Upgrading old CPU and Motherboard and transferring over SSD/OS without clean install

[philament23]

Hi, first post here. I'm looking to upgrade my old system, sporting the Gigabyte GA-H87-D3H and Intel i5-4570 to a recent recommended build on here, specifically to a Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro Wifi and Intel core i5-9600K. I'll obviously have to upgrade the memory too, and some other things, but my main question is about transferring over my SSD with the OS intact (and the other HDD). I've installed a lot of things with Logic I really don't want to have to reinstall, so I want to just transfer over the drive and get it working without a clean install. I've browsed around on here a bit and outside of some old threads, I couldn't find specifics on how to do this going from my particular old system to a 9th gen CPU and new motherboard. Can someone give me the run down of how to do this or link the applicable thread/information? Running High Sierra 10.13.6 currently. Thanks.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Hi, first post here. I'm looking to upgrade my old system, sporting the Gigabyte GA-H87-D3H and Intel i5-4570 to a recent recommended build on here, specifically to a Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro Wifi and Intel core i5-9600K. I'll obviously have to upgrade the memory too, and some other things, but my main question is about transferring over my SSD with the OS intact (and the other HDD).

I've installed a lot of things with Logic I really don't want to have to reinstall, so I want to just transfer over the drive and get it working without a clean install. I've browsed around on here a bit and outside of some old threads, I couldn't find specifics on how to do this going from my particular old system to a 9th gen CPU and new motherboard. Can someone give me the run down of how to do this or link the applicable thread/information? Running High Sierra 10.13.6 currently. Thanks.

Basically, if the installed version of MacOS supports the new motherboard and CPU, then the transferred drive SHOULD be able to boot on the new system. I did this myself several times in the past so I am quite confident. I would still strongly recommend you make a clone of your current drive before doing this. But in your case....

Are you going to use CPU integrated graphics with the new system?

If so there is a problem. High Sierra 10.13.6 does not support the CPU integrated graphics in the 9th generation Intel CPUs like the i5 9600K. Only Mojave 10.14.6 and later have such support.

 

[philament23]

Basically, if the installed version of MacOS supports the new motherboard and CPU, then the transferred drive SHOULD be able to boot on the new system. I did this myself several times in the past so I am quite confident. I would still strongly recommend you make a clone of your current drive before doing this. But in your case....

Are you going to use CPU integrated graphics with the new system?

If so there is a problem. High Sierra 10.13.6 does not support the CPU integrated graphics in the 9th generation Intel CPUs like the i5 9600K. Only Mojave 10.14.6 and later have such support.

Ok, I'll make sure to update to Mojave first. Because, yes, I am using the onboard graphics. Do I need to delete/move the old EFI folder over right before moving? I'm assuming I need to do something like this. I also think I'm going to go with the z390 M gaming board from gigabyte because it's cheaper and the wifi doesn't work on the other one anyway apparently. Thank you!