Question Windows OEM licenses and reselling motherboards

[Dave3000]

If someone resells his/her motherboard that they pulled out from his/her pre-built system that came with Windows 10 or 11 OEM license that was tied to the motherboard of the system and can't be transferred to a new system, should they add $10-20 to the price because of the Windows OEM license tied to the motherboard since he/she if the price of a pre-built system includes the Windows operating system. I don't how how much a Windows 10 or 11 OEM license adds to the price of a new pre-built system? Should he/she just give it away for free and just mentioned it comes with a Windows 10 or 11 OEM license that is tied with the motherboard and only charge specifically for the motherboard, in other words don't factor in the tied Windows OEM license in the price?

 

[RLGL]

You are over thinking this!

 

[BoomerD]

If you sell a bare motherboard and the buyer installs a CPU, how does Windows know the board was in some way tied to a previous Windows installation?

 

[mikeymikec]

The official line from MS is that an OEM licence is tied to the board, so I would consider the two to be a package deal.

 

[dlerious]

If you sell a bare motherboard and the buyer installs a CPU, how does Windows know the board was in some way tied to a previous Windows installation?

The activation key?

 

[Dave3000]

It doesn't have an activation key as whenever I reinstalled windows on this pre-built system, it skips the screen where it asks for an activation key to enter, and is already activated once Windows 11 was installed. There's no Windows 11 activation key on the case or motherboard either in this system but it does have a Windows 11 authenticity sticker on the IO shield of the motherboard.

 

[dlerious]

The activation key is embedded in BIOS or UEFI.

 

[mindless1]

If you want to go to the trouble of providing the installation media for the Windows version that works (is that even legal?), I could see selling it as a bundle at a little higher price like $10 more, IF you go to the trouble to make sure that it does actually install without activation issues which is sort of a wash IMO, to bother doing that for $10 more, so I might just include it without the extra charge.

I could also see you losing sales to someone else selling the same board $10 cheaper without that, or gaining sales selling same board with that but at no higher charge. If it's legal, let the market decide?

The thing is, who buys OEM boards unless it's a direct replacement for what their OEM system already had, and then they already have a license for that system/motherboard? Those people "might" still pay a premium for a drop in replacement because it saves them the trouble of a fresh OS install, and they already have the license, but price it that high and again you aren't as competitive with other sellers.

Of course there are some niche applications where someone good at tech, recognizes their needs and wants a cheap board to fill them, so it's not a repair-replacement. I too have done that years ago, but only because they were dirt cheap and not a proprietary form factor.

Lastly if the board was sold in a system, the buyer typically intends to use the system, so not even sure just how much these used pull motherboards are worth, certainly something if not so old that nobody needs them, but I also used to buy brand new OEM boards and certainly something with no years of use is worth more. If you're parting out new systems, I'd think that's going to take a lot longer and/or work to make money on all lthe parts rather than mix and match, selling them as whole, working systems.

 

[Dave3000]

It's a PowerSpec desktop. It came with an MSI H610 chipset motherboard. PowerSpec support told me the Windows 11 license is tied to the motherboard of this system, but I'm not sure if the buyer uses a different CPU than the one that was used in this system will not see Windows 11 as activated. I might decide to sell it with the CPU installed that came with the system and just buy an i3-14100 (I would prefer an i5 12600 but I think the going price for them is too high for what they are especially that the 12600k is going for a much lower price than the 12600 and does not cost much more than the i5 12400) for my new motherboard as I wouldn't lose much money doing this in the process and I believe that it would be much easier to sell with the CPU installed that came with the system than without it.

 

[mindless1]

The right OEM version of windows, installed fresh should activate the same regardless of which CPU is installed. It's looking at the mobo bios string, not a whole system fingerprint for initial activation.

 

[tcsenter]

The buyer is gonna get the embedded BIOS key so they should have no problem activating as long as it matches the edition/version of Windows installed. Make sure you remove that device/key from your list of devices in your Microsoft account, if you added it.