Haswell may be the last upgradeable mainstream CPU from Intel

[K404]

What if things went the other way and became more technical? BGA CPUs..... that the user has to solder on themselves

[Sparky]

It does not surprise me that Intel would try to steal the entire mobo industry if they can. The FTC may have something to say about that however...

Don't let your fanboyism get in the way BGA doesn't mean they make the boards too. Any board maker can put BGA chips on their boards, heck they do it already.

[Lightman]

What if things went the other way and became more technical? BGA CPUs..... that the user has to solder on themselves

Back to the future then!
I remember soldering oscillators and FPU to Amiga Turbo boards. Great way to OC and improve performance!
It will be a bit more tricky to solder uBGA package though than it was to do it with 68882 FPU

[PedantOne]

BGA Broadwell is CPU only for mobile/embedded market. In 2013-2014 will be mainstream platform still Haswell-DT with classic socket. What will be Haswell successor in 2015 nobody knows now.

[Rollo]

What if things went the other way and became more technical? BGA CPUs..... that the user has to solder on themselves

Is soldering "technical"?

As for the thread:

The day I see AMD is leaving the upgradeable socket CPU market, I'll say,"R.I.P. and thanks for the memories. You fought the good fight against stacked odds.".

The day I see intel is leaving the upgradeable socket CPU market, I say," Ahaha! Hohoho! Suuuuuure they are. And Chevy now makes tvs, and Samsung is heading into the wooden building block market". Won't happen anytime soon IMO.

That market is going to shift to more mobile and include ARM but APUs aren't suitable for some things and Haswell/anything soon won't change that.

[teurorist]

i realy hope you're all right and lga will stay for a other decade

[Aberration]

It would make RMA and repair cost more.

[Movieman]

There are only two things you need to think on to see where Intel is headed: 1) control and 2) profitability
Make an item so that "no one can mess with or adjust it" and second, cut your losses by removing returns from the business model.
Do those two things and your bottom line starts to look much better.
Yes, it takes people like us out of the equation but realistically when has Intel ever shown more than lip service to the interests of the xtreme hobbiest?
Sure, they play the game to make it look like they do but the corporate mindset has always been to ignore our interests.
Look at the dual 1366 systems.
Intel's reference boards had the circuitry locked solid so that BCLK was not adjustable.
It took one of the smaller board makers, EVGA, to make the SR-2 and get around that lockout.
Intels response to that was to learn that they needed stronger "locks" on the chips and thats just what they fed us.
BCLK locked cpu's..Now they have the "control" part locked up..
They call it progress but is it really when a dual 1366 with 2 hex cores can out do the newer dual 2011 with 2-8 core cpu's?
Doesn't sound like progress to me..

[K404]

Is soldering "technical"?

Given the amount of whining the community does if software voltage control isn't available, then yea, soldering is the new rocket science.

[Movieman]

Given the amount of whining the community does if software voltage control isn't available, then yea, soldering is the new rocket science.

There are other factors here. My eyes that were perfect till age 40 are now age 60 and not what they used to be.
I remembering soldering a wire to one leg of a 50 pin PLL controller while looking through a 5x magnifying lamp and needing a hand held 5x magifying glass on top of the lamp lens.
That left one hand free to handle the soldering gun and hold the wire..Had to set up a separate clamp system to hold the second glass in place.
Remember, we all get older but still maintain the passion for the hobby but with that aging lots of body parts don't work as they once did..

[K404]

Ha..... what if a user had to enter their DOB to unlock higher voltages in software and were rewarded with "sorry, too young" if they didn't meet the criteria

I don't look down on people who cannot mod (for whatever reason) .....send the gear off to someone else and let them do the tricky/clever bit

We're heading OT here, but I always had the nagging feeling that a LOT people welcomed software control because they could thrash 7 shades out of their card with no evidence.....hello RMA.


EDIT: 4444 posts Can't believe i've been here over 7 years and am somehow in the top-100 posters!

[Movieman]

Ha..... what if a user had to enter their DOB to unlock higher voltages in software and were rewarded with "sorry, too young" if they didn't meet the criteria

I don't look down on people who cannot mod (for whatever reason) .....send the gear off to someone else and let them do the tricky/clever bit

We're heading OT here, but I always had the nagging feeling that a LOT people welcomed software control because they could thrash 7 shades out of their card with no evidence.....hello RMA.


EDIT: 4444 posts Can't believe i've been here over 7 years and am somehow in the top-100 posters!

We agree on modding and RMA's..Not fair to dump 2 gazillion volts into a cpu or vid card and then RMA it..You play, you take the responsibility for your actions.
It is just that I beleive that we should have that option and Intel doesn't want "the kiddies playing" in any way shape or form..

[VulgarHandle]

Not too sure about Intel, but AMD isn't exactly hiding the fact that their plan is to move away from upgradeable desktop.

And be prepared for the next level of hardware DRM with AMD.

I am the opposite of an Intel fanboy, this is just the simple truth.

[Stukov]

I wouldn't say soldering is technical. I mean, I had never soldered anything in my life, I borrowed a soldering gun (not even one designed for something like that, the head was huge), and removed and replaced the caps with no issue. The monitor still didnt work, but not because of the caps (power inverter was bad and I didnt feel like buying one at the time). Just two days ago I repaired my 200mm fan after I yanked the wires off the pcb by accident. It works now too.

I don't think the issue is whether or not people will find soldering technical or not, its what is the value of what you are doing something like this with? My monitor and fan was broke, if I messed it up trying to fix it for the first time it wouldnt have been an issue. Ask me to try something like that on my first few tries on a ~$200 CPU or $400 GPU, then we are getting into territory where I'm really questioning my ability. I don't have that kind of money just laying around to be thrown away. So the question isn't considering it technical, its whether the risk vs reward is there.

With that said, thinking Intel is going to abandon a market they are making rather large amounts of money in is rather silly. I'd say until you have Intel stating "We are officially abandoning the upgrade market" this is just speculation and subjective thinking.

[Sparky]

BGA soldering is a totally different animal than standard soldering.

[zalbard]

The chances of killing your hardware when soldering are a lot higher compared to software overvoltaging, which is pretty much completely safe these days (assuming you apply reasonable amounts of it and watch the temps).

[Kallenator]

BGA soldering is a totally different animal than standard soldering.

Indeed, you need quite a lot of force on the iron to get it close to the one in the middle with VDD!

[Greg83]

"mainstream". i3

[Rollo]

Given the amount of whining the community does if software voltage control isn't available, then yea, soldering is the new rocket science.

I stand corrected.

[lizardmech]

Why is anyone shocked by this? Their mid range cpus already waste half the die space on a gpu desktop users don't use. When they never made a 6 or 8 core sandy / ivy bridge without the GPU it was obvious they don't care much about desktop users. I'm sure they will continue to offer expensive deffective xeons made on an old process for conventional desktop users though.

[Movieman]

Why is anyone shocked by this? Their mid range cpus already waste half the die space on a gpu desktop users don't use. When they never made a 6 or 8 core sandy / ivy bridge without the GPU it was obvious they don't care much about desktop users. I'm sure they will continue to offer expensive deffective xeons made on an old process for conventional desktop users though.

To be fair, Intel did make 8 core sandy without the GPU..The top E5-26xx's
They are just locked tighter than a "bull's arse at fly time" to use an old expression..

[ColonelCain]

Even if this isn't "the end" of desktop type CPU's, it is coming. The way things are going, desktops are going to end before too much longer.

Sadly, yes. I thought at first that desktops would become more like laptops (very hard to build your own, but could still upgrade). Instead the industry is racing on all cylinders towards handheld devices.

[Darakian]

There's a simple solution to all of this; buy AMD

[Evantaur]

There's a simple solution to all of this; buy AMD

Incoming haters in 5...4...3...2...1...

[Warboy]

Seriously, this would cause riots in the tech industry especially in the OEM, Repair, etc sectors. Not being to swap out the CPU to easily fix a computer.

I'm pretty sure Intel would have some class-action lawsuits coming their way if they did this to desktops.