Replacing I7 930 system

Amen, the initial sacrifice, the amount of time and effort of the clean install, is paid off by months, if not years, of trouble free operation.   That was the deciding factor for me, I've made the mistake of cutting corners in the past and paying for it with frustrating crashes, mysterious reboots, etc.   In place transfers make sense if you are only reinstalling the OS or a hard drive, and the overall hardware design is the same.