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How many times have you actually dropped in a new CPU?

What proportion of your PCs have you done a CPU upgrade on, keeping the old motherboard?

  • 0 - 20%

    Votes: 37 46.3%

  • 20 - 40%

    Votes: 9 11.3%

  • 40 - 60%

    Votes: 17 21.3%

  • 60 - 80%

    Votes: 8 10.0%

  • 80 - 100%

    Votes: 9 11.3%
  • Total voters
    80
G

Growly

n00b
Joined
Jun 13, 2006
Messages
21
I used to think that future longevity of the socket/platform I bought into meant a damn. This was because usually I was spending all my money at once and I wanted to feel like there was a long return period for the investment. Surely, if I could amortise the cost of the RAM, motherboard, etc, everything was going to be ok. I would find happiness, I wouldn't die alone, I would finally open up to my parents, my cat would come back to life, and so on.

20 years of building my PCs later, I have done a purely-CPU upgrade all of twice. One time I went from an Athlon XP 2500+ to an Athlon XP 3200+. Another time I did do a drop in replacement, of a 12600k to 13700k, but that was only because I had plans build a server with the spare chip about two weeks later.

Which makes sense! Chipsets, RAM and IO all upgrade with the motherboard, so I'm rarely thinking about spending any money on upgrading unless it's to buy at least those core bits together. Not only does that make the upgrade more meaningful, it means I don't have a spare part sitting useless on a shelf. I hate that. I hate when I have computer parts that I could build into a machine, if only I had the 95% of the machine that was missing around it. Used CPUs depreciate fast.

PSUs, hard drives, SSDs and cases on the other hand seem to last an average of 2-3 builds each.

I'm thinking about this because it's insane to me how many people are out here on the internet complaining that Intel's new platform will only be around for a generation. Who cares! I used my AM4 board for 1 generation. If I buy an AM5 board it's going to be for 1 generation. Agh!

Am I crazy?
 
Not typically, back when I first started building PCs, I was a poor high schooler so typically got a lower cost CPU (Celeron) than upgraded to a Pentium when I could save up and afford it (grocery clerk money).

The AM4 platform I've gone through three CPU upgrades, which is not the norm for me, but was appreciated. I did end up switching to a x570 from a x370 for better RAM support.

I think the AM4 platform changed the game in terms of platform longevity, I remember most users not batting an eye when Intel would release a new socket every generation. With that said, I'm sure it doesn't help that Intel released a turd with Arrow Lake and there's no promise of a 'Arrow Lake refresh' on the same platform; So purchasers will likely be stuck with the same turd this generation. Even when AMD was releasing turds, at least you could still upgrade the CPU to something better performing (Phenom's to Phenom II's to FX's - or whatever that generation naming scheme was).
 
Ive done a bunch of cpu upgrades over the years, the only one I didnt do at least 1 cpu upgrades on was my Ivy Bridge system as I started with the top cpu in it and there were no upgrades available. My P2 and P3 systems got a bunch of upgrades, then my socket A systems got a multitude of upgrades over several boards. Then my next socket 775 got at least 4 upgrades from dual core to quad EE. Then came the Ivy which didnt get any upgrade, and finally my AM4 which got a 5800X3D upgrade.

That doesnt include all my secondary systems that got tons of cpu upgrades over the years also, but that is a whole other rabbit hole.
 
I used to do it quite a bit in the early days. I would go from a Pentium 150 to a 166 to a 233MX because that was my hobby then. I also did this on socket 370. I originally had a Slot-A? board that I added a 370 adapter so I cant even think of how many CPU's I went through. All in the joy of the Hardest O/C I could get. Good times. I remember a time I asked to try out a Celeron 333 at a shop on a demo PC and they looked at me puzzled but allowed it. And when it posted @ 500+ they were gobsmacked. I purchased and walked out and they were speechless. Fast forward a bunch I haven't done it much if at all until AM4 where I went from a 1700X to a 5700X. Got to give the GOAT award to AM4 on this topic. A hard nod to Slot-A with 370 adaptor cards.
Thanks for the topic OP :)
 
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I rarely upgrade CPU's in my machines. Rarely are future CPU's on the existing platform worth while. I sometimes keep CPU's and motherboards awhile though I prefer to replace GPU's every generation when I can afford it.
 
I generally upgrade MB, CPU and memory in one go. Quite frequently I nab a new PSU as well, just gotta have some of that new PSU smell I guess. The only time I stuck with a single MB for more than one processor was during my Asus P4C800-E Deluxe/479 socket adapter addiction. I went through 10 or 15 Dothans trying to find those cherries. I kind of did the same with socket 775 but it was the other way around. I spent a lot of time trying to find the best fsb clocking MBs for a couple of years. Perfected my RMA skills during that period :p These days I don't game too much but I still really enjoy rebuilding my rig and reconfiguring the loop.
 
Only once recently, upgraded a machine from 2600x to a 5800x. In the past I swapped more frequently, I remember going from an athlon 64 3200+ to a 3700+ to an opteron 165 on the same board. I sit on processors a lot longer now, but if I had the money I would do it more frequently; would be nice to reuse CPU blocks.
 
funkydmunky said:
originally had a Slot-A? board that I added a 370 adapter
Click to expand...

Slot 1 was pentium II. Slot 2 was Pentium II Xeon. Slot A was Athlon.

On topic, I don't think I've done much cpu upgrading since like socket 7. When it comes time to think about it, it's a lot easier to install a new cpu into a new board and then swap the boards. Rather than try to avoid taking the board out and then it never works out.
 
I do it all the time. My current MB has already had 3 different CPUs in it, and I'm looking at swapping it out again.
 
I usually upgrade cpus at least once, I remember using a slocket on my old abit BH6 to squeeze a little more life out of it.
 
7 of the 8 computers in the office have had CPU upgrades. That's at least in part because they were built using a mishmash of new and used parts, so most of them started out life with Zen 1 CPU's with a couple Zen+ in the mix. Now, they are all Zen 2 of some sort, and I've been keeping an eye out for Zen 3 deals. Most have had two CPU upgrades, one has had 3.

The eighth computer started life with a 5800X and a new motherboard, and it's probably not going to see a CPU upgrade. (Depending on what happens with Zen 5/6, it might see a CPU/mobo/RAM change, but I'm in no rush.)
 
It's either 0% or 100%. A motherboard is the last thing I'll upgrade, but... I've downgraded motherboards, swapping out the better board for a newer and better CPU, and buying a budget board for the older and slower CPU.
 
4 times - all in the early AMD Tbird/barton/etc and then AMD64 socket 939 days. Once for a friend, with x370 1700X -> 3600X.

Since then I've bought with that theory - and never bothered. By the time the CPU would make enough of a difference, the whole platform has upgrade advantages. Also the times I've thought about doing it as a planned upgrade strategy I never bothered, except (again) that one for a friend where I took my old workstation and swapped parts around to make it more useful for them. But that was NOT for me.
 
I used to always prepare for future CPU-only upgrades, but since I never actually did it (except for one dual Xeon server I think I might have?) I wisely built the ultimate AM4 with 16 cores and 128 GB ECC RAM and declared that one done.
 
Never. by the time I am thinking about a new cpu all the new features of a new motherboard make me want to upgrade both.
When it come to PC's it's all about me wanting it then me needing it.
 
This is why I invested heavily in AMD boards last year - ditching Intel. It's one of the easiest upgrades and resale is pretty good for the "old" CPU. I upgraded two rigs to 9800X3D during launch week.
 
All of them, eventually.
Back in the Socket 7 era, I upgraded from a Pentium 133 to a 166MMX then to a Pentium 200MMX.
On socket 775 I upgraded from a Q6600 B3 to a Q6600 Q0 then finally to a Q9650
With my 2500k system, I did keep that CPU for a very long time, only eventually upgrading to a 2700k (since the extra threads from hyper-threading had finally become relevant) after the computer itself had been relegated to backup roles.
With my 5820k system, I also kept that CPU for a very long time, but eventually upgraded it to an 8-core Xeon E5-1660 V3 (i7-5960X Extreme Edition equivalent). This also happened after the computer was no longer my main computer.
Going from a 3900X to a 5900X to a 5800X3D on AM4 was fun.
 
yup, all eventually. including my first compaq system, i replaced a k62 400 with a 475. only my family machines (when i was a kid) never gotten upgraded.
 
I tend to keep 2 rigs around so I have a guinea pig/lab machine/backup and don't upgrade super often, so by the time I want a new proc my second rig needs a new board and, well, guess how that goes. Main rig gets a new proc, board and ram and the old set gets moved to the second rig. Or I just do a full build.

So far I've upgraded CPUs 3 times and tried and sort of failed a fourth. The first one was an Intel 486DX-33 to AMD 486DX2-66 upgrade in 1994. Next up was the failure. I bought this upgrade for a Pentium 200MMX, some kind of AMD chip clocked around 400-500MHz, but it wouldn't recognize all of my ram so I returned it. After that I upgraded my last dual socket machine from a pair of Opteron 246s to 285s I got used off of eBay when I was in grad school and had little money. Then the last one was a cheap used Xeon from eBay for my old X79 board. That rig was a little special since it had 64GB of ram. I got into a programming project back in 2014 and needed more ram, so I upgraded. 64GB machine makes a nice lab box/guinea pig for screwing around with programming stuff.
 
I've done it a few times over the past couple of decades. I did a Ryzen 5500 to a 5600G last year and then to 5800X about 6 months ago on my backup PC.
IMG_3440.JPEG

My current main PC had a 5600X and then a 5900X a month later when I finally got one from a member here during the chip shortage of late 2020/early 2021.
 
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The most notable thing I can remember is I believe I bought a Z77 board that supported an older CPU that I had, then I bought a Biostar Z77 board when the prior board died, and then bought a used i5-2500k. The 2500k started to slow up like crazy half way through Windows 10s lifecycle so I bought an i7-3770k on the FSFT forum for $50. That got me another 2-3 years out of that board. Nearly 12 years of life out of that board. Sold the combo on ebay after that.

Finally bought a 5800X with an Asus board from someone on Reddit Hardware Swap. That was a vibe. Plan on keeping for a long time. Clearly, I don't do regular upgrades anymore LOL
 
My current x99 has had two CPUs in 8 years. 5820K to 5960X.

Back in in the SKT939 days I was swapping in a new CPU every 3-6 months stuff was happening so fast, single core Athlons to dual core Athlons to dual core Opterons. The great bonus was my Compaq laptop at the time also ran with desktop Athlon chips so that got upgraded a lot.

I think the Phenom II 720 rig I built in 2009 only ever had the tri-core unlocked to quad core.
 
Four of my thirteen Motherboards saw more than one CPU, that's 30% Not much, but still more than what I'd have guessed if I didn't actually check.
I was always mindful of upgrade paths, but what does it in usually is the availability. CPUs I wanted to upgrade to get discontinued, which drives up used prices, which makes switching to a newer platform better value for the price.

My current MB is actually running its second CPU. Upgraded from 3700X to 5800X3D. I did not plan for it to last this long when I bought it in 2019, but I certainly don't mind. Also back in the day, we ran PPGA and FCPGA adaptors in Slot1 MBs extending their longevity.
 
daglesj said:
I think the Phenom II 720 rig I built in 2009 only ever had the tri-core unlocked to quad core.
Click to expand...
Yeah, mine was unlocked, too. It was fun "gaining" an extra core. I think the only problem was I had a higher overclock with 3 cores vs with the 4th core.
 
Socket A - never upgraded
Socket 939 - Athlon 64 3000+ to Athlon 64 X2 3800+
LGA 775 - Core 2 Duo E6300 to Core 2 Quad Q6600
AM2+ - never upgraded
AM3+ - never upgraded
LGA 1155 - never upgraded
LGA 1150 - never upgraded
AM4 - upgraded the B350 from a 1700X to a 3700X, then upgraded the B550 from the 3700X to a 5800X then a 5950X
AM5 - 7700X to 9800X3D
 
I've done it 5 times in my over 20 years of building my own custom PCs. The trick is to get the top tier CPU when it's price drops massively. I remember when the 6900K had a retail of 1199 or so but I waited and got it for 1/4 that price and this was going from the 5930K which was 6 core to a 8 core 6900K with a more cache it was an awesome upgrade. Or when the first athlon dual cores released after having the single core AMD that upgrade was arguably even bigger going from single core to dual core. I also picked up a if I recall correctly Pentium for extreme I don't even remember what the socket was but that was a beast also my latest upgrade was from a 12-700k to a 13900ks and that was also a huge upgrade so yes I'm all for drop in CPU upgrades who knows I might go back to AMD one day unlikely but never say never.
 
I upgraded the CPU in my old FTP server but never in my personal machine.
 
At least 75% of the time for me actually that I keep the same board and upgrade the CPU. Not so much in the last 10 years, but in the AMD Phenom II and the Nehalem days I definitely did a lot. Upgraded a dual core 550 to a 955 quad, and then went with a 1060t hex core. 2 swaps, same board back then. Later on I went through like every Nehalem CPU there was LOL. Started out with the I3, the dual core 4 thread, then I stepped up to an I5 750 which was a great CPU. Then later I stepped up to an I7 870, all same board. I also did socket 1366 setup too, an I7 950 and then later upgrade to a 980x. Then I went to the Sandy Bridge I5 2500k with a new board, later on I went with an I7 3770k same board. Then I upgrade to a 4790k with a new board but that wasn't much of a jump there, was a little disappointed but I wanted all the newest stuff at the time. Because of that disappointed I skipped the 6 and 7k series, and didn't upgrade again until Coffee lake. I went with an I5 8600k hex core and that was a fantastic CPU and then later upgraded to an I9 9900k same board. I actually used that setup until a more recent upgrade to an AMD setup with a 7900x. It was a microcenter deal, but I've never really liked the 7900x because it ran so hot so I just this week changed the CPU to a 9800x3d. Not sure if you can call it much of an ''upgrade'', but I personally think it is because I use my PC mostly for gaming anyway.
 
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stevenlee said:
So I'm trying to play NFS Heat, the game runs fine on about 60 fps for 10 minutes or so but then the fps suddenly drops to like 5-10 for a few seconds and then runs again normally. This happens every 5-10 minute while I'm trying to play. One thing I have noticed in task manager is that the game uses around 70% of CPU and then the game's fps drops and the CPU usage drops to 10% then it rises again to 70-80% then again suddenly drops to 10% and the game's fps also drops. I don't what's the reason for this.

My Specs :-

16 GB DDR4 ram 3200 Mhz

AMD Ryzen 5 5500u

Nvidia GTX 1650 GDDR 5 4 GB
Click to expand...
have the same thing on my system, never could figure it out, ended up being a waste of money.... but thats a topic for another thread.
 
stevenlee said:
So I'm trying to play NFS Heat, the game runs fine on about 60 fps for 10 minutes or so but then the fps suddenly drops to like 5-10 for a few seconds and then runs again normally. This happens every 5-10 minute while I'm trying to play. One thing I have noticed in task manager is that the game uses around 70% of CPU and then the game's fps drops and the CPU usage drops to 10% then it rises again to 70-80% then again suddenly drops to 10% and the game's fps also drops. I don't what's the reason for this.

My Specs :-

16 GB DDR4 ram 3200 Mhz

AMD Ryzen 5 5500u

Nvidia GTX 1650 GDDR 5 4 GB
Click to expand...
If your frame buffer choking? 4gb seems very low, or something running in the back stealing resources from teh cpu?
 
I did CPU upgrades on the same motherboard a few times in the past eight years. My first mini-ITX motherboard, an Intel H170 LGA 1151 v1 motherboard, went from an i5-6500 to an i7-7700 (non-K).

Then, my AM4 Ryzen ATX motherboard went from a Ryzen 7 3800X to a Ryzen 9 5900X (the latter I had since sold off due to its voracious package power draw at idle), and then when I donated that motherboard to my brother’s build (replacing a Dell prebuilt with a 4th-Gen Intel i7-4770 in the process), I put on a Ryzen 5 5600X ehich will very soon be upgraded to a Ryzen 9 5950X before this year comes to an end.

Next, my second mini-ITX board ran a 5900X, then the 5600X before I settled on a Ryzen 7 3700X which is still on that board (which I have pulled two days ago in favor of upgrading to an AM5 platform with a B650 motherboard and a Ryzen 5 7600X).

Finally, my main system, after a year and a half of running an Intel i7-12700K on my current Z690 motherboard, finally got upgraded a couple of weeks ago to a discounted i9-14900K.
 
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I just remembered that I've done one other CPU upgrade besides the ones posted earlier, and that was on a 2009 Mac Pro. I upgraded the CPU from a 2.4 (?) GHz Nehalem to a 3.3 Ghz Westmere, for a decent performance improvement.
 
I like to have the option, especially if I'm at the newer end of a platform. Like first or second gen am4. I've upgraded a few pc's (not all my own) with am4. Normally though, I hold onto parts well past their obsolescence so upgrading just a cpu becomes moot.
 
Primary system:
AM3- went from a Phenom II 955 to 1055 to 1090T.
LGA1366- i7 920 D0 the entire time.
LGA2011- i7 3820 to 4930k to E5-1680V2
AM5- 7800X3D to ???? We shall see.

Travel system-
AM4- 1700x to ????. Aiming for 5800X3D, might settle for 5700X3D.
 
Tsumi said:
Primary system:
AM3- went from a Phenom II 955 to 1055 to 1090T.
LGA1366- i7 920 D0 the entire time.
LGA2011- i7 3820 to 4930k to E5-1680V2
AM5- 7800X3D to ???? We shall see.
Click to expand...

I didn't have much money back then, so I had a Phenom II 550 dual core but got lucky and it unlocked to a quad. Later on I picked up a 960t quad which unlocked to a hex core, basically a 1090t. I loved the good old Phenom II days, but I upgraded to an I5 750 from that and it literally blew that phenom II hex core out of the water. Of course, back then nothing was really using more than 4 cores anyway.
 
I vaguely remember maybe upgrading my Athlon XP 2000+ to a 3200+ Barton. Maybe E8400 to Q9550 too.
 
My S939 system actually saw 3 different CPUs. Ahhh... the DFI Lan Party NF4 days.. My first ever PC I built was an Athlon 64 2800+ rocking the S754 socket, upgraded to S939 after that. Intel, due to their tik and tock bullshit line of sockets were one each on LGA1366 and LGA 2011. My AM4 is currently on CPU #3. Started with a 3700X, then a 5800X, and currently a 5800X3D.

My AM5 is currently in shipment, and an ASUS TUF X870 and a 9800X3D will soon reside in my ancient dust magnet HAF932.
 
0% for me.

Though I did have the idea of upgrading when I built my AM4 rig with a 2600X back in 2018. Fast forward to 2020 I took a two year long hiatus from all gaming and by the time I returned to gaming I wasn't interested in upgrading hardware as much. I think some of that is due to the lack of new games that interest me. Looking at you BATTLEFIELD 💩

This year I do plan going well above my budget builds of the past with a new complete build though I'm taking my time to research into all the new PC tech over the last several years. And there has been a lot of new tech!! 🤯
 
I did it once when I was building a rig for a friend. He didn't need the latest and greatest, so I bought myself a new CPU and gave him my current one. I can't recall the model, but it was an Intel CPU and the newer one was the end of the line for that socket.
Beyond that, I've never needed to. I've always gamed on the upper-end of the resolution spectrum so I rarely see major impacts from a new CPU. I typically buy a CPU/RAM/Mobo together and keep 'em 'til they're holding me back. At that point I'll sell 'em on Craigslist and buy a new set.
 
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