Longevity, future-proofness Intel LGA1151 socket

LGA_Socket · July 20, 2018

TL;DR see last paragraph

Someone I know is in the process to either purchase pre-built (OPTION 1) or build his own desktop (OPTION 2).

The short version of what he had in mind is:

- Intel Core i5 8th generation CPU Coffee Lake-S, could be 7th generation if major bargain mostly to lower price tag (so he is not against a Core i7 8th gen, or 7th gen with reduced price)

Note: he does not intend to get a CPU with a K or X, no overclocking, liquid cooling, etc so likely i7-8700 or i5-8400, could also be i5-8500 or i5-8600

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050TI or above

with SSD storage and enough DDR4 RAM memory in order to smoothly run Lightroom, Photoshop and casual light gaming.

He also would like to not exceed $1200 CAD.

OPTION 1

In the pre-built, he could get the Dell XPS 8930

(https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/desktops/new-xps-tower/spd/xps-8930-desktop/dxps8930ms_fsb_h13e)

with less RAM and a HDD and no video card iniatially, and later on add what he would like.

OPTION 2

Building his own, it could be an ASUS motherboard, with the LGA1151 socket and ... the B360 chipset I guess, he is not going to get a CPU with a K or X, he won't overclock, liquid cool etc.

Anyway, since RAM, SSD and video card are going to be anything that fit in the CPU/motherboard, the reason of this post is not to get suggestion on parts and pricing for the entire system. In the past, that person bought a motherboard/CPU with a low volume, uncommon socket, and he had very little support with it, and so he had a bad experience on that level.

The reason of this post is to check if any of you know how common the LGA1151 socket is. Even in the case that these would be the last CPUs/motherboards for that socket, if it has been used in a lot in past products it could mean that there is some longevity, future-proofness of such a system; can we expect Intel and motherboards companies to offer support for the coming years?

Mira Yurizaki · July 20, 2018

The socket is largely irrelevant, it's the chipset. Series 300 boards are incompatible with Series 100 or 200 boards and vice versa, despite using the same exact socket. Given Intel's history, you usually get two generations out of whatever the next iteration of something is. So buying a Series 300 board now will likely get you compatibility with the next generation processor, but no more.

Jurrunio · July 20, 2018

14 minutes ago, LGA_Socket said:

The reason of this post is to check if any of you know how common the LGA1151 socket is. Even in the case that these would be the last CPUs/motherboards for that socket, if it has been used in a lot in past products it could mean that there is some longevity, future-proofness of such a system; can we expect Intel and motherboards companies to offer support for the coming years?

9th gen seems to be compatible with the same boards that worked with 8th gen.

Even if 8th gen turns out to be on a dead socket (i.e. no further upgrades with the same mobo), the 8700 is plenty.

If future CPU support is that important, then AMD's AM4 platform will be the way to go. It will be supported till 2020, while the 300 series chipset used by 8th gen CPUs last till 2019 (when 9th gen comes out).

AM4 platform offers more cores than Intel's consumer platform, but then Adobe stuff care about single core performance in some workloads and multicore performance in others, so I dont think there's a clear winner in performance between the two platforms.

17 minutes ago, LGA_Socket said:

In the past, that person bought a motherboard/CPU with a low volume, uncommon socket, and he had very little support with it, and so he had a bad experience on that level.

AM1?

LGA_Socket · July 23, 2018

Sorry for the delay, no he had an early Core i5, but I don't have more details at the moment, only what he told me. I'll contact him, might be some time before I reply though, we are looking at pricings and specs, but he'll buy later this year.

Thank you everyone for the valuable inputs.