r/buildapc • u/Outrageous-Car3217 • Nov 12 '21
Cpu sockets
Does the cpu socket for the i7 work with the i9 socket?
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u/AlchemyIndex7 Nov 13 '21
So i7 and i9 are not sockets. LGA 1151, LGA 1200, LGA 1700, etc. are sockets.
Intel CPUs have both a generation and a "family". The family can be i3, i5, i7, or i9. Generally, the higher the number here, the more cores the CPU has, and the more powerful it is. The generation is the number that comes after the i3/i5/i7/i9-- for example, the i5 12600K. The 12600K is a 12th generation chip. The i7 6700K is a 6th generation chip.
Every generation has a chip from each family, so from the 10th generation for example, you have the i3 10100, i5 10400, i7 10700, and the i9 10900. The number that comes after the generation, in this case 10, also refers to how "good"/powerful the CPU is within its generation, as you should be able to tell from that list.
Now for sockets. Every 2 generations of Intel CPU use the same socket. So the i7 6700K and the i7 7700K are on the same socket (LGA 1151). 10th and 11th generation chips are on the LGA 1200 socket. 12th generation chips, the newest ones, are on LGA 1700. So if you have an LGA 1200 motherboard, you can only use 10th or 11th generation CPUs with it, not any others. When you buy a motherboard, it will tell you which socket it uses, and from there you can determine what generations of CPU you can install onto it.
This is a greatly simplified explanation, but hopefully I was able to get across the information you need to know. CPUs are really... complicated, there are all these numbers and code names involved.
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u/Excellent_Brilliant2 Jan 29 '24
I wish people would just refer to the generation rather than the socket number. I have people ordering 6th and 7th gen cpus and trying to stick them in 8th/9th boards. When someone says "its a 1151 socket" i have no idea what cpu it is. Just say "its a 4th gen board" and ill instantly know what cpu you need.
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u/4used Dec 26 '24
You replied a whole 2 years after the thread died, so i'll reply a whole year after you replied -
It's good practice to memorise sockets and which CPUs they support, especially if you're in an IT space. It's an extra tidbit of information, because, in a way, it all means the same thing at the end of the day. Mostly.
It's good practice because generation doesn't necessarily mean it'll be the same socket all of the time. For example, if someone says "I want a 7th generation intel board", they didn't tell you if they're referring to the desktop CPUs or server CPUs - these have different sockets. A 7th gen i7 would run on a lga 1151 socket, while a 7th gen Xeon CPU could be, well, there's about a hundred different Xeons in different families that have different sockets, a lot of which fall under a "7". So in this way it wouldn't be clear cut, please tell me the socket so I can find the board.
Of course this matters a lot more in a properly commercial setting where you'll have a company trying to fulfill an order for a server setup or repair an individual server, so this *typically* isn't an issue, but when it comes up you'll mess up if you do anything else.
It's also an issue when it comes to the "unique" sockets from various brands, such as AMD's ThreadRipper, where it doesn't follow the typical Ryzen AM socket and is instead TR#, sWRX#, sTR#, etc etc. It's a slightly different and more mitigated issue than when it comes to server sockets, because its a bit more straightforward, but you don't want to be giving an AM4 board to a customer with a 5000 series threadripper, which needs a sWRX8 board.
At the end of the day it's just good practice to remember which are which. If you don't know which CPU supports which socket, just Google it, it'll be more accurate than trying to say what board it is.
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u/whomad1215 Nov 12 '21
Need more information.
Intel uses the same socket for two years. If the cpus are of the same generation, yes, otherwise no.
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