If you decide to build a computer, and not buy ready-made equipment, then first you should think about which processor you want to install in the system unit. The characteristics of the processor play a big role in choosing a motherboard. And she, in turn, affects everything else. In other words, if you buy a weak processor of the old generation, then you will not be able to buy a new motherboard. Of course, you can buy something, but here you can’t install both the selected processor and this board at the same time.
The main characteristics of the processor are as follows:
• A socket, otherwise called a socket. This is the main point that you need to pay attention to when choosing a motherboard for a processor or vice versa. There is one socket on the board, designed for a specific type of processor. For example, motherboards with an LGA socket are only compatible with processors that have an LGA775 socket.
• Clock frequency. The larger the value of this frequency, the more operations the processor can perform in a certain period of time.
• Front Side Bus. Or, if in a simple way, the frequency of the processor system bus . This is such a special bus that serves as a communication and information transfer channel between all devices inside the system unit and the central processor itself.
• Cache. A kind of RAM, but only in the processor itself, which serves as an intermediary between the RAM memory and the processor itself.
Consider the characteristics of the processor individually and in more detail. Let's start with the connector. When choosing a processor and a board, you need to make sure that the connectors on the processor and on the motherboard are the same. Otherwise, you will have to change one of them. Of course, the newer and more powerful the processor, the newer and more productive the board should be, respectively, it will already be designed for a new and powerful processor.
For example, old Intel Celeron processors go on LGA775 sockets. On the same socket, you can also place the processors "Intel Core 2 Duo" and "Intel Core 2 Quad." In this regard, this socket is convenient, since on the same board you can install various types of processors that differ in price and performance.
It should be noted that when buying an Intel Core i3 processor, you need to pay attention to the generation of your chosen processor. Since there is the first and second generation, which are both considered Core i3, and at the same time differ in sockets. Do not confuse.
Clock frequency is also an important point, but not the most important one. So you should not look at the frequency value, but you should pay attention to the cache and bus frequency. The clock speed can be increased if desired. How to change the frequency of the processor? This is not quite simple, and not everyone can decide, because you can manage to spoil the processor. The process of increasing the frequency is called acceleration. You can disperse through the "BIOS".
The cache is considered more important. If the processor is not entirely new, then it has two levels of cache. And if it’s new, that is, of the latest generations, then such models have a third-level cache.
Due to the fact that the cache contains information that is needed at the moment, the more cache in the processor, the fewer accesses to RAM, because the most necessary inside already exists. But if the model is old, then there is little data, and as a result, the processor constantly accesses RAM. And it slows down and reduces performance.
L1 cache is on all processors. The memory in it is very, very small, but the fastest. It is needed for the internal needs of the CPU core. For example, the amount of memory is usually less than 100 Kb. But the L2 cache is already designed for the main work, respectively, it has a fairly large amount of memory. In new, good models, it reaches 2-4 megabytes. If the model is the latest generation, then you will have an L3 cache. Here the volume is even greater, but the speed is less.
I would like to once again note that the characteristics of the processor play a huge role in the resulting performance of the entire computer.