I built my current PC several years ago and it is slowly failing to be the gaming PC I made it to be. At the end of 2013, I moved from Portugal to New Zealand and brought it with me- customs shattered the case so when it got here, I replaced the case and got the local computer shop to also switch my striped RAID with a 2TB HDD to help with space.
Now that I can, I have gone ahead and ordered a new motherboard, RAM, CPU and graphics card to move into my nice case (NZXT Phantom). I want to keep my hard drive- I cannot re-install a lot of the programs on it as most of my discs are in Portugal still. My Windows 7 key is saved on my PC if I need it, though it is an OEM from an old workplace.
I am competent with hardware (obviously, as I originally built this machine) but I haven't ever upgraded so much at once while keeping such an important disc. Many places online say that Windows may not boot afterwards, but I have messed around with old drives, PCs and hardware for years and haven't ever had a problem like that.
Is it truly necessary to do a sysprep on the drive? Many places show how to do it but it doesn't explain what it does precisely- it does say it keeps everything intact but knowing what sysprep does (guessing it wipes all drivers) would be useful.
Rough specs (on my laptop and haven't memorised all of my old specs, so they're not detailed)
Upgrading from:
CPU: Intel Quad Core
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
RAM: DDR2 (6GB total)
Video card: ASUS HD6570
Upgrading to:
CPU: AMD FX-8320 Eight-Core AM3+
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P
RAM: Ripjaws DDR3 (8GB total)
Video card: GeForce GTX 750 FTW version 2GB DDR5
I am very excited for this upgrade. So excited, I actually forgot to buy thermal paste with the order yesterday but if my friend doesn't have any spare, it won't be a bother to buy some later this week. I'm planning on doing the upgrade next Saturday (28th March).