This is what i read in many threads, to my surprise, because my brother told me it's never necessary, that he never had to do it. For instance he recently changed his mobo, cpu, ram, and simply physically installed the components. That's it.
Does that mean that reinstalling windows is recommended but not necessary?
I might say nice, but perhaps not necessary.
The key is if the old system will boot on the new hardware.
Way back when, success was not very likely, particular if changing from amd to intel or vice versa.
Today, windows is much smarter about booting and running on different platforms.
If you are changing from amd to amd or intel to intel, your odds of success are much better.
If you are able to boot, installing the motherboard and other drivers will give you a running system.
This is a big time saver if you have many apps installed.
Sometimes, we no longer have the original product disks.
You may have customized in some manner that you can no longer replicate.
It is very easy to recommend a clean install, but for some, it becomes very complicated and time consuming.
If you think you can, go ahead and try running on the old windows c dive.
BUT..... as mentioned above, protect yourself first.
On the times I have done this, I first protected myself by cloning my C drive to a new ssd.
I use the cloned ssd in the new build.
That way, my current system remains un touched.
Of course anything of value should have already been protected by an EXTERNAL backup.