We are tired of seeing in infographics or photographs something as characteristic as the pins of a motherboard or those of the CPU, where these are often a headache for some users. But are all pins the same, how do they really work? Today we are going to do a quick review of the different pins and their tasks, where we will understand a little more how a CPU or motherboard works.
The first thing we must understand is that the number of pins of a processor or motherboard has a lot to do with its power, as well as the number of cores, size of the matrix or characteristics of the platform. It is unavoidable that for a platform to acquire new functionalities or power the socket ends up being larger and with more pins as a rule, since it is more than likely that more power or a greater number of contacts are needed for buses or GPIO.
The CPU is the component with the most connections in the entire PC
And it is not surprising, everything goes through him and without his approval nothing works correctly. Everything on a PC is going to work with it and therefore, it is the nerve center and it has to have the fastest buses and the greatest number of connections possible to achieve this.
The pins logically come in here, where each of them has both a specific and a group function, something very important to understand. They are not unitary per se, but they fulfill individual, group and joint functions, this is how a pin diagram and a processor must be understood, as an individual, community and a whole at the same time.
The problem with trying to explain the pins of a socket or CPU is precisely that they perform specific and group functions, so it would be necessary to go one by one analyzing their function. What is usually done is to group them by similar or similar tasks, by colors, and thus everything is much easier to see, since only Intel and AMD have the exact keys of the specific function of each pin.
Pin density is constantly increasing
We do not realize it, but many more pins per square centimeter fit into the same space that years ago. That complicates the creation of the processor itself, but it allows as we have said more connections and more buses, or faster for example.
There are normally a series of pins on each processor that are common to all platforms:
- Voltage pins.
- Bus pins.
- Ground pins.
- From GPIO.
- Alert.
- Of control.
Other more specific subgroups already enter these groups, but it can be said that this is all about it. In addition, there are spare pins, which are intended in case any of those that are intended to do something fail to ensure that the processor always works correctly.
It must be taken into account that, although the retention anchors are very specific and are taken care of to the mm, the pressure is not distributed evenly throughout the CPU and therefore there may be pins that do not make enough contact after time and vitiated the board .
So it is not only the number of them, it is the distribution and position of them as important as this. Many times the excess pressure of heatsinks and blocks allows the center of the CPU to sag, preventing good contact and causing errors on the motherboard or leaving the system hanging at certain times.
As we can see, to talk about pins you have to be very specific, since each one has a different function with different intervals, but where at the same time they are all important.
