If you need a new motherboard after 28 July 2016, presumably Microsoft are assuming your OEM could help with the Windows 10 licence, which I think is part of the reason for the statement of Windows 10 upgrades being valid for the 'supported lifetime of the device', where 'supported' means (I think) OEM support.
Thanks for all the input everyone. I have since updated W10 Pro over Win7 Ult 64bit. And it did give the option of installing the upgrade without saving any settings or installed programs which is kinda like a clean install.
One worrying feature is I cannot find an option to not install updates automatically.
Although, MS has been pretty understanding if you need to replace your motherboard due to a "malfunction," lol. But no seriously, if your motherboard craps out... you're supposed to replace it with exactly the same motherboard (if you can) or one very close to it.
If it's so outdated that you can't, MS has been pretty understanding, that it's not an entirely "new" computer and may let you activate it on such a hardware change.
However, I thought the OEM/motherboard thing was binned with Windows 8?
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