Is it just me, or are motherboards getting more expensive, for some reason?

[VirtualLarry]

Is it just because they are selling less enthusiast-market motherboards? I seem to recall seeing various "budget" models, from all the major mobo makers, with entry-level chipsets for both AMD and Intel, and they were roughly $35-40.

Now, it seems that even the cheap crappy ones are $50-60.

I thought that we were in a deflationary spiral, so I don't quite get the price increases, especially in USD prices.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Last time I checked, DIY mobo shipments went from ~80M in 2012 to only ~54M in 2015, Asus and Gigabyte are barely squeezing out a profit of their DIY mobo division and the rest of the manufacturers are simply losing money in the business. (Notice how Asus is aggressively pursuing the phone business?) The dis-economies of scale will eventually itself showing in the retail price tag.

 

[DigDog]

it's true, the quality difference between top and botton of the range is getting smaller, while the price difference is getting bigger. from what i can see, it's just price gouging - notice how much more promotional material they are making for boards? for EVERY board they manufacture?

also any additional feature gouges the price by so much, and they are starting to add useless features to the line *in order* to expand the line and make some boards seem better - such as dual lan (intel AND Killer? wtf?);

otherwise their lineup would look like this: (gigabyte for example)
H - all jap caps, 2 ram, 1 pice, 4 sata
DS3 - all japanese caps, 4 ram, 1 pcie, 4 sata
UD - alljap, 4ram, 2 pci, 6 sata
Gzonk!Gaming! - 3 pci, 8 sata
and something with thunderbolt.

by artificially extending the product line, they give uninformed customers the impression that the more expensive boards are much better. while generally the basic, non-economy board does everything the others do.

 

[waltchan]

When Haswell launch, I remember picking up some ECS H61H2-M3 (2.0) LGA1155 boards for $10 shipped after rebate.

 

[UsandThem]

I miss the days when manufacturers made an entry level, mid-level, and top of the line board for a particular chipset (plus maybe a couple specialty or limited edition model).

Now every manufacturer makes a ton of boards with largely the same features, but with a different color painted on the heatsinks.

For example, Gigabyte currently has 27 motherboards for the z170 chipset.

 

[StrangerGuy]

it's true, the quality difference between top and botton of the range is getting smaller, while the price difference is getting bigger. from what i can see, it's just price gouging - notice how much more promotional material they are making for boards? for EVERY board they manufacture?

also any additional feature gouges the price by so much, and they are starting to add useless features to the line *in order* to expand the line and make some boards seem better - such as dual lan (intel AND Killer? wtf?);

otherwise their lineup would look like this: (gigabyte for example)
H - all jap caps, 2 ram, 1 pice, 4 sata
DS3 - all japanese caps, 4 ram, 1 pcie, 4 sata
UD - alljap, 4ram, 2 pci, 6 sata
Gzonk!Gaming! - 3 pci, 8 sata
and something with thunderbolt.

by artificially extending the product line, they give uninformed customers the impression that the more expensive boards are much better. while generally the basic, non-economy board does everything the others do.

Agree the whole mobo scene now is borderline scammy marketing to gouge the uninformed. They can spam tons of models because all those models share the same PCB while adding/removing components are incredibly cheap relative to the huge markup they can potentially rip off from the customer.

Notice review sites and manufacturers never seem to mention any of their budget low-end boards? And remember the days of nForce2 where a single chipset only gets like two mobo models, tops?

 

[DigDog]

frankly, if Gigabyte continues to manufacture the DS3 (or whatever name they sell it as these days) i'm never buying anything else.

i find their move to Killer NICs shocking and i hope they drink a gallon of wake-up juice because it's killing their reputation.

(also should be said..that nowadays you can buy any Asrock, ECS, Biostar, and they will perform just as well)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, if a board says "Killer NIC" on it, I look elsewhere.

I was rather happy that my ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX board has Intel LAN. (I did have to upgrade my Linux kernel in Mint to 3.19, from 3.13, because the Intel LAN wasn't supported.)

 

[nerp]

I picked my board specifically for Intel LAN, Displayport and the improved audio. Yes boards are more expensive these days for the above-mentioned reasons. But in reality if you get a lot of life out of it it's worth it.

 

[DigDog]

that's true, modern boards have a longer HW life expectancy than their actual usefulness (example: the thread about a PC still running socket 939). and the features are impressive: auto-overclock, exquisite build quality, heat dissipation, OC capacity far beyond what the CPU can cope with, UEFI, and so on. but the cost just doesn't add up.

a $400 mobo ? really?
you could get top of the line for $100 not ten years ago. and back then, they were all sporting the top-of-the-line technologies as well, the only real innovations have been the heat sinks, and fault monitor (that led-thing that tells you whats wrong, instead of the beeps).

surely you did not expact to continue paying the same price for old tech; the longer you produce something the less it costs. you need to look at equivalent prices, not at "how much would a mobo with thunderbolt have cost 15 years ago".

 

[PingSpike]

I've thought the same. I think its just the result of the market shrinking and the remaining players trying to avoid money losing products. The killer NIC is like heated seats and side mirrors on luxury cars. They've put all the best stuff onto the base model so the only things left to put on the top end are fairly silly.

What I actually miss are the other chipset makers. ULi, Nvidia, even Via. When the big boys said "We don't want to do that" they showed up with weird niche things. I remember when nvidia chipsets were the go to for AMD builds the party line from nvidia was something like "PCI-e and AGP can't be done on the same board" which of course makes sense, why would nvidia want people using their old video card any longer? Then ULi came out with a chipset that did just that, and also performed as well or better than Nvidias.

 

[XavierMace]

a $400 mobo ? really?
you could get top of the line for $100 not ten years ago. and back then, they were all sporting the top-of-the-line technologies as well, the only real innovations have been the heat sinks, and fault monitor (that led-thing that tells you whats wrong, instead of the beeps).

No you couldn't and no they weren't. Decent, yes. Top of the line, no. I should know, I was selling them back then. P5B was $150 when it came out in 2006 and was hardly top of the line. MSI 975X Platinum was $170. A8N-SLI32 (which I was a proud owner of) was $220.

$400 motherboards are not new. The Asus P6T6 WS Revolution was $380 when it came out at the end of 2008. The difference is there's far more of them now and the onboard features are getting better.

 

[cbrunny]

Deflationary spiral? Really? Do you mean in computer parts generally or in general economics?