Smellfinger wrote on Dec 6, 2012, 12:37:
Longswd wrote on Dec 6, 2012, 12:13:
The ability to replace only the CPU or MB on failure of one or the other is a cost savings consideration as well.
Whenever I have a CPU or motherboard fail on me (twice in 20 years), I upgrade both parts. Legacy hardware tends to hold its value so it's rarely worth buying something that isn't in production anymore.
Some people upgrade those parts alone though. I upgraded because I wanted more SATA ports for a file server and didn't want a proprietary raid card or etc. Addin cards are not always desirable, sometimes you want to swap the whole board but retain the CPU and vice versa. Some sockets last multiple CPU generations as well.