Best practice to move existing system drive to new motherboard/CPU?

Unfortunately………I am starting to feel the upgrade itch. It’s been over 4 years and a new series of Intel desktop CPUs has launched.

All I might change are CPU and motherboard---not RAM.

I’m seriously considering NOT doing my normal clean install, partially out of curiosity about the process, but mostly because I’d hate to spend the hours required to reconfigure Windows and dozens of applications.

Current setup is Win 10 Home Retail updated to version 2004 system drive (2.5 inch SATA SSD), with all data on totally separate drives. Strictly UEFI, GPT, no MBR. No graphics card. Starting with an Intel 6600K and ending with something like a 10600 or 10700, probably non-K. From an AsRock Z170 series board to most likely Gigabyte, possibly Asus, either H470 or Z490.

I will of course make a fresh Macrium image of all partitions on the system drive before beginning.

With my limited understanding, I guess I could do any of these 4 things:

1: simply move the drive to the new hardware with no preparation and see if it will boot.

2: use Sysprep to “generalize” the drive, shut down, and then move it.

3: walk through my programs list in settings/apps and Device Manager and uninstall anything that looks to be driver-ish or motherboard-specific.

4: something else. Provide details.

What is the best practice as of today? There may be a tutorial, but I couldn’t find it in my fumbling.

I’m generally interested in the least frustration and I realize I may have to reactivate.

As I understand it, I should assure that my current install is linked to my MS account. I think it is already, although I have a “local” installation.

Not sure this is in the right forum, so move if required.

I know nothing about "best practices".

If you have imaged the drive, I suggest Option 1. I have had it succeed going from an Intel motherboard to an AMD one, so I'm optimistic about Win10's ability to detect new hardware and update the drivers.

I suggest checking Device Manager after, in case Windows lacks some drivers for specific hardware.

There are two main hang-ups that prevent just moving the drive over and booting into it:

1. UEFI v. legacy BIOS. As long as both computers are booting in UEFI, no problem.
2. SATA controller mode and possibly driver. IE: AHCI v. RAID v. IDE mode. The easy way to avoid this is just before moving the drive over, delete any drivers/devices in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers then shut down the computer by holding down the shift key when you click on the shut down icon on the power start menu.