Hey,
 
I may be updating my 7 year old hardware soon.  Any possibility I can just assemble the new box, move the drives in from my old machine and go, or would I be facing a clean install?
 
Thanks,
 
Donny

Interesting question. Win10 is supposed to be 90% hardware agnostic. I'm curious to see what happens here. I'm suspecting I'll have the same issue in the next few months.

Well, for whatever the worth, I had to swap out the motherboard on my primary PC, about two weeks ago.  I had just prior to that gone ahead with the free upgrade to Windows 10, using the Upgrade in Place approach.
 
The initial upgrade to Windows 10 was flawless, and painless.  Literally two days later, it was decided that a lingering issue with memory being kept unavailable was likely an issue with the motherboard's BIOS, and that motherboard was swapped out for a completely different one from a different manufacturer.
 
I was fully expecting to have to reload Windows, and all of my applications (more than 1,400), and was NOT looking forward to that.
 
I fired up Windows with the new motherboard, and was pleasantly surprised to see a message from Windows that it was 'Adjusting drivers for new devices' or something like that, followed by the computer proceeding to a normal Windows 10 Logon screen for my user id.
 
FINALLY - after 40 years of waiting for it, it appears that Microsoft may have actually built Windows 10 to be smart enough to figure out how to handle things like the motherboard being swapped out, and sure enough, I was able to logon and everything was just as it had been, and everything worked.
 
I DO need to add that I did need to re-authorize software that relied on an iLOK Activation, and I needed to do the same with software from Arturia, but that was about it.
 
That saved me from 2-3 WEEKS of living hell, having to reload the world.
 
I remain thoroughly happy that I had done the upgrade to Windows 10, and am SO relieved not to have had to reload it all.
 
If you were NOT running Windows 10 on the old machine, you WILL have to load the new computer with some version of Windows, and will have to load each and every application you wish to carry forward to the new computer.
 
Congratulations in any case, on getting a nice shiny new computer.  Even if you have to install everything again, it will still be WAY cool to have jumped forward 7 years in computer technology.  Have a BLAST! :)
 
Bob Bone
 

Hey Robert,
 
That is indeed great to hear.  Once I decide on some hardware I'm going to give it a go.  Thanks very much for your quick reply.  Good luck to you fret_man on your hardware update!  Hope it goes smoothly!
 
Donny

Not know anything about MoBos I'd still want to suggest to consider one that can handle Thunderbolt under win10. There are some great new audio interfaces getting into the market that can run on Thunderbolt with extraordinary performance

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
Not know anything about MoBos I'd still want to suggest to consider one that can handle Thunderbolt under win10. There are some great new audio interfaces getting into the market that can run on Thunderbolt with extraordinary performance

 
Ironically, the same level of performance that you can achieve via a PCIe audio interface.   

I've done many swap outs via Windows, 95, 98, and XP. In all cases the OS was tied to the motherboard so you have to uninstall all of the linking drivers. It could be a crap shoot. Personally, I would build the machine and do a clean install. Otherwise, if you get hung up on a problem it may take you days to solve it and even that is a, "maybe." You will spend far less time reinstalling programs. I've been there. Clean installs are great for your machine too. If you move without a clean install, go to the Microsoft Support Forums. They work and have helped me. Good luck.

I would get another HDD for OS and connect the others. Drag files as needed 

I prefer to 'clean the decks' and do a fresh install for new systems or when the MB is changed. I can't speak about w10 but I've found it to be a double-edged sword. Sometimes, regardless of how things may be uninstalled or the registry cleaned, there is still some stuff that hangs around that could cause strange conflicts. The other edge is that sometimes programs may not work as they once did - like if an obscure codec was loaded on the old system that you inadvertently started relying on. It may be lost in the reload.
 
All-in-all I prefer to possibly have to add later than try to remove/disable and then re-add something else. Companies have to ensure their installer apps work right. Their uninstallers, well, not so much attention is given to those.
 
As far as just moving in your old drives, that shouldn't be an issue if they are supported (SATA vs eIDE).