How well does win10 handle a new motherboard/cpu?

[Granyala]

You can do it but as others have said: stability is not guaranteed.

Big hardware changes work a lot better these days compared to the days of old but I would recommend booting and doing an in-place system reset. That essentially puts windows 10 in a freshly installed state and preserves your user data. Installed programs are lost and need to be reinstalled though.

Format c: is really only necessary in extreme cases (or OCD).

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If you have a retail key its fine, if you have an OEM key you'll need another one. Still cheaper to buy OEM overall though.

Only in america and only if you didn't link it to your MS account.
In the EU, linking software licenses to hardware is illegal, so your key will work fine.

[Onikaroshi]

You can do it but as others have said: stability is not guaranteed.

Big hardware changes work a lot better these days compared to the days of old but I would recommend booting and doing an in-place system reset. That essentially puts windows 10 in a freshly installed state and preserves your user data. Installed programs are lost and need to be reinstalled though.

Format c: is really only necessary in extreme cases (or OCD).

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Only in america and only if you didn't link it to your MS account.
In the EU, linking software licenses to hardware is illegal, so your key will work fine.

You can link OEM licenses all you want to your account on the US, still won't work. Interesting point on the EU side though.

[solinari6]

If you have a retail key its fine, if you have an OEM key you'll need another one. Still cheaper to buy OEM overall though.

I had an OEM win7 key (I bought from new egg when I built my last computer), with a digital license for win10 ... the guy I talked to game me a full win10 real (not digital) key for the home edition.

[Sliske]

My win10 needed me to reactivate it after putting in a new CPU. RAM and GFX card were fine. Didn't change motherboard.

I just used mstoolkit to reactivate it. Took like 15 seconds.