[7bees]

It has pretty much always been the case that you need to make sure the motherboard supports the specific chip you want to use, and that you can't rely on just the physical socket as an indicator of compatibility (true for AMD as well). For motherboards sold at retail the manufacturer's site will normally have a list, and they may provide some BIOS updates over time that extend compatibility to newer chips. OEM stuff like this can be more of a crapshoot.

All things considered I actually kind of respect the relatively straightforward naming of this and several of Intel's other sockets. LGA to indicate it's land grid array (CPU has flat "lands" on it, pins are on the motherboard), 2011 because it has 2011 pins. FC because it's flip chip packaging.

[duskwuff]

> All things considered I actually kind of respect the relatively straightforward naming of this and several of Intel's other sockets.

That's an industry-wide standard across all IC manufacturing - Intel doesn't really get to take credit for it.

[tristor]

> For motherboards sold at retail the manufacturer's site will normally have a list, and they may provide some BIOS updates over time that extend compatibility to newer chips.

Ah, but if you want to buy a newly released CPU and the board does support/work with it, but nobody has updated the documentation on the website: How do you know?

Ultimately it's always a crapshoot. Some manufacturers don't even provide release notes with their BIOS updates...

Back in the day, this is what forums were for. Unfortunately forums are dead, Facebook is useless, and Google search sucks now. So you should just buy it, if it doesn't work ask for a refund and if they refuse just do a chargeback.