Intel could've allowed people to swap to new generation CPU's if they wanted.

According to this thread on Guru3D, someone managed to run a Coffee Lake processor in an older (Z270) motherboard after a few tweaks to the socket and some BIOS modding (and with a performance fairly close to machines with the newer platform).

It gets even better, there’s rumors that it might be possible to run Coffee Lake on Z170 motherboards as well with a few tweaks, lending to the the idea that Intel forces a socket change because they can, not because the chips have enough of a change to need large changes within the socket.

Since stuff like this can now spread like wildfire due to the internet, this could mean more PR issues for Intel (on top of the reported crippling of performance in some cases due to the Meltdown bug).

Who is surprised?
Who thought they only changed sockets out of pure technical requirements?

What was said in the reviews back in October was Intel claiming the socket needed changes because of differences in the area of power delivery and optimal RAM frequency (it is the first mainstream core bump on Intel’s side in 10 years after all).

Alas, the change is apparently not a major deal after all (and people are already fretting the idea of yet another socket change for their first mainstream 8-core models).

Guess 10 years of jerking off hurt their brains… joke. Honestly, you really believe they will change. Unless they get deconstructed, are brought down… they won’t. Lesser intelligent consumer & numerous long-time contracts are taking care of that. They made a lovely bubble.

Meh. I seriously doubt “tweaks” had the necessary testing to satisfy commercial production. Kind of like strapping a JATO pack to a VW Beetle - it can be done, and you can still drive down the road, but is it really going to work? Not to mention, there may very well have been deep technical problems behind the scenes which made going forward the better solution (insert “BGE removal thread” reference here). Not to say there isn’t any kind of commercial influence on the decision, but to suggest some nebulous concept of corporate greed is the only factor is pretty far from reality.

Who really cares, though? Do that many people upgrade their CPUs within 1-2 generations? It’s really convenient for Intel and board vendors not to support CPUs from the future, years down the road. Even on AMD platforms, motherboards often need BIOS updates for newer CPUs, which may or may not be provided. Changing the socket physically just ensures that people get the message that it’s not going to work and that they shouldn’t bother RMA.

Also, while you’re being indignant, why not also complain about EPYC and Threadripper running on two different sockets that are almost identical and certainly could be made to be compatible?

Because Intel and Nvidia are the ‘Evil Empire’ and AMD are a plucky band of freedom fighters who would never sully their business plan with filthy money. All the money you pay for AMD kit is actually donated to orphanages around the world /sarcasm.