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Comment by lurker14 | Hacker News Reader

Who upgrades a CPU without upgrading their motherboard too?

The benefits are neglible, as next-gen RAM, next-gen peripheral bus, etc, all require a next-gen motherboard.

More of a concern is custom-built shopping, where it is harder for a small vendor to stock a batch of mobos and a variety of chips, and some chips go obsolete before sale (and so their mobos would be lost too...)

But hardware is really, really good these days (as the article notes). Runs cooler, less stress, less failure, far overpowered for most use-cases, less need to upgrade.

Enjoy our modern bounty and pay a bit extra for a new mobo every few years.

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The problem is that when you pick a motherboard, you also pick the CPU you want. Now, motherboard makers are unlikely to carry such a wide array of upgrade choices. For example, when they introduce a new cheap motherboard, they will offer a low performance CPU for it. A high end motherboard will offer a high end CPU, and so on. You might have one or two CPU choices for the motherboard you want to buy, as opposed to every possible choice like now.

I think I can live with that. I like building my own PCs, but choosing a motherboard is perhaps my least favorite part of the process. There are just too many choices out there, and the number of variables to consider is downright unholy. I might welcome anything that helps me cut down the list of options more quickly, including being able to toss out every model that doesn't have a CPU I'm interested in.

Alternatively, if there's serious demand for it I'm sure the market will come up with a solution. Motherboards with BGA-compatible sockets, perhaps. Or PGA sockets designed to accept adapters you can solder a BGA CPU into.

Hmm.. We seem to differ.

MB choice today seems to be rather simple for me: What _socket_ do I care for, plus what kind of slots and ports do I need (memory, pci-e, random ideas about the minimum required numbers of USB ports, whatever).

But for me the socket came always first. I upgraded my CPU quite often and would like to keep that option in the future. In the past there was no need to throw away your board for a faster (clock speed) CPU and it made sense to me that way.

Well, it is already pretty easy to throw out any motherboards that don't correspond to the processor you've chosen. On most PC part picker websites such as ebuyer you can select only motherboards with the correct socket. I don't like what Intel are planning to do as I absolutely love the flexibility of desktop PCs. This move could end them a lot sooner.

> Well, it is already pretty easy to throw out any motherboards that don't correspond to the processor you've chosen.

Not really. You can use it to throw out motherboards that aren't compatible with the category to which your processor belongs. Which is probably a very loose category - "Motherboards which support socket AM3 CPUs", for example. That's just not a very fine filter - probably only vaguely more specific than "Motherboards which were released in the past 48 months."

No its pretty good as a first filter. Lets say I want a i5 or an i7 but I must have a bunch PCI-e slots and 4 e-SATA. You start with a motherboard with the right socket and go from there. Perhaps I can get away with getting the most inexpensive processor right now but I must have these other features. This will probably work out to an inexpensive processor on an expensive motherboard. Right now, you can do that.

In the cheap processor is married to the low-end motherboard and the expensive processor is married to the high end motherboard world you couldn't. To get the higher end features you would have to buy the expensive processor, even if you didn't need it.

Actually, in building my own system, choosing the MB was my favorite part of the building process; always choosing high-quality and board component reliability/longevity over anything else.

I still have a few questions though. What will this mean for aftermarket heatsinks/coolers? I never run with the stock Intel/AMD heatsinks, will these coolers be permanently bolted on just like the processor?

And for motherboards featuring high-end processors, what will this mean for scenarios where the MB fails but the processor is still good. Will we just have to scrap the two altogether?

> The problem is that when you pick a motherboard, you also pick the CPU you want.

I think the issue here is that builders/gamers will be pushed into spending more. Right now you can get a < $100 ASRock board, pair it with a i5 3570K and a decent video card and you're off. Now you're more likely to have to grab a > $180 board if you want a top-end CPU.

I've upgraded CPUs a number of times. However, it gets a bit problematic when they changed the socket every other year, but it's still nice to be able to spend $50 to upgrade an old computer with a better CPU rather than buying a whole machine.

Another circumstance I had was that I had a motherboard fail. So I replaced the motherboard but kept all the other components including the CPU.

Your experience may be different, but I've never seen a case where a $50 CPU yielded a significant upgrade.

The new CPUs tend to change sockets before prices drop that low. With memory bandwidth being the major bottleneck, a new CPU in the same system never seemed to give more than 10% improvement anyway.

I've done it only when I had a few machines which needed bleeding-edge CPUs (and price didn't matter), and other machines. I'd buy high end and cheap CPUs when putting both systems online, then in a year (assuming the motherboard/socket was still current), I'd put the old high-end CPU into the cheap machine, and buy a new high-end CPU for the important machine.

Being forced to buy a new motherboard every three years could wind up being very costly.

First, after a few years, a new motherboard will probably require a new type of RAM, which can be quite expensive to fully populate.

It's also possible that the new motherboard will not have the same type of peripheral slots as the old motherboard did, requiring you to buy all new peripherals when you upgrade.

Finally, buying a new motherboard will force you to "upgrade" to a new BIOS, like UEFI -- which can bring in a whole host of problems that the old BIOS did not have (such as not easily being able to boot your existing operating system).

> First, after a few years, a new motherboard will probably require a new type of RAM, which can be quite expensive to fully populate.

Since memory controllers are now embedded in the CPU, not on the motherboard, ram support depends on the CPU, not the motherboard.

> It's also possible that the new motherboard will not have the same type of peripheral slots as the old motherboard did, requiring you to buy all new peripherals when you upgrade.

Peripherals are going PCI-e-only, which is designed for infinite future compatibility. It won't be replaced in a decade, if ever.

Yes, the move to UEFI worries me a whole lot more than the CPU being soldered to the board. I haven't upgraded a CPU in a very long time.

Don't worry: software still manages to bloat the hardware into uselessness every few years.

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