Ready to "Beef Up" my PC...now what???

[jshel65]

Hello all, my current PC specs are in my signature. I am ready to beef up my rig. I have struggled with the decision to start with a fresh build vs upgrading what I have and am going with the latter. I want to do this because I would prefer to keep all of my hard drives and various emulator systems as is...I have a ton and they were quite the project to setup. 

I am not an expert whatsoever when it comes to PC building. After much research and discussion I have decided to upgrade my CPU, Motherboard, and GPU. Would it be possible to do so and maintain my current Windows 7 and all of my settings and what not? Any information would be greatly appreciated guys. 

The goal would be for it to end up as close as possible to my current setup when I boot up but of course with much greater performance! Thanks!

[KHg8m3r]

Technically yes, you can just swap the parts. However, you'll run into driver issues and system problems that will make you run really slowly.

What you could do is get a SSD drive and use that as your main OS install spot, and have the old drive be a data drive where you keep the non program files and large game isos.

But if not, you should backup your files, make a bootable windows 7 disk/usb, get your Windows key, swap the parts, and then re-install Windows.

Here's what I do when installing a new OS: (Show Spoiler)

Install GPU drivers, then run Windows update, and then install (I go in this order): browser of choice, visual c++ 2008/2010/2013, DirectX Web updater, java, Intel driver utility (and then run it to get usb/intel management/iGPU drivers installed), adobe reader/flash, Microsoft silverlight, Steam (if you use that), and then you should be able to just run the emulators like you used to if you put them back in the same spots that they were in on your current system. Then install your old programs, and run

[Gortom]

(02-18-2015, 05:26 AM)jshel65 Wrote: Hello all, my current PC specs are in my signature. I am ready to beef up my rig. I have struggled with the decision to start with a fresh build vs upgrading what I have and am going with the latter. I want to do this because I would prefer to keep all of my hard drives and various emulator systems as is...I have a ton and they were quite the project to setup. 

I am not an expert whatsoever when it comes to PC building. After much research and discussion I have decided to upgrade my CPU, Motherboard, and GPU. Would it be possible to do so and maintain my current Windows 7 and all of my settings and what not? Any information would be greatly appreciated guys. 

The goal would be for it to end up as close as possible to my current setup when I boot up but of course with much greater performance! Thanks!

If upgrading a motherboard, I would recommend an reinstall of Windows. Driver issues would likely be painful and you may BSOD on the first boot.

If upgrading a CPU or video card alone, then a full reinstall is not needed.  Hopefully, your motherboard is good enough that it won't need to be replaced.

For the CPU, looks like you have a 1155 socket.  So you can likely pick a better Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor.  I still use a i5-3570k on one of my systems, which still run great modestly overclocked to 4.2 GHz.  Swapping the processor is very easy.  No new drivers and no reinstall would be necessary.  But, be sure to check that your motherboard supports a certain chip.  Sometimes a bios upgrade is required.

For the video card, it is also very easy.  I've done this many times, even switching from nVidia or Intel to AMD and haven't had any problems recently.  Just uninstall the current driver, shutdown, swap the cards, turn on the PC, and install the latest driver. No OS reinstall necessary.

Good luck!