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bboynatural

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Lynnfield owners beware


The guys over at Anandtech have run into trouble after trying some extreme overclocking of the Core i7 870, but it turned out that the culprit was the actual socket, which is manufactured by Foxconn. And by trouble, we mean frying a few motherboards as well as CPUs.

After closer analysis, it turned out that the actual socket suffers from little or no pin-to-pad contact. This significantly reduces the power delivery, the end result being fried CPUs and motherboards.

Unfortunately, Foxconn makes LGA1156 sockets for many manufacturers, including Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and DFI, but there are alternatives in LOTES or Tyco AMP-made sockets, which have so far worked perfectly fine and exhibited no such behaviour. An example of this would be EVGA's top-tier P55 motherboards, as they're exclusively using LOTES.

On the other hand, buying EVGA's P55 FTW model E657 gives you a 50%-50% chance to end up with Foxconn's socket instead of Tyco AMP's one and some already shipped batches of MSI's and DFI's motherboards allegedly come with LOTES sockets, although we can't confirm that with certainty. Furthermore, DFI claims to have dropped the usage of Foxconn's sockets alltogether.

Apparently, the LOTES and Tyco AMP sockets have been and are in short supply which left some market space for Foxconn. It now seems that such a move has backfired on both Foxconn and the rest of the affiliated companies, and it clearly points to a sluggish execution of a seemingly mundane mechanism. On the other hand, the problem will not affect regular users nor those who overclock their CPU in a "non-extreme" way, meaning LN2 is out the window. So, if you've got a Lynnfield CPU and a P55 motherboard, and plan to do some extreme overclocking, you better check your socket manufacturer before you attempt to push your CPU to the limit.


The actual above quote here: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16000/35/


Anandtech Article;

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3661

Edited by 4ryan6 adding the Anandtech Article
 
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The best way to inform is just to state the facts as they've been reported and keep personal comments out of it, any serious overclocker needs to know this product failure information, so they can take this into consideration if they're planning a new build on the affected platform.

Personal opinions tend to step on toes and rile up this type of flame thread, resulting in this action, so glean what you will from this information. Ryan

bboynatural

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LGA1156 is just a tweacked faster quadcore platform...
Intel in performance/price?
This idea was already too freaking weird to begin with.... It seems it really was too good to be true after all..

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5770-in-3way-crossfirex-review-test/

With i7-870 already bottlenecking something like 3way crossfire for the WEAKEST new GPU cards on a EVGA classified mobo, I dont think staying Quad will be a very good idea when GPU are improving twice as fast as the CPU horsepower needed.
 

era86

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You must really hate the 1156 socket... :)

Thank you, though, for bringing this to our attention. How can we check the manufacturer of the socket? I have an Asus board. Will it say somewhere on the board? Manual? I'd like to know for sure before I do any major overclocking!

I don't think the 1156 will die anytime soon. It caters to mainstream market well and let's face it, the mainstream market makes the money, not power PC users. I admit, I don't consider myself a "mainstream" user, but I went with 1156 for its price/performance ratio. Until there is absolute proof it is a dead socket, it's currently a very competitive one.

Forgive my bias remarks, but as you can see by my sig I am an 1156 owner and will defend it when someone tries to *** on it :).
 

bboynatural

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Well of course I never said LGA1156 is not a mainstream socket or a bad socket.

I think tho that the i5 is very deceiving, the i7 860 being the best mainstream CPU..
But I am rather a long living build type.
Socket 775 was the Sh!t man. Lasted for about 5 years.
So for me the LGA1156 is not very interesting because in about a year, the GPU might become a problem (I didn't mention 6cores because you won't see any "application" or "general use" advantage, we will have to wait abit for some software updating.) .
As you saw a 3way with the weakest gpu of the new era is already facing bottleneck on a i7 870....
So a more powerfull Horsepower will surely be required in about a year.

But yes, the LGA1156 IS a good build if you look performance/price wise.
I am just criticizing the life of this socket because I like being future proofed for a good amount of years.
Also, for the same price you got LGA1156 build, you couldv got a AM3 build (for a very small non noticeable in performance. VERY small) but I guess we didn't know about GPU bottlenecking and OC issues back when you got it.
 

joefriday

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Hardly.....Unless of course you used the same P4 all those years, it doesn't matter how long LGA 775 went, as revision after revision were required to utilize the latest in CPU technology. First it was the 945/965/975 chipset requirements for Pentium D, then it was VRM revision 11 for Core 2 CPUs, then it was FSB 1333 for Wolfdale support (with the consequent loss of a lot of P4/Celeron D/Pentium D support). Sorry, but upgrading the motherboard for a cpu essentially breaks the longevity argument for LGA 775. And, if you indeed did keep a P4/early 915/925 chipset combo together for the last 5 years, then the importance of socket longevity is moot altogether.


Heh....LGA 775 lasting 5 years.... that's like boasting about socket 370.
 

bboynatural

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the C2D and C2Q did last for 3 years, and thats good enough, especially when to use one or both, you didnt need to upgrade anything.

I got a C2Q when the mobo's chipset were stabilized, so I didnt know about all those chipset issues, but even 3 years is a damn good bargain.
Thats why AMD got raped back then.

But now, people are sticking to the past and dont want to give AMD another chance, but if they care doing a little research like I did (and got flammed for pretty badly by some haters that had no skillz in arguing with a stable thesis) they would realize that the only reason they are rejecting AMD until now, is because they read everywhere on the forums that i7 is a must.

MANY people are ignoring AMD because of the damn forums nowadays.
 

bboynatural

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You didnt quite get the point did you...
foxconn are a SOCKET manufacturer before being a mobo's.


"Unfortunately, Foxconn makes LGA1156 sockets for many manufacturers, including Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and DFI, but there are alternatives in LOTES or Tyco AMP-made sockets, which have so far worked perfectly fine and exhibited no such behaviour. An example of this would be EVGA's top-tier P55 motherboards, as they're exclusively using LOTES."

Both Gigabyte and MSI have their socket made by foxconn =/
 

linaaslt

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M8 have you read his thread where he is saying:
"Unfortunately, Foxconn makes LGA1156 sockets for many manufacturers, including Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and DFI, but there are alternatives in LOTES or Tyco AMP-made sockets, which have so far worked perfectly fine and exhibited no such behaviour. An example of this would be EVGA's top-tier P55 motherboards, as they're exclusively using LOTES."
 

jj463rd

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Here is more about the P55 (Foxconn) socket problem.You can read the entire threads.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=234723&page=9
Forum user dctokyo says "pushing excessive voltages and clocks into the processor just shows the problem sooner, but the problem is there as it seems that the CPU does not touch all of the pins.......... over time this will become a problem even with normal voltage IMHO."
 

Dkz

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what can i say, the 1156 it's a socket that was designed for a specific public, for example for those who are used to run SLI or Crossfire it's a bad choice but for those who buy 1 VGA and want to get the most out of it,s it's a great freaking deal.

It's a high end CPU compared to a normal core2duo or a core2quad, it hast most of the best side of a high end CPU but the things that makes it good for SLI and CrossFire.

It has a great OC capability as well.

I'm not sure if it's going to be a last long socket, but it's a good deal, it would be a better deal for me if I had the US prices, a core i5 costs me around 280 American dollars, the motherboards around U$S200 so it's not a easy choice.

the i7 9xx's family price is outrageous for those who usually buy within the price range of core2duo; not so much for core i5 so make your own conclusion, with the price range/overall performance of the 1156 socket and tell me that's not a good choice.

about the problem with the motherboards.. well it's to be expected to find "bugs" in the production of the first series of compatible hardware, nothing that can't be fixed, well expect for those ruined motherboards and CPUs.

Cheers!
 

era86

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I just don't see why 1156 is really doomed at all. I see my current build lasting me 3-4 years from now. So I don't get what you're basing your reasoning on really...

Is it from your own opinion? Are you doing this based on speculation? Fud articles? I can run pretty much any application right now and I'm pretty sure quad core CPUs will run any application in the future (mainly 3-4 years from now). Hell, a dual core can handle most applications nicely right now.

I really don't think the 1156 is doomed especially since there are new chips coming out for it. Sure, they may not be 6core or 8core CPUs, but why would mainstream users need it? Why would gamers do 3-way CF to handle later games when there will, by then, probably be single card solutions that work just as well?

Is it because AM3 has the 6-core options? Future proofing is such an idiotic concept to me because by the time new chips are released for the same board you were using 2 years ago, newer features such as USB 3.0 will be available as well, which means new board, right?

I'd like to know your thoughts on this because future-proofing seems to be your base, but there are more things that affect a system's "future" than CPU and socket.
 

jj463rd

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Actually for running crossfire LGA 1156 is a good choice not much of a loss really (only around 2 to 3 percent on average) as compared to 16 X 16 on the X58 Platform.I don't know about SLI but it shouldn't be too bad.I would just wait a few months until the bugs are worked out.
 

bboynatural

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Very good reply but we don't see the "life" of a socket the same way.
Of course you will be able to use it in 3-4 years.
But the by "life" I talk about upgrades.
In 3 years, 8 cores would have already been releaased on both camps by a year already, so the "mainstream" will probably moved by quite enough into 6 cores because of 2year old prices (so probably very affordable by now) and intel would not need a Quad core socket anymore. By not need, I mean that they will stop making chips for this particular socket, so you will not have any more "upgrade", and will have to buy a whole new system.

Even if you do have upgrade, I think those will probably be around the cost of a AM3 6 cores. With the i5-670 realeased at 280$ US, Intel is going the other way they should be, making huge prices for a mainstream socket. AMD will probably try to snatch LGA1156 users that realized this, thus making good good prices on 6 cores.

The AM3 and LGA1366 life looks very long, because CPU have long past the requirement to run any software and no new socket architecture will be needed for quite a few years. So those LGA1156 users who have enough money left will probably move toward the very affordable AMD setup that still have a good 3 years to live (2010:6cores 2011:8cores 2012:12cores), ESPECIALLY during this hard time of economic crysis.

Now I would really need you to give me examples of what should need to be upgraded because I really don't know...
For USB tho, those can be added through PCI slots, just like I did with my old usb 1.0 mobo when they released USB 2.0
But do you have anyother example?

I am not bashing at LGA1156, and I respect your build If it does what you need.
I am just braggin the merits of my own build if you see what I mean XD
 

LePhuronn

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Hopefully somebody will give Foxconn a slap and get their manufacturing sorted out to rectify this problem - socket 1156 is a good idea in principle giving Nehalem and strong single graphics card goodness to the masses without the price investment of the full socket 1366 platform.

I'd hate to see it die just because a supplier couldn't get their plastic bits made properly.
 
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