What to do / MOBO & CPU upgrades

[keeganroser]

I bought a prebuilt gaming PC and little while back and made a few upgrades right away (GPU & PSU) but now I have bought the missing upgrades and have a complete re-build.

Question is... what to do first?

I’ll be replacing the MOBO, CPU, RAM, and Case. (Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, Viper Elite RAM 8GB 4x2, and the Phanteks Eclipse P400 case)

I am going to fresh install everything into the new case and then transfer the GPU, PSU, fans so... I guess to make it simple here are my questions:

Do I clean install Win10?

If so then how?
Do I need to deactivate something on my current PC?
I heard something about calling Microsoft and they’ll give me a new key?

Do I need to do any kind of back up from current PC then do a “recovery” on new build? Or will a clean install and then just reload all my apps like steam and my games, etc?


Basically... what do I do when installing a new motherboard and cpu combo?

Thanks in advance!

- Keegan

 

[volkgren]

Yes you will need to do a fresh install of Windows. Only thing is most prebuilts have their Windows key locked to the original motherboard and cannot be transferred. So, you'd have to either use the demo version of Windows 10 or buy a new key.

Now, I've bought an OEM version of Windows and I was able to call Microsoft when I switched hardware and they enabled the key to be used on the new hardware. But I'm not sure if that works the same with prebuilt computers, I don't believe it does.

 

[keeganroser]

Okay so once I get a clean install of Win10 do I just reinstall all of my apps and Games and so on and move on?

Or do I need to uninstall and/or deactivate anything like drivers or settings or my Microsoft account ETC from my old MOBO?