Motherboard upgrade, step by step

[Jenachy]

So I've been wanting to upgrade my intitially budget-oriented PC to allow overclocking of my i5-6600K. This upgrade will be a motherboard swap.
I currently have an MSI B150 PC Mate, LGA-1151 ATX motherboard, and intend to swap it for one of ASUS' z270 boards, same socket and form factor. My OS is a retail copy of Windows 8.1 Pro x64.
What I am curious about is what steps I would need to take to make things work. Some say they just swapped the board without problem, some said they needed to contact Microsoft for re-activation, and again some said a full OS reinstallation was necessary.
Can I avoid the re-install (and possibly contacting Microsoft), and if so, how? Simple mobo swap or is uninstallation of drivers necessary?

 

[Makentox]

You will have to reinstall windows, or else it wont boot or may have full of bugs which is nasty specially solving them. Most likely you will have to contact microsoft to avoid buying a new windows activation key.
I would personally not upgrade motherboard, z270 will cost u around 200$ i believe, these money you could spend for GPU upgrade now or later which will give you much higher performance boost than 600mhz from overclocking. You had to think twice before matching H mobo and K CPU.

 

[thx1138v2]

The motherboard chip sets are different and it will require at least new chip set drivers for the mobo to function at all. Those drivers get loaded at install time. And you are changing manufacturers so even the CPU drivers will be different between manufacturers. So that's a new install.

MS registers your product key during install by a value calculated from the mobo, CPU, and HDD/SSD serial numbers. If you change any of those it will calculate a new value which won't match your registered number. The install will still run with your old value but you've only got 30 days to contact MS to get them to update their registration system before the OS will disable many features. The machine will check the registration each time you boot and are connected to the internet. There are certain services that check the registration but if those services are disabled it will automatically disable the OS functional features. So, yes you will need to contact MS.

 

[Jenachy]

...

1) Cooler will cost 0, because I have my own personal designed solution that currently keeps my CPU at 15 degrees (all safety precautions taken). Only mobo will cost me
2) I can manage finances for future upgrades
3) There are no H motherboards among those I listed. I intitially had a i5-6400, and upgraded to 6600K due to a Christmas sale, and my brother got my 6400

 

[Jenachy]

The motherboard chip sets are different and it will require at least new chip set drivers for the mobo to function at all. Those drivers get loaded at install time. And you are changing manufacturers so even the CPU drivers will be different between manufacturers. So that's a new install.

MS registers your product key during install by a value calculated from the mobo, CPU, and HDD/SSD serial numbers. If you change any of those it will calculate a new value which won't match your registered number. The install will still run with your old value but you've only got 30 days to contact MS to get them to update their registration system before the OS will disable many features. The machine will check the registration each time you boot and are connected to the internet. There are certain services that check the registration but if those services are disabled it will automatically disable the OS functional features. So, yes you will need to contact MS.

Oh well, seems I gotta do that then. Thanks for the relevant answer.

 

[geofelt]

You should be able to simply replace the motherboard.
The chipsets are sufficiently similar to allow booting.
Try to boot with your current windows C drive.
It likely will boot, and if it does, then all you need to do is to install the new motherboard drivers that will come with your new motherboard.

Since you have a retail copy of windows, you are entitled to change motherboards and will have no problem reactivating.
It will likely be automatic. You may possibly need to do a phone reactivation where you enter a series of numbers and get a series back.

Do protect what you value on your current C drive.
If you do not yet have a ssd, now would be a good time to do that upgrade.