Upgrading to Skylake build for Christmas from AMD FX series. Will I need to reinstall Win 10?

[alenori]

Hello everyone, I'm getting a Skylake upgrade this Christmas and transferring from a FX-4300, The motherboard is a MSI 970A, and 16GB of Kingston HyperX fury DDR3 Ram.

I will be swapping this all out for an I5-6600K, Asus Z170-A Mobo, and 16GB of DDR4 Kingston HyperX Fury memory.

My question will, with Win10, Will I need to reinstall my OS in order to use the new components, or can I just unplug and swap everything out? My OS is located currently on my HyperX SSD — SH103S3 whis is Boot Drive.

 

[Tradesman1]

Can probably transition, will want to make backups of your data, just in case, but give it a try, if Windows transitions, then will want to load the latest mobo drivers from their website, run a registry cleaner (Wise has a good free version), then will have to reactivate Win

 

[Alabalcho]

There are two issues: Technical and Legal. @Tradesman answered the technical question. But then you will hit "Activate license" dialog...

The legal question you did not ask is: Whether this is legal, and the answer depends on how you acquired the Windows license for your old rig. If it is OEM license (does not matter 7, 8, 1.1, 10), it is tied to that motherboard, and Microsoft have no obligation to transfer that OEM license to your new setup.

 

[Tradesman1]

MS has been approving most every activation , even manufacturer OEMs the last couple years

 

[alenori]

I bought a CD-key from G2A, I assume I could just load that back in, after making a backup, with the 2TB external Hard Drives,
This was the Key I bought, I also bought a global OEM key as well, I can't remember which one I had used.
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional 32/64 Bit CD-KEY GLOBAL

Off-Topic: I plan to upgrade from a 660SC 2gb, I want something good to upgrade to later on, I plan on going for a 960 4GB, due to the issue surrounding 970's I'm definitely a game modding enthusiast and like pretty textures. the Most I plan to spend for a GPU is probably around $300 - $450 USD.

 

[Karadjgne]

The full retail x86/x64 versions of Windows are user licenced, not motherboard tied, so the key is good for 1 pc belonging to the owner, doesn't matter what pc. Can also get that in a 3 key pack and a 10 key pack for small business usage, but none are tied to the actual pc itself. As far as I know anyways.

 

[Tradesman1]

As far as G2A.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2sxvuz/why_g2acom_isnt_as_trustworthy_as_they_seem/