Intel NUC m.2 SSD to Ryzen 1300x swap

[jgault1993]

Hi All

My girlfriend is getting into gaming a bit (praise god) and the only other computer I had apart from work laptops was a Broadwell NUC.

Safe to say it works for her to start on and experience things but everything has to be set to the lowest settings and any amount of moderate combat causes it to lag.

As it's her birthday soon I decided to treat her so I'm putting together a mix of new hardware and things I already own.

The main thing is regarding the swap from Intel to AMD and whether there are many things to consider. I'll back up the drive as there's hardly anything on it but I wondered how seamless the process might be.

Just for reference, below are the specs of both systems and I'm listing everything that might make things difficult with driver differences etc.

Old:
System - NUC5i5RYK
SSD - Samsung 850 EVO MZ-N5E250BW (SATA)
RAM - 8GB low power Hyper X DDR3 Sodimm

New:
CPU - Ryzen 1300x (new)
MOBO - MSI B350 TOMAHAWK ARCTIC (new)
RAM - 8GB Hyper X DDR4 standard size (new)
GPU - 1060 6GB
SSD - From NUC
HDD - 3TB Seagate (not new but never used)
PSU - Corsair RM750 (old power supply I upgraded from)

If anyone could help on this is would be greatly appreciated, would hate to have a headache with reinstalling and finding a working CD drive..

Many thanks!
Jordan

 

[Colif]

Is windows 10 on the old device an upgrade from win 7 or 8? If it is, you can probably transfer the licence across from old PC to new - see transferring win 10 to new hardware

If it came with win 10, you might be able to do that. There are different rules for large OEM and for some of them, if PC comes with win 10, you cannot move the licence across. I wonder if Intel is seen as big enough. Its worth a try. Small OEM PC could move licences just like the upgrades mentioned above.

If you have a new licence or manage to get the old one to move, the only only thing to do is fresh install win 10 on new hardware as there is such a massive change in hardware that it is the only logical approach.

download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB - that way you have the latest build and need not update too much.

 

[jgault1993]

Is windows 10 on the old device an upgrade from win 7 or 8? If it is, you can probably transfer the licence across from old PC to new - see transferring win 10 to new hardware

If it came with win 10, you might be able to do that. There are different rules for large OEM and for some of them, if PC comes with win 10, you cannot move the licence across. I wonder if Intel is seen as big enough. Its worth a try. Small OEM PC could move licences just like the upgrades mentioned above.

If you have a new licence or manage to get the old one to move, the only only thing to do is fresh install win 10 on new hardware as there is such a massive change in hardware that it is the only logical approach.

download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB - that way you have the latest build and need not update too much.

Hi Colif

The drive is an upgrade from 8.1, I bought the media and have a cd but am wanting to do without that if possible.

My onl concern is that the SSD has been used for Intel CPU and MOBO along with different RAM but will be used with Ryzen CPU, MOBO, different ram etc and I don't know if I can plug, remove Intel software things, install new drivers then play or if the system will not work without additional steps.

Regards!

 

[Colif]

You can try. Win 10 is pretty good when it comes to swapping to new hardware. One thing that might help is booting into safe mode just before you swap the parts and uninstall all intel programs and drivers, so that when its put into Ryzen system it won't have as many conflicting drivers.

I think its generally advisable to fresh install on a new PC but you can try this if you want. You didn't need to buy the media (Its too late now) as you would have been able to move her old licence to new PC. Is the current install you want to move over the Creators edition? (press win key + R, type winver and press enter). If you have version 11703 installed, at least it should have most of the drivers it needs to run ryzen until you install the proper ones... older versions of win 10 may not have any drivers for ryzen systems built in.

There is no guarantees as you really can't change PC more than to swap CPU maker and boards, and just plug the ssd in and hope it works.

 

[James Mason]

It won't work. (It will "work" but you'll get tons of bugs and errors and issues)

Windows does a lot of system configuration specific things when you install it, so even if you wanted to just swap from Asus Ryzen board to a Gigabyte Ryzen Board you'd have to reinstall Windows.

The only time you can ever swap HDDs like this is when all the hardware in the systems are exactly the same, like in a business environment where you have 500 of the same Dell desktop models.

You can backup and transfer any of her Files (documents, pictures, videos) but any programs and operating systems need to be reinstalled.