Just how 'plug n play' are things nowadays? (New CPU in old mobo Q)

[DarkSideA8]

I'm at best an intermittent system builder - and consequently do not mind exposing my ignorance, so long as it helps me understand this hobby better. Gigabyte has recently released a bios that will accept a 5800x chip on an x470 board, and I've updated the bios successfully.

The fundamental question is - what do I need to do / think about / be aware of when swapping out the CPU in my current mobo?

• Will the system simply let me plug-n-play the CPU and recognize it and work?
• Will I need to reinstall Windows?
• Do I need to do anything else?

Background Info:

My last (current) build was in 2018, when I built a system using an x470 mobo (Gigabyte's Aorus Ultra Gaming) with a 2700x cpu. I did what I have always done: bought a new mobo, a new CPU and a new drive, built it and installed a clean copy of Windows onto the new drive.

I've learned that I don't always have to do this: specifically, that I can swap my NVMe drive with Windows, etc. into a new build and it should work. (A staggering revelation) I was always under the impression that aside from switching out a PCIE card or RAM, if you swapped mobos or CPUs, Windows pretty much demanded a clean install.

So is swapping CPUs at this point little different than swapping PCIE GPUs?

 

[Dan_D]

I'm at best an intermittent system builder - and consequently do not mind exposing my ignorance, so long as it helps me understand this hobby better. Gigabyte has recently released a bios that will accept a 5800x chip on an x470 board, and I've updated the bios successfully.

The fundamental question is - what do I need to do / think about / be aware of when swapping out the CPU in my current mobo?

• Will the system simply let me plug-n-play the CPU and recognize it and work?
• Will I need to reinstall Windows?
• Do I need to do anything else?

Background Info:

My last (current) build was in 2018, when I built a system using an x470 mobo (Gigabyte's Aorus Ultra Gaming) with a 2700x cpu. I did what I have always done: bought a new mobo, a new CPU and a new drive, built it and installed a clean copy of Windows onto the new drive.

I've learned that I don't always have to do this: specifically, that I can swap my NVMe drive with Windows, etc. into a new build and it should work. (A staggering revelation) I was always under the impression that aside from switching out a PCIE card or RAM, if you swapped mobos or CPUs, Windows pretty much demanded a clean install.

So is swapping CPUs at this point little different than swapping PCIE GPUs?

1.) Yes.
2.) No.
3.) No.

 

[modi123]

I've learned that I don't always have to do this: specifically, that I can swap my NVMe drive with Windows, etc. into a new build and it should work. (A staggering revelation) I was always under the impression that aside from switching out a PCIE card or RAM, if you swapped mobos or CPUs, Windows pretty much demanded a clean install.

It used to be a thing, at least for me, to have a clean install of older windows to get rid of the kruft and gunk from copious amounts of other apps coming and going.. but now, with win10, it seems less of a requirement. Though you may boot and have to call into verify what evers. I believe I did that a few years back on a significant hardware update.

 

[Dan_D]

I'm at best an intermittent system builder - and consequently do not mind exposing my ignorance, so long as it helps me understand this hobby better. Gigabyte has recently released a bios that will accept a 5800x chip on an x470 board, and I've updated the bios successfully.

The fundamental question is - what do I need to do / think about / be aware of when swapping out the CPU in my current mobo?

• Will the system simply let me plug-n-play the CPU and recognize it and work?
• Will I need to reinstall Windows?
• Do I need to do anything else?

Background Info:

My last (current) build was in 2018, when I built a system using an x470 mobo (Gigabyte's Aorus Ultra Gaming) with a 2700x cpu. I did what I have always done: bought a new mobo, a new CPU and a new drive, built it and installed a clean copy of Windows onto the new drive.

I've learned that I don't always have to do this: specifically, that I can swap my NVMe drive with Windows, etc. into a new build and it should work. (A staggering revelation) I was always under the impression that aside from switching out a PCIE card or RAM, if you swapped mobos or CPUs, Windows pretty much demanded a clean install.

So is swapping CPUs at this point little different than swapping PCIE GPUs?

To be clear, swapping CPU's never required reinstallation or re-activation excluding cases where you were increasing core counts on a single socket, or adding a second CPU to a motherboard that only had one socket populated when the OS was installed. The HAL of Windows NT 4.0 for example needed to be rebooted in order to switch from Uniprocessor to multiprocessor modes. That being said, we used to switch motherboards out even in Windows 95 without having to reinstall the OS. It was always possible, albeit dicey at best. At present, switching CPU's out doesn't require anything. It's just like a memory upgrade. Were you in a virtual environment, you would find Windows can even actually add or remove CPU threads on the fly.

It used to be a thing, at least for me, to have a clean install of older windows to get rid of the kruft and gunk from copious amounts of other apps coming and going.. but now, with win10, it seems less of a requirement. Though you may boot and have to call into verify what evers. I believe I did that a few years back on a significant hardware update.

I've been on all sides of this issue as I've been a desktop service technician and many other things professionally speaking. Windows used to be far less reliable than it is today. Back in the day, reinstalling every 30-45 days was common place for gamers and anyone else who really used their machines hard.

 

[kirbyrj]

You might have to go into your bios and reapply settings like XMP or whatever. Usually it will give you a prompt upon first boot to go into the bios when you change CPUs. Other than that, you should have no problems.