The end of the road for the DIY PC?

Intel has announced that they will stop making replaceable CPU's after
Haswell. From now on, all CPU's are supposed to be in BGA packaging,
which means you can only attach CPU's to the motherboard by soldiering
them on. You won't be seeing these in any home DIY's toolkit, so it's
the end of the road for that upgrade mechanism.

I've been upgrading my original system since 1987, and right now there's
no original pieces remaining on it, but I can trace each of the pieces
back in a chain to the original 8088 PC-XT clone that I had bought back
then. I suppose it was meant to happen, not many people build their own
PC's anymore, and it's been cheaper to buy a full brand-new system for
many years now rather than upgrading it.

Although this is just an Intel announcement, and AMD hasn't said it
would do the same thing, but I don't see AMD not following suit with
this, it'll help their financial situation too, and probably help them
even more.

I suppose you could keep upgrading if you buy a full new motherboard
alongside your CPU, you'd probably have to buy it with new memory also.

Yousuf Khan

Intel’s Haswell Could Be Last Interchangeable Desktop Microprocessors -
Report - X-bit labs
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...rs_Report.html

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Intel has announced that they will stop making replaceable CPU's after
Haswell. From now on, all CPU's are supposed to be in BGA packaging,
which means you can only attach CPU's to the motherboard by soldiering
them on. You won't be seeing these in any home DIY's toolkit, so it's
the end of the road for that upgrade mechanism.

I've been upgrading my original system since 1987, and right now there's
no original pieces remaining on it, but I can trace each of the pieces
back in a chain to the original 8088 PC-XT clone that I had bought back
then. I suppose it was meant to happen, not many people build their own
PC's anymore, and it's been cheaper to buy a full brand-new system for
many years now rather than upgrading it.

Although this is just an Intel announcement, and AMD hasn't said it
would do the same thing, but I don't see AMD not following suit with
this, it'll help their financial situation too, and probably help them
even more.

I suppose you could keep upgrading if you buy a full new motherboard
alongside your CPU, you'd probably have to buy it with new memory also.

Yousuf Khan

Intel’s Haswell Could Be Last Interchangeable Desktop Microprocessors -
Report - X-bit labs
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...rs_Report.html


There's always a solution.

Remember that Foxconn makes their own sockets for motherboards, and
they also make motherboards. The motherboard industry could cook up
a flexible solution all on their own.

There are a ton of cheesy adapters out there. Lots of opportunities
for someone to cook up a solution. All that's needed is sufficient
lead time to do the engineering and make a reliable solution.

http://www.primedistributing.com/Pro...PA-BGA-SMT.jpg

And if Intel makes tested silicon die available as a purchase option,
someone can package them at an MCM factory. And put any kind of lead
or contact on it, that you want.

This is just an opportunity for someone - a middle man - to make some cash.

Paul

Apple was/is like that, limited options in changing out hardware. If Intel
completely removes the DIY aspect of a PC then they are handing business
over to Apple. Also, a lot of third party vendors will probably close shop.

Fixed hardware + a Bing OS (aka Windows 8) = a fast declining pc industry.

The motherboard industry could cook up a flexible solution
all on their own.

.... but MB manufacturers usually work from reference hardware put out by
Intel/AMD/etc. Would they be willing to produce items not covered in the
reference?

What does BGA really mean, one buys the MB/CPU as one item? Or does the
whole DIY concept die and the Newegg 'Computer Hardware' section disappear?

"Yousuf Khan" wrote:

Intel has announced that they will stop making replaceable CPU's after
Haswell. From now on, all CPU's are supposed to be in BGA packaging,
which means you can only attach CPU's to the motherboard by soldiering
them on. You won't be seeing these in any home DIY's toolkit, so it's
the end of the road for that upgrade mechanism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjKEmKUatJ4
and a whole bunch more at
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...=bga+soldering

What, you mean you don't have a heat gun in your electronic toolbox
along with the soldering iron, or hot air station sitting on the shelf?
The spouse will get ****ed if you don't cleanup the pancake griddle
after using it to remove and resolder the BGA parts. You must have
soldering wick, though. Just means you'll have to put those old-school
soldering techniques in your backstore memory and learn how to desolder
and solder BGA parts.

You're just spoiled by sockets that made it possible for home users with
no or destructive soldering skills to add components to a mobo. Maybe
the parts vendors are getting tired of the returns by boobs that don't
employ anti-static measures, overclock, overheat, or otherwise destroy
good parts. Soldering on the CPU, chipset, memory, and other components
would certainly up the reliability of the assembly while reducing
returns from ignorant, lazy, or sloppy users.

Intel¢s Haswell Could Be Last Interchangeable Desktop Microprocessors -
Report - X-bit labs
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...rs_Report.html

That wouldn't prevent first-time soldering of the CPU onto the BGA grid.
The mobo maker could just make a plastic frame to hold the chip in place
(both for position along with affixing to the mobo via spring clip) and
the user would use a soldering iron with a tip designed for the BGA grid
pattern. The user would buy the mobo they want, the CPU they want, and
then do a one-time solder of the CPU onto the mobo. After all, after
you buy the mobo and CPU and put them together, how often have you
actually replaced the CPU? Yeah, if the CPU goes bad then you have to
replace it but have you had to do so? When the CPU gets too old,
underpowered, or lacking in firmware features, do you really replace
just the CPU or do you replace the CPU, mobo, memory, and the whole
smash to upgrade to newer hardware?

Also, you can already buy mobo+CPU combos from online vendors. Most
times they pre-install the CPU so all you have to do is attached the
heatsink+fan (and sometimes you don't have to do that if you stay with
the stock HSF for the CPU). So instead of them sliding the CPU into the
ZIF socket for you, they'll have an inventory of pre-soldered
combinations and you pick one to buy.

In article , "geoff" wrote:
Apple was/is like that, limited options in changing out hardware. If Intel
completely removes the DIY aspect of a PC then they are handing business
over to Apple. Also, a lot of third party vendors will probably close shop.

Fixed hardware + a Bing OS (aka Windows 8) = a fast declining pc industry.


Sounds like the 1990's Atari ST, AMIGA all over again.

On Sun, 25 Nov 2012, GMAN wrote:

In article , "geoff" wrote:
Apple was/is like that, limited options in changing out hardware. If Intel
completely removes the DIY aspect of a PC then they are handing business
over to Apple. Also, a lot of third party vendors will probably close shop.

Fixed hardware + a Bing OS (aka Windows 8) = a fast declining pc industry.


Sounds like the 1990's Atari ST, AMIGA all over again.

Really, every computer. Sure you could buy an S100 bus systemin the early
days, but there was limited ability to upgrade despite all the boards
plugging into a motherboard that only had sockets.

It was easy to move to the Z80 from the 8080. But the bus was very much
related to the 8080, so "foreign" CPUs took a lot of adapting. Even the
front panel on the Altair was too specific to the 8080 to be useful with
another CPU. The standardization was often because of CP/M the operating
system, since it was written to keep the I/O in a small section, one could
fairly eaily adapt it to other hardware (as long as it used the 8080).

So the real upgrade path was the 16bit CPU, preferably the 8088 or 8086.
But then there were other issues besides differring buss signals, such as
lack of address lines for more RAM. There were various schemes to deal
with that, but it took time before standardization set in, and then it was
mostly too late.

When MITS came out with a 6800 based computer in the fall of 1975, they
put a different bus on it, and when SWTP put out their computer (which was
far more successful 6800 system than the MITS 6800 system) it used a
different bus (though that bus tended to be used by other 6800 based
computers).

The DIgital Group that was more like a hobby trying to turn into a
commercial product, it used its own bus which made it easy to have
different CPU boards, but they never went further than the Z80 and maybe
the 6502.

The Apple II wsa fairly flexible, so one could get Z80 cards for it, then
later 6809 cards, and at some point 68000 cards. But they were
workarounds and usually the 6502 did the I/O.

Let's not forget that the original IBM PC was no different from that Amiga
or Atari. ALl three had CPUs in sockets, but there was no plug in
replacement that made things faster. You could workaround that, but it
would need a whole board. And you'd be stuck with the existing clock
frequency unless you had complicated timing methods (to run the CPU faster
but the bus at its regular rate).

It was only with time that the "IBM PC" became more flexible. And that
was more a crossover between the CPUs and the motherboard manufacturers.
So you could put in a faster CPU, but that's because the motherboard
company anticipated faster speeds and put in jumpers. That meant the CPU
companies had to keep the other companies informed of where they were
going.

In the 386 era there was some level of variability, so you could get a
cheaper one that had no math coprocessor built in (and oddly then find a
math coprocessor to add later).

It was really in much more recent times that a motherboard had some hope
to be useable over time, and that was because the CPUs generally stopped
changing that much, the speed being the key factor. If the motherboard
anticipated upgrades, and the CPU kept the same package and other
features, then you could use the motehrboard for a few years. Usually a
new motherboard was needed if the databus bumped up in size, the exception
being eventually with the 32-64 upgrade.

Otherwise, it would be no different from the Amiga or Atari, except by
that point nobody was making CPUs to plug into the expansion bus (I once
found an 80286 card that did that), so you had to replace the motehrboard.
But then, the motherboard probably cost as much as one of those plug in
upgrade boards in the past, but the new motherboard didn't have to
compromise. The only good thing was the case was generally generic so the
new motherboard fit (well so long as the area for connectors at the back
matched up or could be replaced).

Michael

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 23:58:33 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
[...]
The mobo maker could just make a plastic frame to hold the chip in place
(both for position along with affixing to the mobo via spring clip) and
the user would use a soldering iron with a tip designed for the BGA grid
pattern. The user would buy the mobo they want, the CPU they want, and
then do a one-time solder of the CPU onto the mobo.
[...]

That's some funny stuff right there.

Unless you're serious, of course...

Cheers!

"daytripper" wrote:

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 23:58:33 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
[...]
The mobo maker could just make a plastic frame to hold the chip in place
(both for position along with affixing to the mobo via spring clip) and
the user would use a soldering iron with a tip designed for the BGA grid
pattern. The user would buy the mobo they want, the CPU they want, and
then do a one-time solder of the CPU onto the mobo.
[...]

That's some funny stuff right there.

Unless you're serious, of course...

Cheers!

I was serious. You do know what "ball" means in BGA, right? It's a
ball of solder. So why can't the chip, even a CPU, come prepped with
the balls of solder on its pads, the mobo come with balls of solder on
its grid and using feedthroughs so the solder is reached from the
backside of the board, and all you have to do is keep the chip pressed
against the grid, keep it aligned, heat up the solder gun with a
matching grid tip, and just melt all the solder to weld the chip to the
grid?

You've never applied new solder to the underside of a PCB so it heats
the solder on the other side through a feedthrough to use solder wick on
the other side when you cannot otherwise reach the other side with a
soldering iron? Heat travels.

Of course, we're talking about DIY'ers that know how to solder and that
it flows towards the heat source and what level of heat to apply and not
the boobs that barely know how to push down the level for a ZIF socket.
Not having sockets doesn't mean you can't DIY. It means the DIY'er will
need better skills than pushing stuff into a socket or slot.

VanguardLH wrote:
"daytripper" wrote:

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 23:58:33 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
[...]
The mobo maker could just make a plastic frame to hold the chip in place
(both for position along with affixing to the mobo via spring clip) and
the user would use a soldering iron with a tip designed for the BGA grid
pattern. The user would buy the mobo they want, the CPU they want, and
then do a one-time solder of the CPU onto the mobo.
[...]

That's some funny stuff right there.

Unless you're serious, of course...

Cheers!

I was serious. You do know what "ball" means in BGA, right? It's a
ball of solder. So why can't the chip, even a CPU, come prepped with
the balls of solder on its pads, the mobo come with balls of solder on
its grid and using feedthroughs so the solder is reached from the
backside of the board, and all you have to do is keep the chip pressed
against the grid, keep it aligned, heat up the solder gun with a
matching grid tip, and just melt all the solder to weld the chip to the
grid?

You've never applied new solder to the underside of a PCB so it heats
the solder on the other side through a feedthrough to use solder wick on
the other side when you cannot otherwise reach the other side with a
soldering iron? Heat travels.

Of course, we're talking about DIY'ers that know how to solder and that
it flows towards the heat source and what level of heat to apply and not
the boobs that barely know how to push down the level for a ZIF socket.
Not having sockets doesn't mean you can't DIY. It means the DIY'er will
need better skills than pushing stuff into a socket or slot.

You at least want to solder all the balls at the same time.

There is a magic alignment effect, where the wetted contacts
tend to "pull" the chip into alignment, such that the chip
rotates to the grid of contacts underneath. You want the
solder to fill the pads properly, which is going to
happen if all the balls melt at the same time
and the chip settles into place.

If you were a home user, and desperate for adventure,
you could try a toaster oven. That's the closest thing
to IR reflow you can arrange for real cheap. Some people
used the toaster oven method, to fix Nvidia GPU solder joints.
But I would still put this idea in the "repugnant" category.
You have absolutely no control of the temperature profile
that way, and the toaster oven is going to be heating all sorts
of stuff you don't want heated (think "burned plastic").

At the factory, they use an XRay machine to verify BGA soldering.
On a processor, 2/3rds of the balls could be VCC and GND, and
they wouldn't be candidates for boundary scan verification. An
XRay, can uncover balls damaged by the "popcorn" problem
for example. And more than one XRay is taken. By holding
the XRay machine on an angle, you can photograph the balls
from either side. No home user would be able to verify
the solder job was completed properly. You wouldn't want
to burn some power connections, because too many VCC or
GND pins were open circuit.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...joint_xray.jpg

(Voids caused by excessive moisture level on the solder balls.)

http://glenbrook.webworksnow3.com/bl...3/bga_fig4.gif

With care, I'm told you can get defectivity down to around
1 ball in 100,000. That means, if you solder down a hundred
chips each having 1000 balls underneath, one of the chips
will have a single bad solder joint. It would take a little
effort and expense though, to get that good at it. The
results of home users doing such soldering, isn't going to be
that good.

Paul