First time building - Socket roadmaps.

Wyzguy · September 6, 2013

Hey everyone.

I am gearing up to take a swing at building my first PC in the winter. I'm not trying to build an inexpensive system, rather an upgradable system - and this is where my concern/question comes from.

I am constantly stumbling across articles about Intel/AMD road maps. From these articles, I am gathering that AMD is ceasing development for AM3/AM3+ socket motherboards, and Intel apparently ceasing their socket chips all together in favour of BGA. What I fear is dumping hundreds of dollars into a AM3/AM3+ or LGA CPU and quality motherboard, only to be in a situation that due to no longer developing these sockets, I cannot simply upgrade my CPU, and rather have to spend another $200.00 - $300.00 on a new motherboard in addition to a new CPU.

Basically, what I am asking is - 1) am I reading bad information, or misreading it altogether; or is my thought process of upgrading onto an existing motherboard good on paper, but bad in real world? I understand that in the tech world today, nothing lasts forever. But I feel if I spend the money on quality components such as PSU, motherboard, and case, these can be the base for future upgrades and will enable me to spend more on items like my CPU and GPU down the road with new releases. 2) From my understanding of said articles, AMD will continue using its FM2 sockets for the foreseeable future. Is it a good idea to go with the older FM2 socket chips (i.e. Athlon X4) to tie me over, or even the current APU series, and hope that AMD releases a quality gaming CPU on the FM2 sockets. 3) Should I wait for now until new sockets are released and spend my money then. (I have no idea how long it usually takes for a replacement to hit the markets when AMD/Intel begin to switch from one technology to another. I'm still kind of new to this!)

I just want to say thanks in advance to any helpful comments you guys leave for me. Also, this is my first time posting here on these forums, and I hope I am not rehashing a topic that's already been answered. If so, sorry!

Glenwing · September 6, 2013

Intel switching to soldered chips is just a rumor at this point... while it can be a beneficial move for them in some ways, we have no solid information on when they might implement it, or whether they will do it with all of their CPUs or only certain market segments.

The socket isn't the only thing you need, you also need chipset compatibility, so an FM2 motherboard doesn't guarantee future compatibility

Usually future CPU options are hit and miss; FM2 has better chances than LGA 1150 but it's still a toss-up.

Wyzguy · September 8, 2013

Thanks for the reply, Glenwing. Sounds like I'll just have to take my chances!

For · September 8, 2013

I think you shouldn't worry about upgrading a CPU at all, it's not worth it 99% of the time.

I am not sure how AMD does it but intel brings out a new socket every 2 releases (tick tock) so at best you will be able to upgrade from sandy to ivy bridge or haswell to broadwell (assuming the rumors of broadwell being incompatible with haswell mobos even though they are the same socket(sort of) are false) or skylake to skymont. This is not worth worrying over for 2 reasons:

1) the difference will be minimal as in like a 5-10% performance increase which means it's not worth it to buy a brand new CPU just for that, you are better off spending a small amount of the money it'd cost you to get a new CPU on a new cooler and overclock your CPU a bit, that usually results in more performance gain then buying a new CPU for the same socket.

2) CPUs are not the bottleneck (if you buy a 4770k today the CPU itself will not be the bottleneck for AT LEAST 5 years down the road, (I still have a 1st gen Core i5 720 CPU and when playing games it never passes the 30% usage mark)

I would say worry not about the CPU/MOBO being upgradable, if you upgrade you PC part by part like me buying a new CPU/MOBO will be the closest you'll ever get to building a new rig.

Over the years I have added an SSD some more HDDs, a new PSU, Case, Fans, CPU cooler and soon a new GPU. The CPU and the Motherboard should be the least "replacable" part of your build since it will not affect performance at all and upgrading a CPU/mobo will mostly be for the new platform (for example if you need more PCIe lanes, sata ports for more hdds or ssds etc. etc.)

As someone running an i5 720 from over 3 years ago I am planning to upgrade to haswell-e, reasons being haswell-e will have 40PCIe lanes, ddr4 support meaning I am future proof RAM wise and it'll have 10 sata 6GB/s ports meaning enough for all the HDD/SSDs I could ever need. I am assuming that once I have haswell-e I will not be upgrading my mobo/cpu for another 4-5 years simply because it will not be the limiting factor in my PC.