Windows 8 OEM and Upgrades

[Toomchief]

I have heard that if you have Windows 8 OEM you cannot upgrade your motherboard or CPU without buying the OS again. Is this true?

 

[WyomingKnott]

To the best of my knowledge that was true for 7 but not for 8 if you bought the OEM license yourself and did the installation. If you have a machine that came with win8, it's not transferable.

To quote myself in http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/16-73-windows-guide-last-updated-2013 ,

The licensing model has changed in Windows 8. The "Full Retail" version is no more, and if you buy a non-upgrade copy to install on bare metal you will be buying the OEM / System Builder version and installing it as a "Personal Use" license.

The biggest difference is that the Windows 8 version does not include Microsoft support.

Despite being called an OEM license, the license is different from previous OEM licenses in that the "Personal Use" version can be transferred to a new machine (after decommissioning the old machine) and can be transferred to another user (only once?). So you should not have trouble moving your personal use license from the machine you build this year to the one you build next year.

These two pages contain more info, plus doublespeak:
http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/licensing/sblicensing/Pages/personal-use-license.aspx
and the license itself:
http://personaluselicense.windows.com/en-US/default.aspx

The Windows 8 license that you can buy in a store or online does not come with downgrade rights; you can't use it to install Windows 7. If you bought a machine with Windows 8 Pro (only the pro version) pre-installed, there is a downgrade path to seven. See this: http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/downgrade_rights.aspx