Query Activation and changing Video Cards

veldthui said:

I have a new PC that I have built nearly ready to go. Just need to install 32GB memory, an NVMe 1GB drive, 2 4TB spinning drives and a RTX 2080Ti card.

I plan to install 16GB of memory and the NVMe drive next week hopefully. As the video card is expensive and a while away yet I plan to stick in an nVidia graphics card (think it is a 6xx version) just so I can get the machine up and running.
Will install Win 10 but do I enter the key or not? Will changing the video card and adding another 16GB of ram force the system to want to re-validate the key? I did have issues with Windows 7 (motherboard change) and was a pain going through Microsoft to get it done.

License is tied to MB only, any other change will not require reactivation even after clean W10 installation. When you install it, it will activate automatically thru internet and MS server.
As far as drivers for GPU goes, you don't have to stick to same make, Best way to do it is to use DDU Official Display Driver Uninstaller DDU Download to clean old drivers out Before you switch cards, Windows will install a basic driver for new card which you can update later.

EwryRobert said:

Hello Count what if I'm replacing same name and type except with more memory and little better specs is it still recommended that I use this type of software?? thanks for your time.
Have good day. Robert

Yes, each one is at least somewhat different

bobkn said:

I concur that you should uninstall the graphics drivers when swapping video cards, even if the cards are similar.

It may not be necessary to run DDU, though. I managed without that for numerous video card swaps over the years. Even for switching between AMD/ATI cards and nVidia.

(On rare occasions, I've had to clear the CMOS to get the motherboard to see the new card.)

DDU may not be necessary for new card's operation but without it much is left from old drivers taking space. holding settings and registry entries.

hennmann said:

I had an older MSI AM2 Mobo and it had a dual core AMD on it. For $15 I got a small quad core and slapped it in. No reactivation was required but when I reinstalled Win10 on it it wouldn't activate. I contacted Microsoft and they asked what I recently did and I explained a CPU upgrade. They checked my account and said we will take care of this and a few seconds later Bing my Win10 became activated.

That certainly wasn't because of CPU, only MB counts.