Why are LGA 2011 boards so damn expensive?

[mysticjbyrd]

My brother in law has a 3820k, and I am fairly certain his board needs replaced. So, I looked on the web to find some a replacement, and they are like $150! Why is an outdated board $150?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Because it's kind of a specialty product, not made in large quantities, not in current production, and it's not really all that outdated.

When a company stops producing premium hardware, the price tends to rise for a little while, because people who have systems built around those parts will pay more than MSRP to not have to replace their entire system.

You will tend to see a similar thing happen with consumer-level parts when a new socket comes out, although it's not as extreme - once all the liquidation sales sell out, you'll see particularly desirable New-Old-Stock LGA1150 CPUs and Motherboards (enthusiast-class kit, -K CPUs and high end mobos) selling for a the same price as equivalent LGA1151 parts, if not a few bucks more.

 

[DigDog]

second hand boards are expensive because they can be.

2011 (and other consumer-level server sockets) tend to stay in service longer, and less of them are produced, so there's fewer of them to drive the price down. sometimes server boards will actually cost more on eBay than they did when launched.

as for actual build quality and materials, sure, they are the premium boards, but they also have higher attached R&D costs (because less produced) and they own the market, so a portion of that initial cost is just a "FU consumer" added because they can.

 

[kylef]

Volume I'm sure is part of it, but I also suspect supporting the additional PCIe lanes available on most 2011 and 2011-v3 processors gets expensive. There is probably also a higher PCH chipset cost.