Upgrading CPU and Motherboard

tommo990

Honorable
Feb 9, 2014
36
0
10,530
Hi Guys,
So I've decided to upgrade my CPU and Mobo. I'm currently running an i5 4670k @ 4.5 ghz with 8gbs of 1333 ram. The Mobo is and Asus z87-plus.

I've already decided what I'm going to upgrade to which is an i7 5930k, Asus X99-A and 16gb ddr4.

I've checked And I'm confident that there are no issues with my other components. My question is this: can I just replace the Motherboard, CPU and Ram, install the drivers and everything will work fine? Will my programs mess up? Is there anything I should do before I upgrade?

Btw I am doing this because I need and upgrade for my flight simulator as it requires more CPU power than I currently have. I wouldn't be upgrading if it was just for gaming...

Regards,
Tom

Full specs:

i5 4670k
8gb G.Skill Ram
GTX 780ti
2x Samsung 850
1x Samsung 840
1x 2TB WD HDD
H100i
Ax760i
Corsair 759D
 
Solution
As long as the memory is on the X99-A QVL you should have no problems.
I did a similar upgrade (except I went 32GB RAM @ 2666mhz and an X99-Deluxe for Dual LAN)).
You may have to activate Windows again if you have an OEM version.
Once you install your drivers you should be good to go.
Programs (like office, adobe, etc), and games generally don't have problems, although I have heard of the "occasional" compatibility issue (it was some time agao so I don't remember exactly which).

I have found that when I change motherboards, and long as I install the same brand I can do an in-place upgrade installing just the drivers without reinstalling the OS. Often, I have ended up with endless BSOD's when changing brands.

However - A Backup is...
As long as the memory is on the X99-A QVL you should have no problems.
I did a similar upgrade (except I went 32GB RAM @ 2666mhz and an X99-Deluxe for Dual LAN)).
You may have to activate Windows again if you have an OEM version.
Once you install your drivers you should be good to go.
Programs (like office, adobe, etc), and games generally don't have problems, although I have heard of the "occasional" compatibility issue (it was some time agao so I don't remember exactly which).

I have found that when I change motherboards, and long as I install the same brand I can do an in-place upgrade installing just the drivers without reinstalling the OS. Often, I have ended up with endless BSOD's when changing brands.

However - A Backup is strongly recommended. Eg. A disk image with EaseUS, Macrium or other free imaging software.
 
Solution
Me personally i would do a fresh install. Moving from a Z87 to a X99 chipset might give you issues using the same windows install. If you want to try and change motherboards without a new install, boot up into safe mode and uninstall all your drivers shut down change motherboards and then boot back up. This will force windows to find new drivers for the chipset and not try and boot up with old ones.


I would also recommend finding an old HDD and using macrium reflect, make a bootable backup of your OS, just incase something goes wrong.