Motherboards with interchangeable cpu sockets?

[YoloYuhan]

My friend suggested that today and that is actually quite a good idea. It would make cpu upgrades and stuff much easier if you didn't have a matching socket with the new cpu. 

[MrSuperb]

My friend suggested that today and that is actually quite a good idea. It would make cpu upgrades and stuff much easier if you didn't have a matching socket with the new cpu. 

 

not possible. the traces on a motherboard are specific to a socket.

[Suffokation]

I *think* it'd be possible. But it'd require a lot. Far more tracers (they are compact enough already), several chip-sets, different controllers.

It'd be a big, expensive motherboard.

 

Not worth it.

 

EDIT: Just have multiple sockets on one board. Still a stupid idea.

[Toxicable]

My friend suggested that today and that is actually quite a good idea. It would make cpu upgrades and stuff much easier if you didn't have a matching socket with the new cpu. 

Never gonna happen, so much changes with each chipset as with each socket.

[Tim Drake]

It's a good idea but it stays at idea..

[Dabombinable]

This is the closest we have ever gotten to what your friend was talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotket

 

(I should really buy a few of them for shits and giggles).

[ApolloX75]

To add on to what @ said, AsRock had motherboards back in the S754/939 era that had a special slot above the PCIE that accepted a proprietary board. The board would change a S754 board to a S939 or a S939 to AM2. In the AM2 case it included DDR2 slots and all.

It was an elegant but expensive endeavour. The add in board often cost as much as a new board since no one really carried them. Had two of them, good boards.

[Glenwing]

So... A socketed socket?

[typographie]

My friend suggested that today and that is actually quite a good idea. It would make cpu upgrades and stuff much easier if you didn't have a matching socket with the new cpu. 

 

Different CPUs (at least different architectures) provide different functionality that informs what other hardware is present on the board. As one example, the PCIe lanes on a modern AMD system are provided by the 990FX chipset itself. The PCIe lanes on a modern Intel system are provided directly by the CPU. Further, AMD doesn't even support PCIe 3.0 on it's highest-end desktop platform. And I think AMD still uses a separate Southbridge chip, an arrangement that Intel abandoned years ago.

 

Basically the motherboard has to be designed around the CPU that's going in it.

 

These diagrams may help:

Z97 vs. 990FX