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Why do some cpus not have pins

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Go to solution Solved by Moonzy,
8 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

I have 2 pentium 4's, one has pins on the bottom and one has pads.

Why do some CPUs not have pins?

(one is from old optiplex, one is from old iMac)

there are MANY variation of P4 from what i know

amd Ryzen cpus (excluding Threadripper, ty monibois) have pins and current gen intel desktop cpu's don't.

current amd motherboards don't have pins and current gen intel motherboards have pins.

tbh i don't know the advantage/disadvantage to having pins on the cpu or not, maybe other than that pins can easily break if someone is careless and intel didn't want to deal with that problem. (statement made is not a fact (unless someone else can confirm it)

Anything i've written between the * and * is not meant to be taken seriously.

keep in mind that helping with problems is hard if you aren't specific and detailed.

i'm also not a professional, (yet) so make sure to personally verify important information as i could be wrong.

 

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There isn't really any one reason why some are PGA (pins on the CPU) and others are LGA (pads on the CPU). Your P4 with an LGA setup is just newer than the other one since it's from around the time when Intel made the transition to an LGA format in around 2005.

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Paul did a video on PGA (pins on the CPU) vs. LGA (pads on the CPU) a couple years ago:

For the end user, there isn't really much of a difference.

2 minutes ago, flashiling said:

amd cpus have pins and current gen intel desktop cpu's don't.

current amd motherboards don't have pins and current gen intel motherboards have pins.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper uses LGA, so pins on the motherboard and not on the CPU.

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8 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

I have 2 pentium 4's, one has pins on the bottom and one has pads.

Why do some CPUs not have pins?

(one is from old optiplex, one is from old iMac)

there are MANY variation of P4 from what i know

-sigh- feeling like I'm being too negative lately

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1 minute ago, minibois said:

AMD Ryzen Threadripper uses LGA, so pins on the motherboard and not on the CPU.

ah, let me edit it to say ryzen excluding TR

Anything i've written between the * and * is not meant to be taken seriously.

keep in mind that helping with problems is hard if you aren't specific and detailed.

i'm also not a professional, (yet) so make sure to personally verify important information as i could be wrong.

 

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28 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

(one is from old optiplex, one is from old iMac)

Not related to the LGA/PGA discussion, but are you sure the one from the iMac is a Pentium 4? iMacs never used the Pentium 4, Pentium D or Pentium in general. 

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10 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

sry, eMac

The eMac didn't even have Intel CPUs at all. Those used PowerPC G4 CPUs.

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pins are better for user  (easier to install in socket, harder to damage motherboard because if things fall on the motherboard socket, you don't damage the socket).

 

Increases just a bit the risk of damaging the cpu if you drop it, but a cpu can be repaired MUCH easier than a motherboard socket (you can solder pins or straighten them with maybe less than 50$ investment, while you need hundreds of dollars worth of equipment to desolder and solder new cpu socket, besides the socket cost.

 

pads are better for cpu manufacturer (fewer cpus with broken or bent pins returned), one less manufacturing step (soldering gold plated pins on pads or substrate)

 

pads are better for pin density (you can have more pads in a small area compared to pins) and in theory they're a tiny bit better for signal quality because there's less "wire length"  between the cpu die and the traces in the motherboard. In practice it's hard to say if it actually matters. 

 

Threadripper and Epyc processors went with lga socket (pads) because of the huge number of contacts/pins/pads - it would have been quite hard to manufacture a regular socket that big, and precise enough to put pressure on all the pins to make good contact, and the length of the pins could cause problems due to inductance and other reasons.

 

 

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