How important is socket compatibility (CPU upgrade path) to you?

[godihatework]

In light of Coffee Lakes need for a brand new motherboard and the numerous comments surrounding the lack of upgrade path on Intel platforms, I'm curious just how important is a viable upgrade path to you when it comes down to purchasing a new CPU?

Personally, for me, it's good to have, but not a must have. I'm still running a 2500K for example, and whilst I can upgrade to a 3770K and get a big boost in MT performance, it doesn't make sense because I can get a new (and far superior) i5 8400 for approximately the same price.

Yes, I will have to get a new motherboard and RAM, which adds to the cost, but I can also sell my existing motherboard and RAM to recoup some of that cost. I will also be able to finally take advantage of new IO standards like NVMe and higher bandwith PCI-E lanes, something I wouldn't be able to do if I stay with my current motherboard.

What about you? How important is an upgrade path to you when it comes time to purchase a CPU?

I upgrade so rarely it's a non issue. I assume that by the time I'm upgrading it will be system wide.

 

[OTG]

Very important.
I'm on an old cpu (A10-7850K) and a tight budget.
When I upgrade to Ryzen, (sometime after I'm re-employed, and RAM prices have returned to earth) I'll probably go for an R3 or R5 1400 with a nice motherboard and overclock the nuts off it.
When I upgrade I'll pass the old CPU to my parents on an A320 mobo and slap in a 2nd gen R5 or R7.
Maybe by then I'll find a way to convince myself I need that much processing power

I really can't think of any changes to motherboard or RAM that will make much difference to me. Mayyyyyybe Thunderbolt or USB, but I can't think of what I'd actually use it for that couldn't be handled with an add-in card.

 

[TStep]

Just another consideration when contemplating an upgrade. However, I can say with certainty that Intel has lost 2 or 3 cpu purchases from me due to marginal performance gains AND requiring me to change the entire platform. Had there been compatibility thru 3-4 icore iterations, I likely would have bit on at least one cpu upgrade along the way. Sandy 2600k on P67. In hindsight I should thank Intel for keeping my yearly amortized mobo/cpu/ram cost to under $40/year.

 

[SangamonTaylor]

Used to be important to me, stopped being important when I no longer felt the need to upgrade every 18-24 months because the CPU market stagnated.

My last rebuild was over 5 years ago now. Once I can get my hands on an 8700k I'll be making the jump.

 

[Timmah!]

Usually not that important, cause i dont tend to upgrade/change computer parts every year, usually bought whole new rig after bunch of years, with a single exception, when i swapped Athlon64 with its 939 board for C2D E8400, board and DDR2 RAM maybe like 2 years down the road? while keeping the rest of the rig.

That was a special situation though, i bought that A64 maybe half year before arrival of the first dual-core CPUs, which quickly became standard and the C2D came and made everything obsolete. I wanted to play Supreme Commander, early 2007 game, and it was literally no go on that single-core CPU, which was like year and half old at that time. Try imagining a game coming nowadays, which would be unplayable on 2015 CPU, something like Haswell or Broadwell. Ridiculous. On second thought, happy times :-D

TBH though, there is similar situation happening now, i bought my last rig a year ago, X99 with 6850k, and i would really love if it was possible to put in it one of the Skylake-X CPUs now and there was no need for a new board. Would be 400 EUROs cheaper, there would be no need to dismantle entire computer and i still am not sure about Windows 10 - i have OEM version and i am not very keen to buy a new license - again, pretty much my third W10 within a year. Hopefully there is a way to transfer it to the new board.

 

[dlerious]

Very important.
I'm on an old cpu (A10-7850K) and a tight budget.
When I upgrade to Ryzen, (sometime after I'm re-employed, and RAM prices have returned to earth) I'll probably go for an R3 or R5 1400 with a nice motherboard and overclock the nuts off it.
When I upgrade I'll pass the old CPU to my parents on an A320 mobo and slap in a 2nd gen R5 or R7.
Maybe by then I'll find a way to convince myself I need that much processing power

I really can't think of any changes to motherboard or RAM that will make much difference to me. Mayyyyyybe Thunderbolt or USB, but I can't think of what I'd actually use it for that couldn't be handled with an add-in card.

Most of my upgrades were new motherboard and CPU and keep everything else. I'd wait a little longer between upgrades if I needed to also upgrade other parts (like RAM). Went crazy this year and grabbed parts for 2+ new systems, grabbed a bunch of SSD and RAM before prices got too crazy. Waiting a little while before grabbing a Threadripper and motherboard.

 

[OTG]

Most of my upgrades were new motherboard and CPU and keep everything else. I'd wait a little longer between upgrades if I needed to also upgrade other parts (like RAM). Went crazy this year and grabbed parts for 2+ new systems, grabbed a bunch of SSD and RAM before prices got too crazy. Waiting a little while before grabbing a Threadripper and motherboard.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time rationalizing an upgrade considering I've never tried to use it for anything it couldn't do. I'm not much of a gamer and my only PC related hobby is mining, so my workloads don't need a ton of CPU power.
I do plan to mine Monero on the CPU when I upgrade, and I'm trying to use that $ return to justify a 1700 but I haven't convinced myself yet...

 

[whm1974]

My only concern with socket compatibility is replacing motherboard the if dies during the CPU's sill useful life. Such if the older CPU is still compatible with a newer chipset.

I had a motherboard die on me before back during the Socket A days.

 

[epsilon84]

Days after starting this thread, I'm actually going to swap out my i5 2500K for an i7 2600K. It wasn't in my plans to upgrade, but I found a good deal on a 2600K. Net cost of the upgrade will be about $30 - $40 once I sell my 2500K, which I'm pretty happy with.

Yes, it's not a huge upgrade but should help with my games where I'm thread limited like BF1. Was going to go straight from my 2500K to Coffee Lake but the 2600K should help extend the life of my ageing system a bit. When overclocked it still seems to keep up quite well in todays games.

 

[Spartak]

It used to be not that important to me, because when I usually upgrade (avg ~4yrs), most of the time there are enough new motherboard features to warrant a full interior transplant. But this time around I feel it's different. Current m-ITX motherboards supporting M.2 3.0x4 PCIe & USB 3.1 have finally brought storage/IO speed to the point it will suffice for years to come.

Waiting for Ryzen AM4 APU's to hit the shelves next year, and would be nice to upgrade to the Zen2 on 7nm 2 years later. When Zen3 arrives another ~2 years later, it would be cool if that'd support AM4 too.

 

[richaron]

Motherboard longevity is essential for me to invest into a "high end" system, I expect to keep my options open as far as upgrades and compatibility.

Otherwise I just go bargain basement.

 

[Tantricscorpion]

Hello Everyone,
Firstly, my apologies if this is in the wrong place, I can't find where to put a question, (this is my first).

I've recently bought a Sabertooth 990FX R3 and a WesternDigital M.2 drive with both an "M" and "B" key.
The motherboard has an M.2 socket with an "M" socket, will the WD M.2 work with it please?

I hope some of you very clever people in here can help this O.A.P.

My kindest regards to all.

 

[daveybrat]

@Tantricscorpion

According to Asus this board accepts both SATA & PCIE mode M.2 drives so you should be good to go.

 

[Tantricscorpion]

@Tantricscorpion

According to Asus this board accepts both SATA & PCIE mode M.2 drives so you should be good to go.

Thank you Daveybrat.
I was worried because the Sabertooth has an "M" key only socket but, the M.2 drive has both "M" and "B" keys and these M.2 drives are new to me, I'm fine with spinners and 2.5" SSD,s. It's the "Old dog and new tricks" syndrome.
Will it boot on this drive please?

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I voted for upgrading both at the same time. It's not worth upgrading at all, unless you go all out. I went from a Q6600 to a 3770K, and from that to a 7600K to a full out Ryzen system. It's a lot nicer when you go all out.

I totally agree with you..!! If you would have asked me last year, I would have said it was one of the most important things when building a new computer, but lately it seems to me to be better to go all out an buy a new motherboard when buying a new cpu so you get all updated chipsets and all other important bells and whistles..

 

[Tantricscorpion]

I totally agree with you..!! If you would have asked me last year, I would have said it was one of the most important things when building a new computer, but lately it seems to me to be better to go all out an buy a new motherboard when buying a new cpu so you get all updated chipsets and all other important bells and whistles..

Hello Justinbaileyman,
I was very lucky and found a secondhand Sabertooth with an AMD 9590, (which is an upgrade from my M5A97 and FX8350), and the M.2 drive, but when it arrived I found the M.2 had two keyways, both M and B, but the motherboard socket had only one and I didn't want the drive damaging what, by all accounts that I've read, is a super motherboard.
Thank you your comments.

 

[lixlax]

I have always liked the idea of longevity, since it gives additional flexibility for the future. Although I have almost always ended up buying a new CPU with a new motherboard. The only exception have been on my Asus 990X board on which I had Athlon II X3 435> Phenom II 965> FX 8320.
I think that the point on if one component fails and you still have a surplus of new and used items to replace it with is also valid.

PC enthusiasts often upgrade their hardware anyway not because they have to but because they can/want to. So I'd say the consensus in this thread is pretty much expeted.

 

[Eug]

I have always liked the idea of longevity, since it gives additional flexibility for the future. Although I have almost always ended up buying a new CPU with a new motherboard. The only exception have been on my Asus 990X board on which I had Athlon II X3 435> Phenom II 965> FX 8320.
I think that the point on if one component fails and you still have a surplus of new and used items to replace it with is also valid.

PC enthusiasts often upgrade their hardware anyway not because they have to but because they can/want to. So I'd say the consensus in this thread is pretty much expeted.

AM3 was around for so long that I ended up with several compatible motherboards and CPUs around the house. These were mixed+matched as people upgraded, which was very convenient.

I just went from an Athlon II X3 435 (Cinebench R15 - 193) to a Phenom II X6 1055T (Cinebench R15 - 427) on AM3... in 2018. More than double the performance with no other changes.

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=thread...055t-any-issues-i-should-be-aware-of.2533986/

Since this was a pre-built slim format system without all off-the-shelf parts, it would have been impossible to change the motherboard. That would have meant buying an entirely new machine, which would have cost 6X the money or more: New case, new CPU, new motherboard, new heat sink, new fans, new power supply, and new memory.

By the way, on an Asus P2B motherboard back in the day, I went from a Celeron 366 to a Celeron 800 to a Celeron 1.4 GHz. That was 4X the CPU performance using the same mobo.

Actually now that some of you have mentioned it, I also only recall ever upgrading my CPU on an existing motherboard once, way back when Celerons were a viable alternative to the Pentium!

It wasn't a straightforward upgrade either, as I was using a slot CPU and Intel had just moved to socketed CPUs so I used something called a "slotket" which was an adaptor so you could use new socket based CPUs on your old slot based motherboard. How cool was that?

Yes, the Celeron 1.4 GHz above was on a Slot-T adapter.

 

[misuspita]

For me, very important.

I usually buy a new computer with a good motherboard, and a mid gen CPU, with the ideea that after a few years I will replace only the CPU, add some RAM and I'm good. Case in point, last time I bought a AM3+ board with a Athlon X3 460 CPU, which later got upgraded to a FX 8300. This month I just bought a AM4 board with a R5 1600 which will probably last me many years, but if I need some upgrade in 4 years, I will probably get a boatload of RAM in the meantime (prices are killing me ATM, bought only 8) and a Ryzen gen 3 probably and call it the day for another god knows how many years.

 

[mikeymikec]

I was originally going to go for a 4790k for my haswell setup and mainly for budget reasons and partly for gaming reasons I opted for an 4690k instead. I'm keeping an eye on 4790k prices in the hope of eventually snagging one for a better price difference that I would have originally paid.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I do not upgrade often, so usually it is not an issue to have socket compatibility. I buy usually a Motherboard+ CPU+memory combination. But now i have already bought an AM4 board and i will be really happy that when zen+ comes out, i can install this new cpu as well. I delayed buying a ryzen cpu until the memory i ordered is finally in stock. This gives me the option of buying a better cpu when available.
I checked the ASROCK site for the AB350M and there has already appeared a new bios with AGESA code for the upcoming ryzen processors.

 

[Kenmitch]

Only AMD gives the option of upgrading to future generations of products. Based on recent past and what AMD has stated about AM4 compatibility.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I was originally going to go for a 4790k for my haswell setup and mainly for budget reasons and partly for gaming reasons I opted for an 4690k instead. I'm keeping an eye on 4790k prices in the hope of eventually snagging one for a better price difference that I would have originally paid.

Yeah but that's from the same generation of CPU's. I'd expect Haswell boards to be compatible with Haswell cpu's

For me, it would be nice if i can slot in some magical 8 core 9700k into my z370 but knowing Intel I doubt it.

 

[epsilon84]

Only AMD gives the option of upgrading to future generations of products. Based on recent past and what AMD has stated about AM4 compatibility.

That's not exactly true. Z68 or P67 chipsets could run both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips, for example.

Z170 can run both Skylake and Kaby Lake, though technically that isn't much of an upgrade at all in reality.

The same possibly can be expected from Z370 as it is a first gen chipset for Coffee Lake - we may see compatability with 9xxx series chips based on what Intel has done historically.

 

[TempAcc99]

Not very important for me in this day and age. Till it is actually worth it to upgrade in terms of performance increase (3+ years at least, probably rather 5 years) you will want to have a new motherboard anyway for new features like faster USB, faster RAM, faster PCIe, faster link to chipset and so forth.

Also when you sell your old stuff, usually better to be able to offer the CPU with a working motherboard.