Upgrade from to Skylake

[curweed]

Hi,

At the moment I am running an i5 4460, 16Gb G.Skill Sniper and an ASrock H97m Pro4. I am about to purchase an i7 6700k, 16Gb Corsair Vengeance, and an MSI B150M Mortar Arctic Motherboard. I was wondering what I need to do in terms of my hard drives and specifically my boot drive before I install. A friend did this earlier and didn't do any prep and he had to send his PC to be fixed, I'm hoping to avoid this.

If a fresh install of windows is required, and I have upgraded from windows 8 to 10, how to I get a new copy of Win10 without buy a new copy.

Cheers,

Curweed

SPECS

i5 4460
16Gb G. Skill Sniper 1600MHz
ASrock H97m Pro4
EVGA GTX 1070 SC
120Gb Samsung 750 EVO SSD - Boot drive
2Tb Seagate barracuda HDD
Corsair RM650

 

[1LiquidPC]

If you used the free upgrade program, your Windows 8 key and Windows 10 upgrade key are tied to your current motherboard. However, if you purchased Windows 8 yourself for original install, there is a "gray" area where you could install 8 again on new setup, but I'm not sure on upgrading to 10 again, as MS would consider it a new machine. When you buy a physical copy of Windows, usually you can install it on a new machine as MS seems to relaxed on licensing over the years.

 

[geofelt]

Your current windows 10 is likely able to boot with the new cpu and motherboard.
If so, all you need to do is install the new drivers that come with your new motherboard.

If you have to do a clean install of windows, your activation code is known by ms so no new license will be required.

And... on your build:

1. buy a Z170 based motherboard so you can oc the i7-6700K as it is designed to do.

2. Now would be a good time to convert to a ssd.
Buy a Samsung evo and use the free Samsung ssd migration aid to move your C drive to the ssd.
Do the update to the ssd. Keep the old hard drive as a backup if something goes wrong
Later, you can use your 1tb drive for bulk storage.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Setup a Microsoft Account and link your current PC to it , then backup whatever you want to save and perform a clean install on your new setup and activate it with your Microsoft account from within windows. Skip the key entry during setup and activate it from within windows with the registered Microsoft Account.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/
Create a USB installer here ^
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP4sAhmH_Oo"][/video]
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ROoOkPWIM"][/video]

 

[USAFRet]

You do NOT need to worry about going back to Win 8 again.
Assuming your current Win 10 is properly activated, and on the latest release version, read and do this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3164428/windows-build-1607-activation.html

This will link your Win 10 OS license to a Microsoft account, rather than specific hardware.
You do this before you change any hardware.

I did this just a couple weeks ago.
It works.

Create a USB or DVD install media, with the MediaCreation tool. Here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

If you need to reinstall, boot with that and do the install.


I went from an i5-3570k to i7-4790k
It did need a full reinstall.
Once done, I went through the activation thing. It did take a couple of days to contact the servers, but just keep trying if it does not work immediately.

 

[EtnoNyt]

If you are using Win10 Anniversary edition and you have a MS account, your license will be linked to your MS account and then you will be able to install win 10 on new motherboard.

 

[1LiquidPC]

Just did a bit more research. Looks like it may vary if the Windows 8 was a Retail or OEM copy whether it can be linked to your MS account and then transferred, though I'm not 100% on this. Others here seem more knowledgeable on this specific matter.