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Will sticking with same chipset preventing having to reinstall OS?

J

jtvang125

Diamond Member
For the second time now the Gigabyte board in my HTPC bit the dust. The chipset is the AMD 785G. There's a used identical board for $100 but no way I'm paying that much for a board this old. There are boards with the same chipset for half that (still overpriced I think) but more reasonable. My main concern is not having to reinstall Win7p.
 
That's what I get reading through too much at once. If you install another manufacturer's board that uses the same chipset, you shouldn't have any issue. The sound and some other stuff (like SATA vendor) might be slightly different, but you should still be able to boot into your OS and update that stuff.

It will probably trigger your PC needing to be reactivated with Microsoft however.
 
UsandThem said:
That's what I get reading through too much at once. If you install another manufacturer's board that uses the same chipset, you shouldn't have any issue. The sound and some other stuff (like SATA vendor) might be slightly different, but you should still be able to boot into your OS and update that stuff.

It will probably trigger your PC needing to be reactivated with Microsoft however.
Click to expand...

Perfect that's what I was hoping. Replacement will be another gigabyte but matx.
 
i've not only switched chipsets going intel to intel and amd to amd but also gone intel to amd and vice versa. windows is much more robust than people want to give it credit for. for s&g i did a new install and benchmarks were the same.
 
As long as the replacement board is a 785G chipset, you shouldn't have any major issues. I've replaced many motherboards with different models/brands but with the same chipset and just had to update some drivers. (On Windows 7 too).
 
Ive switched HDs to completely different systems and laptops and have not had to reinstall in a few years. Win10 is great in that respect. Win7 was pretty good as well. Just had to reactivate the OS and was good. Win10 was even better as all I had to do was log in with my live account.
 
Just make sure you retain the same SATA operation (IDE, AHCI, RAID etc..) and be prepared with your LAN drivers on a USB stick and you should be fine. Id backup anything of value first anyway, just in case. I usually re-OS anyway once I move to a new board, but ive definitely used drives from completely different systems as teh boot drive and its worked mostly fine.
 
If you want to try saving some money, there are AMD 785G mobos pulled from OEM prebuilts that can be had on Ebay for cheap ($25 ~ $30). e.g.

MA785R from Dell Inspiron 570

Alvorix-RS880-uATX (codename "Alvorix") or H-RS880-uATX (codename "Aloe") from HP systems.

You didn't specify the Gigabyte model so I don't know if you have DDR2 or DDR3, Socket AM2+ or AM3.

Not going to get any overclocking features with those OEM boards but they are otherwise fine, even have standard connectors and stuff.
 
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There's a sysprep trick you can use to get it to boot on anything. Its kind of a useless trick since you have to perform some operations before moving the drive over to a different system, which if your motherboard died you obviously can't do, but I've used it to transplant a Windows 7 install from a AMD laptop to an Intel HTPC.
 
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