A user is building a new gaming PC and has decided on the motherboard and processor. But he doesn’t notice that the two products don’t fit together.
Anyone who has ever assembled a gaming PC knows that there can be many pitfalls. A gamer has now made a particularly annoying mistake.
This is reported by a support employee who the player contacted. And the error could have been prevented with little effort.
AMD processor does not fit on new motherboard
The user contacted tech support. The employee there posted a screenshot and the course of the conversation on reddit. Here you can quickly see that the processor and motherboard don’t fit together and the user wanted to force a Ryzen 9 5900X into an AM5 motherboard. You can get the Ryzen 9 5900X in stores for around 320 euros.
What is the problem? Processors are placed in a socket on the motherboard so that the CPU can function. Certain processors only fit into certain sockets. A processor like the Ryzen 9 5900X has to go into the appropriate AM4 motherboard. Otherwise the CPU won’t fit and, in the worst case, the CPU pins on the bottom will be bent.
In the picture you can see that the user has pressed a processor for the AM4 socket into an AM5 mainboard. And that doesn’t work technically.
Many users from the community are quite shocked because the error could have been avoided without any problem. Many people don’t even want to know what the processor looks like on the underside. Someone says, “One video… One goddamn video could have prevented this. Why don’t people research how it works?”
A look at the manual would also have been enough. Then he would have noticed that the hardware he had purchased did not fit together.
AMD and Intel regularly develop new sockets for their processors
Why are there different bases? Each base comes with a certain feature set. But the features also change with technical progress. Certain functions cannot be easily retrofitted. An example of this is the support of RAM.
On top of that, the AM5 socket offers PCIe 5.0 and offers faster data transfer rates and higher bandwidth compared to AM4.
Additionally, sockets AM4 and AM5 have different hole patterns, meaning CPU coolers designed for one socket may not be compatible with the other. However, many manufacturers offer adapters or mounting kits for the coolers. In this way, older coolers can also be used with the new mainboard.
No backwards compatibility: The problem, however, is that the sockets are not backwards compatible. AMD CPUs are an example: You cannot place an older CPU for an Am3+ socket or an AM4 CPU in an AM5 board because the socket is constructed completely differently. If you try it anyway, you will only damage your expensive hardware.
16-year-old demands a gaming PC for 3,000 euros from his unsuspecting father and wants to use it to play Fortnite