[Closed] Upgrade motherboard advice required.

what do you plan to do with it?

Usual office stuff, a little light gaming perhaps using on board graphics. Keen on the USB three ports to move around Gb of files mainly. I used to build PC’s but then found more interesting things to do. So out of touch now.

Seems a shame to disregard quality case, PSU, two SSD’s, optical drives and I fancy a Christmas project that will last another 8/9 years.

I realise that the current set up works fine for 99% of what it is used for. Office and internet.

When going to swap a motherboard previously (a few years back) I was told it can cause issues with Windows as it thinks there is a "new" machine. Is that still/was it ever a thing/issue that the op needs to be wary of?

Windows 10 free upgrade for customers who use assistive technologies runs out December 31st, this is why I want to upgrade this side of Christmas.

That's almost identical to what I bought for my son for gaming last Christmas. With a GeForce720 graphics card(£80 ish this year, silent) he can play pretty much every game he's tried at 1920x1080 with good frame rates. We got ours from Aria pc, they will do them pre-assembled and tested so you have a bit less to worry about.

When going to swap a motherboard previously (a few years back) I was told it can cause issues with Windows as it thinks there is a "new" machine. Is that still/was it ever a thing/issue that the op needs to be wary of?

That will depend on what license you have. If you buy the full retail version, you can move it to a different machine without problem. If you buy the DSP version (basically an OEM version), it's cheaper but officially restricted to a single machine. However, Microsoft is apparently fairly lenient about this, so you might be able to have it unlocked. I replaced a faulty motherboard with an [i]identical[/i] one and had Windows unlocked online without any problem. Can't guarantee that it will work with a major upgrade, but apparently MS are actually fairly reasonable about it.