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Hello, i'm in a unique situation atm. A friend of mine built a new ryzen system for editing and light gaming and he's selling all of the intel parts.

He asked if I wanted the 9900K for 340 US dollars. However my situation is "unique" because I already own a 8700K on a asus maximus x hero board. I'm fully aware that my board is 100% compatible with the 9900K however looking at benchmarks the 9900K isn't much better at all than my 8700K.

With that said 340 US dollars for a 7 month old 9900K isn't a bad deal to me for the extra 2 cores and 4 threads.

My question is will I need to reinstall windows if I upgrade the CPU? I've never done a cpu upgrade like this before. How do I uninstall the chipset drivers? I've never had to do that before. Usually once I build a new pC or format a PC I install the chipset drivers and just forget about them for years.

Is a CPU upgrade as simple as setting my bios back to default (removing the OC on my 8700k and voltages etc etc) and swapping it out for the 9900K?

I want to buy it off him and just sell my 8700K on ebay lol

diasflacog wrote:

My question is will I need to reinstall windows if I upgrade the CPU? I've never done a cpu upgrade like this before. How do I uninstall the chipset drivers?

Yes, you can update the CPU without needing to upgrade Windows or remove the chipset drivers. But your motherboard's BIOS version should be 2203. If it's not, go here:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-M ... pDesk_CPU/

Search 9900K on this page. Click Go.

Download the BIOS version 2203.

Extract the contents of the zip file. Run Bios Renamer. It will change the BIOS filename,

Now copy this to the root folder of a FAT32 formatted USB.

Then follow the instructions here to update the BIOS: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1038568

Just remember. This could be a risky procedure and I don't have any experience with Asus's BIOS update procedure but hopefully it should go fine.

Once the BIOS is updated, just pop out ur old CPU, put in the new one and the new CPU should get detected on boot. Then simply enjoy

To add to Igor's points, you probably will need to re-register Windows with the new CPU ID. Again, shouldn't be a big deal, just go through the reactivation process.

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

diasflacog wrote:

My question is will I need to reinstall windows if I upgrade the CPU? I've never done a cpu upgrade like this before. How do I uninstall the chipset drivers?

Yes, you can update the CPU without needing to upgrade Windows or remove the chipset drivers. But your motherboard's BIOS version should be 2203. If it's not, go here:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-M ... pDesk_CPU/

Search 9900K on this page. Click Go.

Download the BIOS version 2203.

Extract the contents of the zip file. Run Bios Renamer. It will change the BIOS filename,

Now copy this to the root folder of a FAT32 formatted USB.

Then follow the instructions here to update the BIOS: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1038568

Just remember. This could be a risky procedure and I don't have any experience with Asus's BIOS update procedure but hopefully it should go fine.

Once the BIOS is updated, just pop out ur old CPU, put in the new one and the new CPU should get detected on boot. Then simply enjoy

Yeah i'm already on the latest bios.

So aside from this it's literally just "plus and play"? its not like a GPU upgrade were I have to uninstall drivers then DDU then finally install new drivers and set things up?

Windows will automatically detect the new cpu and the extra cores and threads?

diasflacog wrote:

Yeah i'm already on the latest bios.

So aside from this it's literally just "plus and play"? its not like a GPU upgrade were I have to uninstall drivers then DDU then finally install new drivers and set things up?

Windows will automatically detect the new cpu and the extra cores and threads?

Yes, yes and yes. Don't worry so much. You'll be fine.

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

diasflacog wrote:

Yeah i'm already on the latest bios.

So aside from this it's literally just "plus and play"? its not like a GPU upgrade were I have to uninstall drivers then DDU then finally install new drivers and set things up?

Windows will automatically detect the new cpu and the extra cores and threads?

Yes, yes and yes. Don't worry so much. You'll be fine.

Haha. I was totally not "fine" XD

I had some trouble to deal with. So before removing the 8700K from my PC I went ahead and just set the bios to factory default this way when I put the new 9900K in the mobo see's it as a brand new chip an loads the proper default settings.

So when I go to install it everything is working normally the bios reads the CPU perfectly and knows that it's a new CPU and I have to press F1 to go into "setup" (great). Once in there I make sure everything is set to factory defaults and once I check that everything is set to factory default I fire up windows.

Right off the bat I noticed that my video drivers were not loading up properly cuz my resolution was set to like 600p. So I restarted the PC thinking (oh maybe its getting "used" to the new cpu) when I restarted I decided to go into my bios and set my XMP profile for my TridentZ 3200 CL14 RAM and that's were my first problems started.

The PC would not boot into windows no matter what I did. It kept non stop blue screening (lol). After trying to get into windows with non stop BSOD I decided to check the bios to see what was going on. I then noticed that the voltage was locked to 1.005 and that low voltage was what was causing the PC to blue screen every single time.

I then set the core voltage to manual and 1.300v. This solved the issue. I was able to boot into windows with my XMP and stock settings for my 9900K.

Next, I had to uninstall the Nvidia drivers and reinstall them cuz the PC could not read them (no idea why). Once I reinstalled the Nvidia drivers everything seemed like it was back to normal. However when I fired up some games they were performing well but with glitches. For example Shadow of the tomb raider was very glitchy Lara's hair for one was glitchy and she looked bald? I tried all sorts of fixes but nothing would fix it.

Anyway's to not make this any longer I decided to just simply reinstall windows and format all of my drives and start fresh.

Now my PC is back with a 9900K at 4.8ghz 1.320v and my XMP profile turned on. Everything is working perfectly now. Some games even show better benchmark scores too now that I have a 9900K. None of my games have weird glitches anymore.

Incase anyone is wondering what i'm using to cool the 9900K i'm using a Noctua NH-U12A with the new NF-A12x25 fans. Seems to be doing a great job.

diasflacog wrote:

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

diasflacog wrote:

Yeah i'm already on the latest bios.

So aside from this it's literally just "plus and play"? its not like a GPU upgrade were I have to uninstall drivers then DDU then finally install new drivers and set things up?

Windows will automatically detect the new cpu and the extra cores and threads?

Yes, yes and yes. Don't worry so much. You'll be fine.

Haha. I was totally not "fine" XD.

Sorry to hear about the issues but good thing that you were savvy enough to solve them on your own. My experience going from Sandy Bridge i3 to Ivy Bridge i7 was as simple as dropping the CPU in and turning the system on. Haven't had a problem so far.