News Rumours point to an end for user-replaceable CPUs

Anti-trust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

On a mobo, you are free to add in your own Ethernet controller or sound card (even on a mini-ITX board, you can still add sound/ethernet via USB dongles). The cheap onboard stuff adds only a few bucks to the overall sell price, and is overwhelmingly considered usefull. With regards to chipsets, they are too reliant on specific slots and ports (PCI-e, USB3, SATA, IDE, etc) to support upgrades.

Taking it to the extreme: could you imagine dropping a BGA1567 8 way server mobo (read: you broke it, so no warranty) and having $36000 worth of CPU's sitting there, utterly usless?

 

First, the only thing class action lawsuit and antitrust cases have in common is that they are lawsuits.

Secondly, this is meant for customer market. That is even with the CPU with are talking about items at 600 euro tops. Did you complain that you cannot swap your Cell CPU in PS3 ?

Fact is, there is only a very slim chance these lawsuits would stand a chance. Especially beacuse you can count on having the most sensible options available. Just look at Atom or E350/E450 market where you have your CPU soldered in. You got the same boards with all Atom CPU from specific generation, and it's up to you to choose. You got multiple board variants including ITX and mATX for E350/E450. Same will happen with the mainstream market IF the removal of LGA option happens (and that is a huge IF).

 

I am pretty sure most PC manufacturers wouldn't mind this approach. There are sure segments of their customers who are not bothered with upgrading (mostly because the lifespan isn't as long) their PC especially the like of the all-in-ones or consumer market PCs so they will gladly adopt these strategy. Quicker and more integrated. Intel knows to compete with the like of Apple, (I am sure you know one of the reason you don't like Apple products is the upgradability), a similar approach is needed. HW-SW integration. One way to start is this, a complete motherboard/processor package - fast turnaround and manageable esp. with Intel's integrated graphics.

 

The last company I worked for had Dell machines, and over the course of my 6 month contract, we needed to have 8-10 motherboards swapped due to faulty NIC's (around 225 desktops in the company). Dell never admited to us that it was a systemic problem, but in any case they were required to replace the entire motherboard, rather than add in a bandaid NIC. The point is, the cost of replacing a mobo and CPU, adds up pretty quick for a large OEM like dell.

 

To be honest, I whish we could still find mobo with no NIC, no wireless, no sound, no IGP .... only USB and PS/2 (PS/2 is better for key rollover). I'd like to be able to choose my NIC card, my sound card, etc.. instead of disabling the embedded ones (would free space on the IO shield for more USB ports).

 

Is Intel trying to get motherboard manufacturers to cover the cost of RMA-ing faulty CPU's? If it's built into the motherboard, it's their problem, not Intel's.
That was one of the reasons behind the move from PGA to LGA wasn't it? Bent pins became the motherboard's problem rather than the CPU's.

 

I have never seen a DDR3 adapter card that increased a boards ram capacity, care to share that one? And tell me exactly how I can put a Sata3, USB 3, AND DDR3 expansion cards into my MATX board along side my Graphics card, I seem to be a slot or two short.

Not to mention, you can flood out the PCI-e bus, with too many cards and data. Ever put a Gigabit card into a Pci slot? It works, but you will NEVER see gigabit speeds.

Warranties suck and can be almost useless.

On one of my current high end boards, the pci-e slots failed 3 months in, it took 6 weeks for a replacement and the replacement had bad memory slots. This was not some $80 board, it was an extremely high end board. In fact, it was even recommended by Bit-Tech for their high end build.

I don't know about you, but being without a board for 12 weeks isn't possible for me. Luckily, I had a spare, but had I not, I could have bought a cheap one to hold me over. I did not however have a spare processor.

If they are combined, you can't go out and buy a cheap board to hold you over, it will be a board/chip combo. I'm not spending hundreds just to hold me over.

The reason we now have solid caps is because of that big capacitor disaster, and it wasn't relegated to low end boards which I think you are implying.

Also, many manufacturers did all they could to avoid repairing the damaged boards, just like Nvidia did when they had sold a bunch of bad 8400's. Ask high end laptop owners how they fared in that deal (they were offered a $250 HP computer) or better yet, ask Sony SZ series ($2000 laptop) owners how they were treated... I'll give you a hint, they were offered NOTHING for their failed video cards.


Bottom line, keep your warranty and high end ideals, I'll keep my modularity.

 

No need to be that arsh, I was just giving an opinion .... and no need to extrapolate my words, where did I mentioned Ram bank expension card ?

My approach is more : "I get what I'll need for the 5 coming year". This includes free ram slots or PCIe connectors.

Warranty ..... I had faultry hardwares that all got replaced in less than 3 days .... Just choose the manufacturers carefully, they do not all provide the same quality of services. I also take warranty extension to cover that kind of risk. It sure adds to the overall cost, but then you are well covered. Had a screen dying after almost 3 years, got a new one delivered at home the next day ...

I agree on the bus saturation .... But why taking the mATX example ? Even my entry 775 mATX has 8 sata, 4 ram slots and 12 usb ... Isn't that enough ? Except for more 3 way sli and above, why does atx still exists ?

I don't want to see CPU sockets, but I also think that the whole atx format should be redesigned.

Edit : when I was mentioning the "going for cheap" or "I get what I'll need for the 5 coming year", I mean : "If my board has 4 ram slot and can take up to 32 GB .... if I actually need 16 GB, then I get 2x 8GB over 4x 4GB" ... 8GB modules cost a little more, but that won't populate all available slots. I alsso pay great attention to board layout when going mATX. I prefer board with (from top position to bottom) x1 --> x16 --> whatever (x1 or legacy pci) --> x16 ... this also sound card and 2x dual slot GPU if I need SLI / xFire.

If you need more than 1 VGA card and some other expension, then you should take a board with an NF200 additional chip, cause even an i7 won't provide enough PCIe lanes



I think BGA is good for HP and alikes ... because people bying that kind of computer generally never upgrade it, not event the hdd or memory. Servers .... companies generally just swap the faultry blades and put in a new one. So for high density server, BGA is suitable aswell.

About enthousiast ... well, we all like to build our rig, it's like a lego game for us .... . But as I said, the ATX standard is no more suitable ... just look at GPU size oO. They could do them more squarish, a little wider, but shorter ... our cases are wide enough to accomodate heatsinks like DarkRocks .

 

Form factor wasn't my complaint, the inability to cheaply change/replace motherboards is. The fact that I will be forced to replace a $500 part (board/processor) instead of a $100 part (motherboard) is my problem. I mentioned matx and the memory card because your advice was to throw add-in cards at it to upgrade it. It simply isn't always practical, or even possible in many cases.

Intel isn't proposing this for HP and Dell, they are proposing this for all of us. You won't be able to build your "Lego" computer, at least not to extent you can now.

 

I know that! But I had to change a motherboard a couple of years ago, and decided to get a new one as the company I had bought the original parts off were a pain to deal with, taking over a month to deal with a previous issue. I'd also noticed alot of reviews since then complaining of major issues with the board, so I definately wanted a completely different board as a replacement, because there was a high chance that any replacement board would have the exact same issues. With that in mind, I just bought a new one cheaply, and got it delivered within a couple of days. A lot less hassle then sending it back and hoping they test it right and don't try and send the faulty one back, which is a possibility. Sending off things to the motherbord manufacturer would take even longer, and through carriage charges, it wouldn't be that much cheaper for a bog standard bottom of the range board. If returns were simple and always worked out, that'd be fine.

Plus what happens when their inventory starts to run out a couple of years down the line? They can't hold loads of older boards forever? They'll start sending you back equivalents, so if you had an overclocking gem of a CPU before, that'd be gone too, and if they give you a different socket replacemnt, you might find yourself needed to buy a new CPU cooler as well, costing more money. Either way, I want a choice in what I want to do and not having a choice is not good.

 

As someone pointed out earlier, Intel isn't looking in soldered on CPU direction because it's a step forward but because it's a chance to simultaneously cut costs and increase profit margins in one fell swoop. They're probably going to do this since a) AMD is in position to give them trouble and b) # of people that matter that this change would anger << everyone else.

 

I can understand why this change is taking place, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Locking everything onto the Motherboard just means that replacements are going to be more expensive, the more complicated you make something; the more likely it is to go wrong. Permanently tying the motherboard and processor together sounds like you're asking for trouble (And killing off Overclocking.)

I would be curious to see who would take the blame should one of these "All-in-one" boards fail, however. Would it be Intel? The Motherboard Manufacturer? Some other party? The User? I'm betting that Intel would start selling the BGA CPU's "As is" so they could dramatically up profits, but that may lead to less motherboard manufacturers actually wanting to deal with them

Who wants to buy potentially buggy parts, then resell at considerable extra development time and costs, when you may be shafted with the costs should the parts you have very little control over fail?

 

Before we all get heart attacks, check out the latest motherboards and CPUs on the market. How many of these have features that are squarely aimed at the modder and overclocker? Exactly: almost all of them. Pretty colours, overclocking features, easy BIOS tinkering features, LEDs all over the place. If manufacturers do all that just to entice the home builder, do you think that they'll dispense with interchangeable CPUs? Nope. That may work for generic cheap office machines, which still have green PCB mobos, but not for the home builder market. So it isn't going to happen. Relax.

 

I agree with nexxo.

Also this article is just another sensationalist click generator.