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by DoofusOfDeath 2138 days ago
>in building a PC, you're choosing a motherboard socket, and thus potentially making it cheap to upgrade to later-gen CPUs that stay compatible with that socket.

I'm curious how common it is for people to upgrade just the CPU or motherboard.

I tend to upgrade / replace my personal PC's every 4-6 years. At that pace, it's always seemed worthwhile to upgrade both motherboard and CPU at the same time, because of platform improvements. But maybe I'm an outlier.
1 comments
derefr 2138 days ago
One oft-stated reasoning is that people who currently don't have much money (e.g. college students) can build a PC with a motherboard socket targeted by both low-end and high-end CPUs; and then select, for now, the (cheap) low-end CPU. Then, a few years later, when they're working and have more money, they can replace it with the high-end version.

I'm not sure how common this actually is in practice, but it seems logical.

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leetcrew 2138 days ago
it's great if you decide to upgrade your CPU a couple years later and you motherboard is still compatible, but imo this is not a good reason to choose a particular platform in the first place. you never know when the CPU manufacturer is going to drop support for that chipset. even if the new CPU does support the old chipset, you might be sacrificing some new features or leaving some performance on the table. plus if I'm going to buy a high-end cpu, I'd like to pair it with a high quality power delivery also, which you probably aren't going to find in a college student's budget build.
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Symmetry 2138 days ago
AMD is pretty good about sticking with motherboard sockets and maintaining firmware compatibility. The motherboard I got with my 1st generation Ryzen is handling my 3rd generation chip just fine, though admittedly I'm missing out on PCIe 4.
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outworlder 2138 days ago
They usually don't drop support for chipsets. They move to a new socket.
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lwkl 2138 days ago
Probably not too common. The only people I‘ve seen do this were enthusiasts that had high end gaming rigs and spent a lot of money on their computers. It probably would’ve been cheaper for them to replace everything every 3-4 years. But it‘s their hobby and who am I to judge?
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