I am planning to change my MoBo, CPU and RAM to make the computer fit for my GPU (RTX4070Ti). So long it seems to be no problem for OS (Win10) itself. I have organized all data and printed and also prepared the SSDs, HDDs etc.
But will the MSFS work after this surgery too? My data is on M2NVMeSSD and the name of drive will change from L to xy. I expect that it will configure itself after starting again in the new enviroment. Are there any tipps, hints etc.?
Btw afterwards i want to update to Win11.
I recommend keeping drive letters the same. Youâre not changing anything on the drives themselves, and a new MOBO and CPU shouldnât change their drive letters (unless youâre also installing a new copy of Win10, in which case Windows will reassign them.) You can always manually assign drive letters using âDisk Managementâ to make them match what you had.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/change-a-drive-letter
Also, youâll want to download and install chipset drivers from the new MOBO manufacturerâs support page. Windows should automatically install drivers for embedded devices like audio chipset, WiFi chipset, etc. Itâs good practice to do the chipset drivers manually after a MOBO change (or even a system BIOS update.)
And check your MOBO manual re: NVmE drive slots. On mine one of them is 3.0 and the other is 4.0.
It wonât hurt anything to put a 3.0 drive in a 4.0 slot (or vice versa) but it makes sense to match them up if the slots are different speeds. On my MOBO using one of the slots disables one of the PCIe slots. I donât use that slot, so it didnât matter, but itâs something to know before you put everything in place.
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Make sure your CPU (you didnât say what youâre changing to) is fully supported in Win 10. I think, for Intel processors, full P core and E core architecture support is only in Win 11. Not sure if the latest AMD V- Cache CPUs have a similar dependency.
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About the drive letters i am quite unsure. And now i have 3 SSDs and 3 HDDs. After surgery there will be 2 SSDs (one with OS) and two HDDs. Most of the MSFS2020 stuff is on M.2NVMeSSD which is drive L now.
Drive C (SSD), D (HDD), E (HDD), F (SSD) and K (M2) and L (M2 with MSFS2020 Community Folder etc.) will remain. So i have to skip G and H somehow.
But downloading drivers for MoBo in advance and storing them on a USB stick will be a good idea.
Oh yeah and i will put the M2 NVMeSSD for MSFS2020 to the 5.0 slot on the new board. Everything would be nonsense.
THX for you thoughts
It will be a Ryzen 7 7900X3D. I hope already windows 10 will support it. But i will change to Win11 nevertheless.
Iâm not sure what you mean by âsurgeryâ. If you change the mobo and cpu you will have to reinstall Windows.
As for the drive assignments, this will be determined by how they are plugged into the mobo. You may not have control over how they are assigned.
Finally, Windows 11 requires Trusted Platform Management to be enabled in the BIOS. This may or may not be enabled by default.
FWIW-Windows 10 End of Life is out in October 2025 I think, so moving to W11 now might be more efficient. I did for all my machines when I purchased this one, and no issues period, file path is way longer and MS has finally gotten most of the early bugs fixed in it. Yes, on TPM being enabled.
My desktop/game machine was factory installed with W11, my old ASUS Scar Strix III, was Windows 10, so just upgraded that one. BHs new laptop came with W11 so it was just setup and configure for her.
My old Laptop is W10, and did factory reset back to W10, and let it update, keeping W10 on it, but I can trick it to run W11 if I want to.
I experienced no issues with any of them doing this. I am thinking I may have too many PC, so thinking about selling the oldest one. It got years of life left and would be great machine for any student around here. I could also donate it to my Ham Radio Club, and they could use it for a testing machine running Linux in that environment. Tough decision, itâs been excellent machine, will miss it.
Why?
In most cases Windows will find the new hardware and install the appropriate drivers. Worst case he might have to manually install some.
I was thinking about license key issues, but it might work.
New MB & CPU requires new Windows License.
It doesnât seem that black and white.
I moved from a 10th Gen Intel on a B460 MoBo to a 13 Gen and Z690 Mobo.
I transferred by NVMe boot drive over and Windows was still activated.
Keyed to the CPU then. He may just have to re-authenticate.
Sounds like my rig.
Asus Z790 plus Wifi mobo, i5 13600k, MSI RTX4070ti 12GB ventus 3x OC, corsair vengeance DDR5/5600 RAM, 1 TB samsung Evo990 SSD, 1000W be Quiet platinum PSU, be Quiet dark rock 4 CPU cooler, Win11 and a 32"Iiama 4k monitor.
Not the cheapest way to re-invent my joy in sim flying but imho since I come from a Lenovo ideapad laptop this feels like being in heaven.
Even my TrackIr5 refuses to cause stutters and sound cracks.
Anything faster ( eg i9 13900k, RTX4090ti etc) would be overkill in terms of their cost, fuel consumption etc.
Happy 
There are different types of windows keys. Some can be purchased from retail with full price or some discount, and then there are OEM keys which are not supposed to be bought by end users and thus usually available for much cheaper in gray markets. But MS doesnât seem to mind what type of key you are using.
But AFAIK, the retail windows key doesnât need to be purchased again if you change your motherboard. But OEM keys do get tied to motherboard and you will need to use a new key of you buy a new motherboard. This is only applicable for motherboard, it doesnât matter if change the whole of the rest of your pc.
There are another thing to consider. Some FS add-ons tie themselves to the installed instance of windows and you may need to deactivate them from that same installation before you can activate it again in a new one. This may apply if you change motherboard without windows installation too. You would still be able to activate this but usually that means going to the addon publisher for support and getting yourself unblocked. Better to clean it up beforehand if you have a chance.
And finally, although, itâs possible to have existing installations of windows will work on a new motherboard, itâs generally recommended by letâs just say more experienced people in this area to have a clean install of windows when you have a extensive hardware overhaul. Windows is supposed to be smart enough to pick the right drivers and other components. But remember, itâs software and itâs never perfect. There can be bugs which can cause mayhem in certain edge cases. These kind of issues become harder to find out and squash later. I think I remember seeing a gamers nexus video (they are type of people who know what they are talking about in this area) on a CPU review where a change of CPU on the same windows installation caused some issue for them. So unless your current installation is really very important that you cannot recreate with some minor effort, I think itâs better to reinstall windows as well.
Which version of windows to use, you can choose for yourself. But MS can pry windows 10 out of my cold dead hands if itâs upto me. But as some have said, some processors may work better in windows 11 than in windows 10, but otoh, I think I see less reports of crashes on windows 10 than on 11. That includes other games, not just MSFS.
Edit: I missed that you want to update to windows 11, I would highly suggest doing a clean installation of windows 11 itself from the start. If you want to avoid redowloading whole MSFS again, I can share a way may be which you can use. If your installation is in a custom path in a drive other than the C drive, then you are 95% there. As for drive letters changing, other than the c drive, donât worry about the rest of them. You can just write down on a paper which drive letter is assigned to which physical harddrive or may be partitions, and then when you have your new installation, you can manually change your drive letters like it was before if needed.
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This is why the whole Windows activation thing is still a mystery to me. I expected exactly this, but my Win 10 pro OEM key did not need to be replaced. I also subsequently upgraded to Win 11 since I needed P core / E core architecture support for the new CPU.
Well, that is not a first hand experience which I shared about the OEM key. In any case op can just try and see. If windows activated without issues, great, else they will have to get a new key.
I recently changed CPU, Mobo, RAM, GPU and m2 drives to update my pc for both better office work and MSFS.
In preparation, I asked Windows (was already on 11) to display my product key so I could record it somewhere the old-fashioned way, and also ensured that I had all my login IDâs and passwords recorded away from the PC for my Microsoft account, Steam, GeForce Experience, itunes, Mobiflight, FBW, Google / Gmail etc. I also set up another USB drive with the latest chipset drivers and Bios for my mobo, direct from the MSI site.
I updated Windows on the âoldâ PC, then created a USB stick with my copy of Win11 and commenced the change-over. One of the changes I made was to install a new, separate C drive (a small but fast Samsung m2 nvme) as the Windows boot drive only, and I would strongly recommend this. I previously had (due to my inexperience of pc building) the o/s and MSFS on the same drive, but in the new build I have MSFS and itâs Community folder on a dedicated m2 nvme, and all my other games and work are on two separate SATA 2.5 SSDâs.
Once I had installed the new CPU, mobo, RAM, dedicated o/s m2 and the GPU, I stuck in the Win11 USB and booted up to the BIOS. Once Win11 started from the USB, I transferred it to the m2 SSD and got everything up and running in Windows relatively easily. I had to do a bit of messing around at first as it wouldnât recognise my network either via wifi or ethernet cable so I had to update the mobo from the second USB I had created, but after that it was all fine. I think I still had to verify and activate my copy of Windows, but as I had the product key to hand it was simple. All of my Windows settings carried over fine, so I could log into Steam and download a fresh install of MSFS to itâs new dedicated drive.
I was a bit concerned that I might lose my logged hours and achievements in the sim, but those all carried over fine too. The only MSFS problem was that it still showed profiles for my VKB joystick, control panels and rudders alongside the keyboard and mouse, but some of the assignments appeared to be lost or duplicated. To be fair this may well have been caused by user error, but after some frustration searching for controls and unassigning / re-binding them, I opted to delete my custom profiles altogether and set them up again as if from new. It took some time to remember and re-set all the control bindings but meant that I could refine a few little things too, so it was probably beneficial overall.
Good luck with your PC surgery - the key to success is preparation!
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You are wrong 
Surgery means that i transplant an new MoBo and CPU to my computer. And no with Win10 you dont need to reinstall the OS when changing MoBo and CPU. With the Trusted Platform Management in BIOS i will look into it when the new MoBo is installed.
Yes the End of Life for Win10 is an argument too for me.