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The activation algorithm is more complex than just being tied to a specific configuration. It's weighted, meaning it's tolerant to one or two peripheral components being swapped out (non-boot hdd, ram, gfx, sound) but typically not the motherboard. Why? Because to Windows, this looks like someone cloned the HDD and put it into another machine. It can't tell either way.

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This is how it was for Windows 7. I think it was introduced in 2003 R2 or Vista.

This is a non-story, it's the same behavior Windows has had for almost a decade. People are only getting excited about it because Windows 10 is trending.

I've installed my Windows 7 license on three separate motherboards over the years (one system upgrade and one faulty board) and I never had a problem activating with my license key.

And as far as what I heard before, they even periodically "flush" hardware revision history from their server, so more components can be replaced over time.

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