Should someone (ASRock, maybe) make a new, cheap, S775 mobo?

[VirtualLarry]

Going along with this thread:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/is-the-raw-performance-of-core2-duo-quad-still-viable.2491801/

It seems that most of the people that have responded in that thread so far, seem to think that Core2 is still a viable CPU to use in 2016, for basic tasks such as web browsing.

There are countless multitudes of Core2-era CPUs on ebay for cheap, but there are precious few models of mobos to go with them. I think ASRock, and maybe Gigabyte, are still making G41 boards. Problem is, they're like $65-70 new. Which, even though the CPUs may be available for under $10 (Core2Duo) or $15-20 (Core2Quad, Xeon), the combined price may be hard to swallow, especially given that G3258 combos in the past have been available for as low as $90, with obvious advantages.

It seems like kind of a waste of technology, to eventually have people scrap, or even worse, dispose of, their old S775 CPUs, due to lack of cheap mobos.

You can find H81 mobos for under $40 today, why aren't there S775 mobos for similar prices? (I think I paid $42 or so for a pair of S775 DDR3 G41 Biostar mobos, back in the day, maybe 2011-ish.)

Heck, for the $70 a S775 mobo costs, you can get Z97 micro-ATX ECS board right now on Newegg's ebay store for the same price.

Although, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, if it were Intel behind the high prices of S775 gear, to prevent undermining the current model chipsets and boards, that they are keeping the G41 chipset prices high enough to make them just un-affordable. Even though, they are produced on a fully-depreciated process / line, and cost probably peanuts to actually produce.

Edit: I just checked ebay, there's a "top rated seller" selling E8400 CPUs, used, for under $5 shipped. Which seems to me barely covers the cost of shipping and a bubble envelope.

If some company would produce an intentionally-stripped-down "budget" line of S775 mobos, it could spark a revolution in cheap good-enough desktop computing. At least, as long as the S775 CPUs on ebay held out.

I'm imagining maybe a micro-ATX, maybe even an ITX, if you could fit the VRMs in (remember, most of these CPUs are 65W for the dual-cores, and 95W for the quad-cores), with a PCI-E x16 slot, two DDR3 slots (since they would be using the G41 chipset, you could potentially put in 2x4GB DDR3 DIMMs, but watch out for RAM compatibility. Must use low-density RAM chips), VGA out, four SATA ports (using ICH7, not even wiring up the IDE or floppy ports), and round it out with a cheap LAN and audio chipset. Just enough to work, but cheap enough to shave as many pennies off of the cost to drop the final price of the mobo down to $40 or so. Thinking, RealTek 10/100 FE LAN, and ALC662 audio codec. (Or lower, if there is a lower audio codec that's still Azalia-compatible.) Also, maybe some USB2.0 ports on the back panel, and a USB2.0 dual-port header (or two, for larger boards than ITX). (Edit: Oh, can't forget the PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, in case the user is already using PS/2. Though, maybe could eliminate them to save costs. My Intel ITX S775 boards didn't have PS/2 ports.)

And definitely ITX, if the PCB cost was lower with a lower size.

Edit: Possibly, a two slot mini-DTX board, with the top-most slot being the PCI-E x16 slot (which would then accommodate a double-slot video card), and then a PCI (not PCI-E) slot as the second slot, for sound or network cards of that era. (That would be a hard choice, PCI or PCI-E x1, since many add-on cards are now PCI-E these days.)

Another possibility, for a slightly more-advanced board, would be to wire up an NV entry-level GPU, like a GT610 / GT710, to a x1 PCI-E port on the G41 chipset (or two of them ganged together, if that were possible), and then have an HDMI output as well as a NV-controlled VGA output, on the rear I/O panel of the board.

(I think that the G41 chipset's video-output does support HDMI, but I don't think it supports HDMI audio output, which really gimps the whole idea of the HDMI port. Thus, the need for entry-level NV video.)

Surely, if NV has a stockpile of these older entry-level chips, they would sell them cheap to a mobo maker like ASRock.

Edit: I forgot, if ASRock added an NV GPU, they would need to provide RAM for it, likely. Unless the GT610 supports NV's version of "HyperMemory". They could probably get away with as low as 256MB for desktop usage (two RAM chips?). Oh yeah, you would need a heatsink, and maybe a fan for the GPU chip too. Nevermind, probably best just to require the user to plug in a card.

 

[XavierMace]

The "why doesn't somebody make a new board for old technology" discussion has been done to death. There's zero incentive for any mobo manufacturer to do this.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The "why doesn't somebody make a new board for old technology" discussion has been done to death. There's zero incentive for any mobo manufacturer to do this.

Well, ASRock has made "Crossover" boards, like a socket 939 / AM2 daughtercard board, and a Socket 775 board, with both a PCI-E x16 slot, and an AGP 8x slot. (Via/ULi chipset). They also made a Socket 939 board, with a newer-generation 785G chipset. Unfortunately, that board wasn't sold in the US to my knowledge. I wanted one, I had a spare S939 CPU, and a modern chipset like that would have allowed me to run a modern OS. (Of course, today, you can't run Win8.1 / Win10 64-bit on the older A64 CPUs, they lack a certain instruction used by the newer Windows' 64-bit kernels.)

And, additionally, it's not like they're not still producing S775 boards, apparently, they are. But the price is IMHO too high, to bother buying a board for $70, and a CPU off of ebay for $10, when for around $100, you can get a brand-new H110 board for $55, and a G3900 Skylake Celeron for $45 new.

But make the new board $40-50, and then with a $10-15 CPU, that change the equation quite a bit. Especially for my style of "donation rigs". (I picked up my A4-3420 FM1 APUs for $14 and change, and the ECS A55M FM1 boards were around $28 new. I did have to buy heatsinks for the APUs though, because although new (supposedly), they didn't come in retail boxes with HSF.)

Edit: I guess, Seek and Ye shall Find.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-ECS-RC4...329095?hash=item543cbdde87:g:gRUAAOSwubRXF~Nc

ECS, "new other", micro-ATX S775 board, $29.99 FS. Only problem is, it's DDR2. So I would have to search out some cheap DDR2 DIMMs for it. Also, I haven't looked up CPU compatibility, so I don't know if the E8400 would work in it. If it does, that would make a viable box, for basic stuff.

$30 mobo + $5 CPU + $5-10 heatsink + ??? RAM.

Edit: Additionally, here's an ECS G31 ATX board, mfg refurb, for $39.99.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ECS-P33T-A-...761762?hash=item19e2b603e2:g:b5wAAOxyXp5SRenf

Both of those have "more than 10 available".

The G31 board, says up to 4GB, was that a limit of the G31 chipset? Or do they mean 4GB per DIMM?

Here's 2x2GB DDR2-800 low-density, for $21.16 shipped.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4GB-DDR2-PC...079029?hash=item336dd61635:g:dpIAAOSwq7JUG1AT

So, $29.99 (board) + $4.75 (CPU) + 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM ($21.16), that's $55.90 so far. $10.99 for copper-cored, or $11.99 for regular heatsink (Intel OEM), so that's $67.89.

My FM1 rigs, cost $28 (board) + $14.50 (CPU) + $9 (heatsink) + $18 (2x2GB DDR3-1600). That's $69.50.

So the Core2 rig would come out slightly ahead on price, but it doesn't have an HDMI output, and it uses DDR2 instead of DDR3, so not really expandable as far as the RAM goes. Both rigs have SATAII and USB2.0. No SATA6G and USB3.0.

Edit: Figures. I went looking for info on that ECS G41 DDR2 micro-ATX mobo on their site, NOTHING. No drivers, no BIOS. Must be an OEM-only board. Could probably track down NIC, Audio, and Intel chipset and VGA drivers from their respective chipset mfgs, and make it work, but that would be a pain in general. Then again, if the OS is new enough, it probably has built-in drives. (Windows 7 and newer?)

 

[XavierMace]

I would love to see some proof that they are still producing S775 boards as I know this was brought up last time this subject was discussed. But in either case, all you just did is reiterate why you want one. Not why ASRock (or whoever) would make one. You're asking them to design and develop a new board with a $40 price point for use with products at the end of their life span for a very small market segment. It's not like they can scale that design up into a higher level product. None of those examples you gave really compare to what you're wanting.

The 939/AM2 daughter card was trying to bridge the gap between the current gen and last gen. You'll notice they tried that once and haven't tried it again. Apple did something similar back in the 90's. They haven't done it since either. I personally don't know a single person who bought one and if memory serves, reviews on the board were generally bad.

Tons of companies made 775 boards with both PCIe and AGP because that was still a transitioning technology at that time. AGP video cards were still being actively developed and the performance gap wasn't all that big at the time.

The 939 board with a slightly newer chipset I guess sort of qualifies as an example. But that was a much smaller obsolescence gap and as you noted it was sold to a limited market. More importantly, that's AMD which progresses much slower than Intel on the chipset front.

All those above cases were basically trying to bridge two immediate generations of technology. You're asking for a board for processors that are 7+ generations old. Just because people are still using technology that old doesn't mean it's remotely worth starting up production on parts for that old of stuff. Plus you're wanting them to spend the time/money to design an obsolete bottom of the barrel board not just keep producing an existing board. Why? Just why would they do that? I don't mean this in an insulting way, but there's not enough people like you on the planet for them to justify that as a sound business idea. For that kind of board design and production to be worth their time, you have to be buying HP/Dell levels of volume. The handful of people wanting to build a "new" computer with obsolete parts is extremely small. Again, I'm not saying you personally (and people like you) couldn't make good use of that. I'm simply saying you're far too small of a market for it to be worth ASRock's time and money to do this.

I'm not sure why you think the process line being depreciated has any bearing here. It's not like they build a new factor each generation, and then leave the old one sitting there doing nothing. I guarantee you there isn't equipment sitting there ready to build G41 boards, just waiting for somebody to press the power button. Even if it was, running equipment costs money even if it's depreciated.

Lastly...

Although, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, if it were Intel behind the high prices of S775 gear, to prevent undermining the current model chipsets and boards, that they are keeping the G41 chipset prices high enough to make them just un-affordable. Even though, they are produced on a fully-depreciated process / line, and cost probably peanuts to actually produce.

LOL.

Supply and demand. Even if they are still producing 775 boards (which I question), I guarantee you it's in far fewer quantities than any of the newer boards you mention. Lower production runs means higher total cost. Therefore that cost is going to get passed on to you. The minuscule cost difference between a RealTek 10/100 and a GbE doesn't come close to the cost difference due to low production runs. My dad works for Flextronics, believe me when it comes to manufacturing it's all about volume. Have you ever watched motherboards being made? The quantity of machines and people involved is substantial, regardless of how old the technology on the boards is. Equipment and people both cost money to keep running. Dedicating either of those for obsolete products is just bad business.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not sure why you think the process line being depreciated has any bearing here. It's not like they build a new factor each generation, and then leave the old one sitting there doing nothing. I guarantee you there isn't equipment sitting there ready to build G41 boards, just waiting for somebody to press the power button. Even if it was, running equipment costs money even if it's depreciated.

I was specifically speaking about the silicon process node used to produce G41 chipsets at Intel. Not the mobo manufacturing line. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

You're right, it probably would be cheaper just to fire up a production line for an existing model, than incur the R&D expenses for a new model. But even that wouldn't be cheap, getting the line up and running.

I'm going to agree with you on your other points. As much as I "wish" that ASRock would magically come alone and create a supply of new $40 S775 mobos, realistically, that's not going to happen. And at the volume I'm talking about as a customer (not much, really), the ebay supplies of "new other" S775 ECS boards will have to do. (If I even get into Core2 stuff any more.)

 

[Torn Mind]

I suspect that many of these boards were made years ago and the "new" inventory gets tossed around from place to place if not sold.

For the Asrock 775I865G, Newegg is selling them, but I doubt they were made just this year. Perhaps Asrock ordered too many chipsets in the past and wants to burn off the last vestiges of stock that they can. After all, this motherboard was first listed on Amazon nine years ago.

Intel charges $20 for the G41 chipset. The rest of the board goes into the other components and manufacturer profits. Motherboards don't go below the $50 wall unless they are already a budget board to begin with or there is a sale to clear $50-$70 boards.

The boards are now out of production and priced at the mercy of the suppliers, which are no longer major vendors but a hodgepodge mix of individuals and "shops". Heck, I was able to sell an ASUS Z77 itx board for a little more than what I paid for it and lost only $17. It took three years. Once "official" supplies run out, pricing becomes wild west-like, especially for new-in-box products that have never been opened.

Not to mention expansion slots exist precisely to stuff "new tech" into boards well past their prime.

 

[Valantar]

Economies of scale make any new motherboard for a CPU/chipset this old an impossibility. There's a huge difference between designing a low-end $50 current-gen motherboard (which you could sell quite a few thousand of), compared to one for an old socket where worldwide sales would in all probability be in the low hundreds, if that. Development costs alone would make these boards very expensive.

The best you can hope for is for someone to make a limited production run of an old model where they still have the parts lying around. If they dont, they're not going to spend resources trying to scrounge together components for an obsolete platform. Scarcity would make these both very difficult to find and more expensive than more modern components.

Does anyone even make s775 sockets anymore? Or chipsets? Compatible SATA controllers? Anything else? Are current motherboard production lines capable of conforming to outdated production specs?

 

[whm1974]

Considering that a Celeron 3900 on a H110 board will out perform S775 CPUs anyway, why even bother?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

The 939/AM2 daughter card was trying to bridge the gap between the current gen and last gen. You'll notice they tried that once and haven't tried it again. Apple did something similar back in the 90's. They haven't done it since either. I personally don't know a single person who bought one and if memory serves, reviews on the board were generally bad.

You're talking about the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2, eh? I had one of those. Actually I had 3(!), because they kept dying for some reason, and got replaced on the warranty* (bad batch perhaps?). But the last one worked just fine, still do in fact.

The real reason for getting that particular board wasn't the AM2 daughter board, but the combination of AGP and PCIe on the same board. So you could use your existing AGP card, and then upgrade to a PCIe card later. I would even have bought the daughter board later. Unfortunately it turned out to be even more expensive then a new AM2+ board, since no retailer would get one for single customer at a reasonable price. Ordering abroad was just too expensive too (shipping+tax). So I got a nice new AM2 board instead.

*We have very... eh... robust consumer protection rules in Denmark.

Getting back on topic; no manufacturer has any incentive at all to make new S775 boards for such a niche market. Intel has zero incentive to supply the chipsets either. They'd rather sell you a new chipset and a new CPU too. Its just business.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

So, $29.99 (board) + $4.75 (CPU) + 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM ($21.16), that's $55.90 so far. $10.99 for copper-cored, or $11.99 for regular heatsink (Intel OEM), so that's $67.89.

My FM1 rigs, cost $28 (board) + $14.50 (CPU) + $9 (heatsink) + $18 (2x2GB DDR3-1600). That's $69.50.

Or you can build a new A6 7400k with mobo and 4 gb memory for $70.- that will perform as well, or better. I still wouldn't buy, sell, or waste time on any of the above.

Once you add in the OS, case, PSU, and HD/SSD might as well just get a ebay i3. Hell, for that price buy 2.

 

[Torn Mind]

Considering that a Celeron 3900 on a H110 board will out perform S775 CPUs anyway, why even bother?

He stated the following in his OP.

If some company would produce an intentionally-stripped-down "budget" line of S775 mobos, it could spark a revolution in cheap good-enough desktop computing. At least, as long as the S775 CPUs on ebay held out.

Perhaps he means sub-$300 desktops. The bottom of the bottom of the barrel sort of users.

But given how video playback is important and growing more demanding these days, S775 will require a small discrete GPU like the 5450 for 1080p playback.

Also, given that Skylake has four generations of IPC boost plus clock speed boost for that G3900, that chip packs CPU processing power that is probably equivalent to or better than the 3.2 GHz Sandy Bridge Pentium of that era, and with a better GPU. It is better than the i3-560 on Passmark.

When it comes to old systems, complete refurbs or craigslist for prebuilts will always outmatch a new "build" because the mobo and PSU will eat up around $80-$100. Craigslist for some builder's flashy gamer with a garbage PSU necessarily means tacking another $25-$40 after purchase for a cheap EVGA unit.

 

[fleshconsumed]

I don't think VirtualLarry being the sole customer for such a product can make it worthwhile financially to produce it. Sadly, VirtualLarry, I'm afraid you're on your own, your only option is making your own motherboards at this point.

 

[whm1974]

I don't think VirtualLarry being the sole customer for such a product can make it worthwhile financially to produce it. Sadly, VirtualLarry, I'm afraid you're on your own, your only option is making your own motherboards at this point.

Which of course will cost more then buying modern hardware in the first place.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

No. Buy leftovers and deal with the crazy-high failure rate, or buy newer kit.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Going along with this thread:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/is-the-raw-performance-of-core2-duo-quad-still-viable.2491801/

It seems that most of the people that have responded in that thread so far, seem to think that Core2 is still a viable CPU to use in 2016, for basic tasks such as web browsing.

There are countless multitudes of Core2-era CPUs on ebay for cheap, but there are precious few models of mobos to go with them. I think ASRock, and maybe Gigabyte, are still making G41 boards. Problem is, they're like $65-70 new. Which, even though the CPUs may be available for under $10 (Core2Duo) or $15-20 (Core2Quad, Xeon), the combined price may be hard to swallow, especially given that G3258 combos in the past have been available for as low as $90, with obvious advantages.

It seems like kind of a waste of technology, to eventually have people scrap, or even worse, dispose of, their old S775 CPUs, due to lack of cheap mobos.

You can find H81 mobos for under $40 today, why aren't there S775 mobos for similar prices? (I think I paid $42 or so for a pair of S775 DDR3 G41 Biostar mobos, back in the day, maybe 2011-ish.)

Heck, for the $70 a S775 mobo costs, you can get Z97 micro-ATX ECS board right now on Newegg's ebay store for the same price.

Although, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, if it were Intel behind the high prices of S775 gear, to prevent undermining the current model chipsets and boards, that they are keeping the G41 chipset prices high enough to make them just un-affordable. Even though, they are produced on a fully-depreciated process / line, and cost probably peanuts to actually produce.

Edit: I just checked ebay, there's a "top rated seller" selling E8400 CPUs, used, for under $5 shipped. Which seems to me barely covers the cost of shipping and a bubble envelope.

If some company would produce an intentionally-stripped-down "budget" line of S775 mobos, it could spark a revolution in cheap good-enough desktop computing. At least, as long as the S775 CPUs on ebay held out.

I'm imagining maybe a micro-ATX, maybe even an ITX, if you could fit the VRMs in (remember, most of these CPUs are 65W for the dual-cores, and 95W for the quad-cores), with a PCI-E x16 slot, two DDR3 slots (since they would be using the G41 chipset, you could potentially put in 2x4GB DDR3 DIMMs, but watch out for RAM compatibility. Must use low-density RAM chips), VGA out, four SATA ports (using ICH7, not even wiring up the IDE or floppy ports), and round it out with a cheap LAN and audio chipset. Just enough to work, but cheap enough to shave as many pennies off of the cost to drop the final price of the mobo down to $40 or so. Thinking, RealTek 10/100 FE LAN, and ALC662 audio codec. (Or lower, if there is a lower audio codec that's still Azalia-compatible.) Also, maybe some USB2.0 ports on the back panel, and a USB2.0 dual-port header (or two, for larger boards than ITX). (Edit: Oh, can't forget the PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, in case the user is already using PS/2. Though, maybe could eliminate them to save costs. My Intel ITX S775 boards didn't have PS/2 ports.)

And definitely ITX, if the PCB cost was lower with a lower size.

Edit: Possibly, a two slot mini-DTX board, with the top-most slot being the PCI-E x16 slot (which would then accommodate a double-slot video card), and then a PCI (not PCI-E) slot as the second slot, for sound or network cards of that era. (That would be a hard choice, PCI or PCI-E x1, since many add-on cards are now PCI-E these days.)

Another possibility, for a slightly more-advanced board, would be to wire up an NV entry-level GPU, like a GT610 / GT710, to a x1 PCI-E port on the G41 chipset (or two of them ganged together, if that were possible), and then have an HDMI output as well as a NV-controlled VGA output, on the rear I/O panel of the board.

(I think that the G41 chipset's video-output does support HDMI, but I don't think it supports HDMI audio output, which really gimps the whole idea of the HDMI port. Thus, the need for entry-level NV video.)

Surely, if NV has a stockpile of these older entry-level chips, they would sell them cheap to a mobo maker like ASRock.

Edit: I forgot, if ASRock added an NV GPU, they would need to provide RAM for it, likely. Unless the GT610 supports NV's version of "HyperMemory". They could probably get away with as low as 256MB for desktop usage (two RAM chips?). Oh yeah, you would need a heatsink, and maybe a fan for the GPU chip too. Nevermind, probably best just to require the user to plug in a card.

NO.

/thread.

 

[StrangerGuy]

As usual the penny-wise, pound-foolisher strikes back.

 

[whm1974]

As usual the penny-wise, pound-foolisher strikes back.

With computers that old, it would cost just as much if not more to fix them as it would be to buy new hardware.

 

[B-Riz]

Here is a barebones 775 G41 DDR3 board $46.99 FS http://www.ascendtech.us/pc-chips-p49g-lga775-ddr3-intel-g41-mb_i_mbpchipsp49gv1n.aspx

But they also have an 1155 H61 board for $22.99 no FS http://www.ascendtech.us/pcchips-p63g-lga1155-ddr3-vga-hdmi-mb_i_mbaecspcchipsp6.aspx

 

[cbn]

You can find H81 mobos for under $40 today, why aren't there S775 mobos for similar prices? (I think I paid $42 or so for a pair of S775 DDR3 G41 Biostar mobos, back in the day, maybe 2011-ish.)

You can but they are off brand ones like HongShuo at places like Gear Best.

 

[whm1974]

You can but they are off brand ones like HongShuo at places like Gear Best.

There must tonnes of used Socket 775 CPUs floating around in China.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

You can find H81 mobos for under $40 today, why aren't there S775 mobos for similar prices? (I think I paid $42 or so for a pair of S775 DDR3 G41 Biostar mobos, back in the day, maybe 2011-ish.)

Because supply & demand.

 

[crashtech]

You can but they are off brand ones like HongShuo at places like Gear Best.

Where do you get drivers if necessary?

 

[Valantar]

Where do you get drivers if necessary?

Windows update? Everything on my Asus X48 Rampage Formula is recongnized automatically, at least. Heck, it even installs third-party drivers for the completely outdated audio solution, complete with silly effects and the works. In Windows 10, of course.

Otherwise: most component makers publish generic (non-board specific) drivers on their own sites.