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It’s an exciting time in the CPU world right now. We’re all waiting for the new AMD Ryzen processors to launch and early benchmarks look encouraging. So right now you may be thinking that you want to upgrade your CPU.
Should you, though? For many of us who have been in the PC hardware game for decades, it’s become almost a habit. Every 18 months or so your CPU would be noticeably slower than the latest model in the same price range and new applications would start chugging.
That hasn’t been true for a while and for most casual users don’t need to upgrade their CPU very often at all. At least not for performance reasons. Word processing, YouTube, and web browsing no longer pose a challenge for any sort of CPU on the market.
The Need for Speed
There are a lot of users who do need high-performance CPUs. These include various professionals such as artists, video editors, 3D modelers, scientists, engineers and of course gamers.
These groups of people are always looking for a performance edge and if you fall into one of these groups you may be wondering if it’s the right time to upgrade. In this article, I’m going to go over some of the key questions you should ask yourself before considering a CPU upgrade.
Socket To Me
The first thing you have to know is if you can upgrade your CPU by simply buying a CPU itself. Often new CPUs, especially from Intel, require a new motherboard with a new CPU socket. If that’s the case you may also need to start upgrading other components. Most likely the RAM, which often moves on with the CPU generation.
If that’s the case you may want to weigh up the cost of the upgrade versus simply buying an entirely new computer. Buying a new computer will leave you with a working computer to sell or use for something else.
After an upgrade, you’re left with a motherboard and CPU which, if they were old enough to need an upgrade, not many people may want. The bottom line is that if you need more than just a CPU to upgrade your CPU, maybe you should consider the pros and cons first.
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