Why are CPU pins so fragile and why haven’t they been designed to make the pins hard to deform?
In: Technology
Adding more pins to a cpu will only ever make them thinner to accomodate so many, so they will always be fragile, but newer CPU’s have moved away from the pin design and put them on the motherboard so that the processor itself is less likely to break or deform.
Why are they fragile? Because they are small. They are small because more pins in less space mean more connections, and more connections mean faster CPU throughput.
And they *have* been redesigned in more recent years. Instead of a bunch of pins on a moving, replaceable part, the more modern design essentially has the pins on the motherboard. But because backwards compatibility is important with consumer electronics, only the newest machines will have this (more expensive) feature.
CPUs have a lot more than just the calculation stuff inside them. They also connect to most (if not all) the PCI-E slots, and typically at least 2 RAM sticks. The number of pins involved is huge, and it needs to be that way.
So, yeah, each one is kinda small and fragile.
The manufacturers know this. CPUs ship in a protective case, and if the motherboard has pins there is a cover on the board itself protecting its pins. Either one should only be exposed for the brief moment you open it up for installation, and it is assumed people know what they are doing. In fact motherboards won’t be accepted for repair/RMA unless it it shipped back with that cover in place, just in case.
Because you need to make them small as bigger CPUs are worse as distance is an important factor in a CPUs speed and you want a lot of them because it means higher throughput. Its also just not a big deal most CPUs are inserted once and then never put into another mainboard, so it is just not to much of a priority.
They are designed to make the pins hard to deform while still carrying the signal. You already have what you asked for. Why are they fragile? They are small. Why are they small? Because there are a lot of signals to transfer in a limited space. Why is space limited? Because signals take time to travel distances and signals are lossy when they travel distances in small wires.
Hard things are also brittle. Brittle things crack. It’s best that they bend.
Also they sell far more CPU’s when people ruin the pins on them.
Also they call it a ‘zero insertion force socket’ for a reason. If you can’t drop the CPU in you are doing it wrong.
How often do you handle your CPU? They don’t need to be that strong, why compromise on conductivity or something else when it’s only ever touched once for installation. They already are designed for that but there’s a limit before it starts to affect other more important things which are more important than the robustness of something very rarely handled. You get better performance at the cost of having to be careful during one simple action.
besides being fragile because small thin metal sticks are easy to bend, which I believe has been answered sufficiently already. They haven’t been made more durable because it’s just a non issue, the connection between motherboard and CPU is not designed for frequent cycles by untrained people. And in fact most people aren’t replacing CPUs very often, with care and attention it’s easy to not damage the pins. A factory worker, repair technician, or hobbyist will take their time to install it correctly and safely. Whereas something like USB is a connection that is designed for frequent and abusive cycling by a broader audience, so durability is a major factor in consideration for it’s design.
Some have pads instead of pins.
BUt the idea is you need tons of those pins in a small space. Nobody wants a CPU the size of a piece of paper just for the sake of stronger pins.
Also, from a design standpoint, most CPUs only ever “move” one time. The pins or pads are only ever at risk when they are installed, and in most use cases that is just one time in the life of the product. No need to make it super durable if it is only ever at risk for one moment.
The number of times you need to be careful with the pins numbers usually less than 10. Oftentimes most CPUs will be inserted into a motherboard once. Ever.
While it shouldn’t be overly fragile the priority of “make a rugged CPU pin” pales in comparison to all the other design constraints a CPU has to perform for. The closer and smaller the better for maximizing performance.
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