[SOLVED] New motherboard steps for setup

[joshhall16]

So I've just sold my old hardware apart from hard drives and ssd and have the new stuff on the way.

My old pc was a i7 4790 and 16gb ddr3 ram, GA-H81m-s2h mobo

My new setup will be Ryzen 5 3600x, Msi x370 mobo and16gb 3000mhz DDR4 Ram.

Both will be using a gtx 1060 6gb which I plan to upgrade in the new year.

I know when I boot my pc for the first time I should fresh install Windows, but I don't want to lose my files and games etc.

Can I keep my old hard drive as it is, connect my new ssd and install Windows 10 from an iso on a USB I have onto that ssd as a boot drive. Will the files on the old hard drive cause errors?

I really really don't want to wipe that old drive and reinstall my games, that's days and days of downloads.

I've changed Processor and ram before, but never a new motherboard

 

[Obakasama]

Does the MSI motherboard you've chosen have BIOS flashback? Likelihood is you'll need to flash the BIOS for the 3600X to work with it.

If the SSD is to be your new boot drive, then install only the SSD and install Windows to it. Boot up, log in, shut down and turn off. Then connect the other drives. This way your SSD will be the main priority and doesn't conflict with the old one. You'd still need to reinstall software though being a new Windows set up, but you'll keep your data and can transfer it accordingly.

 

[joshhall16]

Does the MSI motherboard you've chosen have BIOS flashback? Likelihood is you'll need to flash the BIOS for the 3600X to work with it.

If the SSD is to be your new boot drive, then install only the SSD and install Windows to it. Boot up, log in, shut down and turn off. Then connect the other drives. This way your SSD will be the main priority and doesn't conflict with the old one. You'd still need to reinstall software though being a new Windows set up, but you'll keep your data and can transfer it accordingly.

The motherboard is coming flashed with the latest bios conveniently.

And to make sure I'm understanding, build the pc in the case, connect everything except my HDD. Boot into bios, change boot order to boot from USB. Install Windows 10 iso onto new SSD. Finish install.

Log out and shut down, connect old HDD and then all my games etc will be there and playable with no problems.

Going forward my pc will boot solely from ssd and old files drivers etc on old HDD won't cause a problem?

 

[Obakasama]

Basically, yes. To be even safer you may want to confirm BIOS chooses the SSD as the first priority boot device after installing Windows. (I find Windows boot manager takes care of it.)

Don't forget that the new Windows installation won't know what you previously installed, so you would need to reinstall certain software again.

In the case of games, eg. Steam, you'd need to reinstall the Steam client but you can redirect Steam to find your old game installations: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

You could then clean up the old HDD of the old Windows installation.

 

[joshhall16]

Perfect, Thats just what i was looking for.

Final question. The main game im worried about is modern warfare. The install was massive. Howevers all files for the game are on the HDD as its the only one i used at the time.

So I will boot from SSD then plug in HDD will i just be able to click and play? I feel like im dreaming here but i thought id ask. Will it remember all of my settings and account?

Or am i better off just wiping the drive after booting up and reinstalling all my games, as much of a pain that would be

 

[Obakasama]

Which game client are you using for it? (Not that much of a gamer here.) I'd expect similarly for GOG and Origin from my experiences with them. Do check the link in the previous post for the Steam side of things to get an idea.

As for settings.... There might be some small discrepancies depending how things are installed and where the game keeps them. For example, when I built a new PC and moved my game drive over (with all my downloaded games from Steam, GOG and Origin) I had access to the games after installing the respective game clients and redirecting them to where my games are. Game saves were missing as it seemed most were saved to the standard documents folder in Windows.

 

[joshhall16]

Oh okay i see, the client is battle.net if thats any use. As long as i dont have to redownload i can deal with changing settings etc. Thanks alot for your help

 

[Obakasama]

Some mixed messages from googling the battle.net client, but there should be an option in the client to locate a game install.