyone, 

I intend to swap my brother's motherboard and mine as I intend to upgrade my ram and apparently my current board doesn't support more than 2666MHZ of ram but my bro's motherboard does. (Ram im upgrading to is 3200Mhz, shouldve checked it at first lol) but yeah If i were to swap motherboards do I need to fresh install windows or is it okay to keep the drives the way it is? As i am going to just swap the motherboards and all the other components are not gonna be swapped

TIA!

 

[RONOTHAN##]

14 minutes ago, Mr.Mittenz said:

I intend to swap my brother's motherboard and mine as I intend to upgrade my ram and apparently my current board doesn't support more than 2666MHZ of ram but my bro's motherboard does. (Ram im upgrading to is 3200Mhz, shouldve checked it at first lol)

Would help knowing the CPUs and motherboards you're planning on doing that with, there was only one series of motherboards that had that issue and generally if you're doing that swap, your brother will be getting a massive downgrade in motherboard quality. 

 

15 minutes ago, Mr.Mittenz said:

If i were to swap motherboards do I need to fresh install windows or is it okay to keep the drives the way it is?

It's usually fine, though there can be minor issues that pop up from time to time (they're relatively rare though). 

[Mr.Mittenz]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Would help knowing the CPUs and motherboards you're planning on doing that with, there was only one series of motherboards that had that issue and generally if you're doing that swap, your brother will be getting a massive downgrade in motherboard quality. 

 

It's usually fine, though there can be minor issues that pop up from time to time (they're relatively rare though). 

My Specs
I7 8th Gen
1080ti
ASROCK H310-HDV/M.2 specs MOBO

My bro's Specs
I5 9th Gen
1660ti
Gigabyte z390 MOBO
 

[RONOTHAN##]

12 minutes ago, Mr.Mittenz said:

My Specs
I7 8th Gen
1080ti
ASROCK H310-HDV/M.2 specs MOBO

My bro's Specs
I5 9th Gen
1660ti
Gigabyte z390 MOBO
 

Specific CPUs would be nice, though odds are your brother might run into power throttling (that is a very bad VRM on that board) unless they're running something pretty low power like a 9400F

[Mr.Mittenz]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Specific CPUs would be nice, though odds are your brother might run into power throttling (that is a very bad VRM on that board) unless they're running something pretty low power like a 9400F

What else could a bad VRM do to affect the pc?
i7-8700k is paired with my asrock board atm

my bro if i remember correctly it's i5-9500f that is paired with the z390

[RONOTHAN##]

6 hours ago, Mr.Mittenz said:

What else could a bad VRM do to affect the pc?

The VRM overheats under full load and the board reduces speed to keep it from breaking. 

 

If they've only got a 9500f, it's probably fine, it's definitely worse with the 8700K, but your brother might lose a little bit of performance by doing this

[Mr.Mittenz]

13 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The VRM overheats under full load and the board reduces speed to keep it from breaking. 

 

If they've only got a 9500f, it's probably fine, it's definitely worse with the 8700K, but your brother might lose a little bit of performance by doing this

oh crap didn't realize it will be worse with my 8700k, does it damage the CPU? and what should i look for in motherboards in the future? as in which spec should i or how can i check on if the VRM would not be able to handle the CPU?

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Mr.Mittenz said:

does it damage the CPU?

Nope, it just reduces performance.

 

1 minute ago, Mr.Mittenz said:

and what should i look for in motherboards in the future? as in which spec should i or how can i check on if the VRM would not be able to handle the CPU?

Not the cheapest motherboard you can find. There isn't really one good spec on a motherboard page that can tell if a VRM is good or bad. Power stage count and current rating can be indicators (higher is better), but it's not reliable for whether a board is good or not (the ASRock X470 SLI Master, for example, has 12 power stages but is an absolutely terrible VRM when compared to something like an X570 Crosshair Impact, a board with an 8 power stage Vcore). That said, most modern motherboards are crazy overkill, so as long as you aren't looking bottom of the barrel for motherboards you should be fine. 

[Mr.Mittenz]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Nope, it just reduces performance.

 

Not the cheapest motherboard you can find. There isn't really one good spec on a motherboard page that can tell if a VRM is good or bad. Power stage count and current rating can be indicators (higher is better), but it's not reliable for whether a board is good or not (the ASRock X470 SLI Master, for example, has 12 power stages but is an absolutely terrible VRM when compared to something like an X570 Crosshair Impact, a board with an 8 power stage Vcore). That said, most modern motherboards are crazy overkill, so as long as you aren't looking bottom of the barrel for motherboards you should be fine. 

Thank you for your information, really helps. I'll keep this in mind when getting new motherboards in the future!