re-install windows 10 question

[Salacious B Crum]

So I have a pre-built that had win10 on it and no disk or usb drive came with it I broke the small ssd boot drive for this machine - since I am turning it into a plex sever I want to run windows on it again just in case I change my mind, I know I could install Linux but would rather win10 my question is I bought a legit retail windows key so when I installed it with the supplied usb it installed the full version and never asked for the key so does this mean that ms identified this computer as having a legitimate key at manufacture and the win10 key that I just bought is still good for another rig? Hope I'm not making it to difficult to explain

[iRileyx]

did you link your microsoft account on the old version of windows? if you did that key will have copied over.

[Electronics Wizardy]

The key is linked to the motherboard, so you don't need to activate it manually.

[Enderman]

Since you didn't change the motherboard it stayed activated.

You did not need to buy a new copy of windows.

The key you bought is still unused and you can use it somewhere else.

[Salacious B Crum]

8 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Since you didn't change the motherboard it stayed activated.

You did not need to buy a new copy of windows.

The key you bought is still unused and you can use it somewhere else.

Excellent I am planning another build so it will go there thanks for the quick response guys I thought that would be the outcome!