LGA pads on both sides?

[Alvin853]

Bent pins have been a cause for defective CPUs forever. LGA moved the "pins" to the mainboard, so if they're bent, you only have to replace the mainboard and not the expensive CPU. But with recent generations, mainboards have become just as expensive as CPUs. Would it be possible to have a socket that has LGA pads on both the mainboard and the CPU, and with the mainboard you get a tiny plastic interposer plate that has the LGA springs on both sides and is placed between CPU and mainboard? That way, when pins get bent, you can simply replace a $3 plastic piece instead of expensive equipment.

[mariushm]

It would be extremely expensive as the springs would have to be gold plated (or some other metal that doesn't oxidize resulting in bad/weak contact) and have a guaranteed "springiness" for an amount of time.

The springs (and the tubes they would be in) would have to super small and thin in diameters - the main reason for LGA is the ability to squeeze more pads compared to pins - Intel cpus have 1700 pins, AM4 has around 1350

The pins are now just a few mm tall, the lga springy pads about the same. It's hard to make such small springs... we're talking 1500-2000 ultra small springs that are normally used in expensive watches.. you'd end up paying $50 just for that replacement plastic bit with springs and at that point you'd just buy another motherboard.

[AbydosOne]

TBH, I kinda like this idea. I don't know how practical it would be in the real world, but I feel like it would make motherboards simpler to implement.

 

17 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

That way, when pins get bent, you can simply replace a $3 plastic piece instead of expensive equipment.

My guess is that they'd be closer to $30-40 given the amount of gold and precision cutting/machining needed.

 

However, because we all know this would happen, INB4 "Asus ROG Strix Gaming™ Interposers with integrated RGB, heatpipes, and a superconduction* ^{*=not actually superconducting}"

[BobVonBob]

I'm no electrical engineer, but I don't see a reason that couldn't work. That said there could be trouble with doubling the number of pin-to-pad connections and the extra pin length. Very high frequency signals are sensitive to stuff like that.