Intel Leaving Desktop Motherboard Business 219
An anonymous reader writes "As soon as its next-gen Haswell CPUs ship, Intel will start to leave the desktop motherboard business. It will be a lengthy process, taking at least three years, and the company will continue to produce chipsets. The company will be focusing instead on smaller and newer form factors. For one, it will be working on its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) boards, which are 4" by 4". Legacy support for old motherboards and the new Haswell motherboards will continue through their respective warranty periods. 'Given the competitive landscape, it's not a big surprise that Intel is refocusing its efforts on areas that have greater potential impact on future growth. All segments of the PC business are under extreme pressure, with sales slipping and users gravitating toward tablets and smart phones. Focusing on reference designs for all-in-one PCs, Ultrabooks and tablets will enable Intel's partners to more rapidly ship products that appeal to the new generation of mobile users.' AnandTech points out that one of the reasons Intel put out motherboards for so long was to assure a baseline level of quality for its CPUs. Now that the boards coming out of Taiwan are of good quality, Intel doesn't need to expend the effort."
I will still use my desktop computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I will still use my desktop computer (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I will still use my desktop computer (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a professional photographer. I need vastly more processor power, storage space and screen real estate than any tablet or laptop could ever offer me. So yes, the desktop computer market still makes sense, maybe not for everybody, but at least for specialized groups.
If anyone will ever come up with a 2x eight core, 64Gb RAM, 9.3Tb RAID5, Quadro 6000 and 30" + 24" IPS screens, I'll gladly switch. Until then, you can pry my desktop from my cold, dead fingers. (yes, those are the actual specs of the machine I just built last month, minus the screens which were transferred from the outgoing computer to the new one)
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2x eight core, 64Gb RAM, 9.3Tb RAID5, Quadro 6000 and 30" + 24" IPS screens
You dropped $2200*-$4200** on CPUs, but only put 64G ($500) of RAM in the machine? Cheapskate.
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You dropped $2200*-$4200** on CPUs, but only put 64G ($500) of RAM in the machine? Cheapskate.
Or $600 : cheapest Opteron 8 core.. [newegg.com]
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AMD is currently getting out of the game, and will be unable to take advantage of this opportunity, as their intelligentsia had a vision that said "ARM is the future, let's drop everything and go THATAWAY!" several months ago. That such a large market opportunity has suddenly appeared, and will go unfulfilled, is only further proof that AMD's leadership (or perhaps their previous leadership, seems to be a revolving door there somewhere) needs to be taken out back by the investors, and Old Yeller'ed.
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There's still a need for the "gamer" PC, and that niche will continue to exist.
But for most of us, there are better alternatives. I just bought one of the Intel Next Unit of Computing [intel.com] systems a couple of days ago. I'm thrilled with it so far. It's totally quiet, mounts discretely on the side of my desk, supports two monitors, and is plenty fast enough for my software development needs.
I don't develop games, but I imagine that most users will be playing games on tablet-like devices in the near future, so
Re:I will still use my desktop computer (Score:4, Insightful)
That system only has a core i3 in it. There are reasons some of us need CPU power besides gaming. My desktop spends a great deal of time compiling software. Intel and AMD have made it clear they don't want me as a customer, but the problem is that I have no where else to go.
Intel's on a race to the bottom with ARM. AMD is on a race to extinction.
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My year old Air stomps all over this thing.
If I want a real PC I don't care how big it is, if I want something tiny I am willing to pay enough to get something better.
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The NUC is just this years iteration of the ION nettop or Mac Mini.
It's not a real desktop replacement.
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Only 16GB of RAM? Was the paycheck late?
Re:I will still use my desktop computer (Score:5, Insightful)
There will be a need for high-power professional and enthusiast machines for a long time. You'll still be able to get them - but as they become a niche product and volume goes down, there may be a corresponding rise in price.
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An example: once upon a time if you wanted to use a computer you'd sit down at a dumb terminal that talked to whatever monster your institution had in the basement. Then "personal computers" came, and they were slow, riotously expensive per unit computing power, and used this horrible mouse thing to operate, but the big smart machines didn't go away. They just receded to the people that actually needed them, where they remain to this day.
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They'll just get more expensive as the demand goes down, and they'll only be sold by vendors of professional gear.
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Here's what I see happening:
In the post-desktop future you'll pay $200 for a physical terminal you can plug into a keyboard & mouse and into your HDMI jumbo OLED TV (e.g., a Mac Mini running VNC), and then pay a fee per month to log in and develop on a remote machine with 100-10,000x more compute speed than any desktop you can buy or build today.
The future is distributed computing. Let someone else pay to maintain the TFLOP hardware.
Amazon already offers this service. I can rent time on linux compute se
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It'll always be around. Just like most people don't need pickup trucks to do the grocery run, but we still have 'em for the jobs that often do require them, or for the people who feel they want them.
There will always be a need. The "pr
You'll still have it; you'll just pay more (Score:2)
Nobody is saying that it will disappear. What they're predicting is that this segment will get smaller. And because of that, some manufacturers will pull out.
We have been lucky over the last two or three decades (especially the last two) in that everyone (Joe Schmoe) needs a computer much like yours and mine. The resulting economy-of-scale allowed many manufacturer
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HP makes no motherboards they are buying them from someone else.
Newegg shows ASUS and EVGA both have boards like this. I was a little surprised Tyan was not represented.
Monopolist voluntarily leaves the field? (Score:3)
For a while, it seemed like Intel would dominate the mboard market.
After all, everything was being integrated onto boards (sound, network, Intel good-enough graphics, etc.). Add to that the processor itself, and you've got great vertical integration.
It's hard to believe Intel would give a better deal to an outsider (Gigabyte, MSI, etc.) than to its internal mboard division, no matter what accounting system is used.
So it's hard to figure this out.
It's quite simple, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's quite simple, really. Intel, monopolist or not, can make more money by utilizing its resources elsewhere than in the the desktop market. All of the hype is in the tablet/phone/ultrabook market and that is where they are shifting their resources. It's quite simple, really. The cost to design and produce a board for a tablet is not significantly different than that of a desktop. On the other hand, a tablet board will probably out sell a desktop board 100 to 1 if not more. As such, the ROI on the tablet board is far greater than on the desktop.
For most users, particularly those that are simply consumers of content, the modern PC is overkill, at least in the world of online services where even the fastest consumer internet connection is a bottleneck for the underlying hardware.
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PC's as a market segment are losing money
Intel spent a few years hiding in its margins. PC components have a higher dollar profit than mobile ones. but few people are buying the traditional type of computer these days and so the costs of R&D/Production and other costs outweigh the profits
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The motherboard and chipset don't have to be sold with a profit margin since they support CPU sales. It may not even have to do with the profitability of the desktop market. Investors play a large role in steering public corporations. Investors are interested in growth potential, almost to the exclusion of all else.
They don't see growth potential in the desktop market therefore they declare it to be "dead" (meaning saturated). They see instead, and mostly with hindsight, growth potential in the tablet and s
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Almost everything you described is going into the CPU these days to cut down power and size.
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Between laptops, tablets and AIOs the ratio of custom to standard motherboards has been going more and more in the direction of custom boards, while Intel is moving more and more of the functionality onto the chip itself. If the leaks are correct both the lowest power versions of Haswell (ULT and ULX) will be system-on-a-chip. More importantly, since Intel is now the only supplier of chipsets to Intel CPUs they effectively control the features and prices of motherboards anyway, while giving the illusion of
Really. They Mean it. (Score:2)
Beginning of the end of the homebuilt desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a Terminator-like vision of a dark future where everything is a all-in-one, laptop, or tablet--and all are walled gardens.
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there were homebuilt desktops before intel started "making" motherboards, they will still be around after ... intel isnt the only one making mobo's for intel chips
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I have a Terminator-like vision of a dark future where everything is a all-in-one, laptop, or tablet--and all are walled gardens.
I struggle to see how having a major player break up its presence in a market, to multiple competitors, the sign that it's going to be harder to purchase individual parts.
Awww (Score:5, Funny)
Aww. I loved Intel boards. They were the only ones where there were no spelling mistakes in the manuals or bios. =(
Intel and AMD (Score:2)
I agree with a lot of you that the Intel boards are Rock Solid and Stable; I have a P2 here with an Intel D865PERL that works like a charm. But Intel it seems are trying to completely remove itself from the Desktop market by using CPUs already attached to the Motherboard (Less Options, bad for Hobbyists) and now removing its own boards. I use AMD now, with a Rock Solid M5A97. It was in my price range and I don't regret it.
And here's AMD in the background waving at all of you that they're dedicated to DIYers
tablets need more storage space and bigger screen (Score:2)
tablets need more storage space and bigger screens to replace pc's.
Also need a real keyboard and not a mini slide out one.
And no the Cloud can not replace storage space due to a mix of things like slow ISP speeds , wifi interference, the low caps on 3g / 4g as well the gaps in coverage.
Also the SUPER HIGH roaming fees. And the lag can be high on 3g / 4g as well.
The multi-faceted trends of dumbness (Score:3)
Apple sold lots of iPhones and iPads, so M$ decided to jump on their gravy train (again) and turn Windows 8 into iPad-bizarro-land...
PC sales declined because of tablet/pad sales, so OEM's decide they're in the wrong business and start to kill the Real Computer market...
Now I hear rumors that AT&T is planning to kill their land-based Internet services (DSL etc) in an attempt to move to all 3G/4G service plans. This is terrible for anyone who understands what latency is and how it makes your Internet suck. 3G connections usually have about 1000ms latency vs DSL sitting pretty at 40-50ms latency. But even worse, many rural areas still have no 3G service and some can actually get DSL or similar terrestrial lines.
All these trends look like a push by big bizness to retract the last few years of progress in the PC/Internet world. It's time for some new ass-kicking innovations to start, rolling in to bust up these lame trends like The Dude's holy bowling ball towards a bunch of lame duck bowling pins of lametardness.
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It's time for some new ass-kicking innovations to start, rolling in to bust up these lame trends like The Dude's holy bowling ball towards a bunch of lame duck bowling pins of lametardness.
For a second there, I thought you were BanAnalogyGuy.
The real reason the desktop pc is on the decline (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason the desktop pc is on the decline is that it can be upgraded and made to last a very long time. Contrast that with a laptop, ultrabook, tablet or phone which are all disposable devices. Most of them, now, you can't even replace the battery, let alone any of the internals. /.ers like car analogies, but I think stereos are a better one. Back in the day, the best stereos were all components. You had an amplifier, a separate tuner, turntable, tape deck, etc. You could purchase the best components your wallet and audio needs dictated. If something new came out, like CDs or a component broke, it didn't require replacing the entire system. That is how it is with desktop computers.
On the other hand the new mobile market devices like tablets and phones are like the mass marketed all in one stereos that started to dominate in the late 70s. They were a marketer's dream, and the accountants loved them, because there were no user serviceable parts inside. If something new came our or something broke, the consumer went out and purchased a new one. Great for the bottom line.
The typical desktop PC can be made to last far longer than its expected useful life (how many computers are still running XP out there?). That is not an option with tablets, phones, ultrabooks and the like. Eventually the battery will fail to hold a charge and since it is not user serviceable, the consumer will have to choose to pay the vendor almost as much to put a new one in or to buy a new device. Easy choice, buy the new device, even if you didn't need the new capabilities. All of those back lit displays also start to dim with time and again are cheaper to replace the device than to send off to have serviced. At least with a desktop, it would involve replacing just the monitor, not the entire computer.
The average consumer convinces themself that the tradeoffs are worth it, but for many of them, they are wrong and they get frustrated and convince themself they just need to upgrade to a better model (Is the iPad X really that much better than the iPad X-1?). The vendors are counting on that! It's all about the marketing.
How many people do you see who would scoff at a $200 netbook, but walk around with a $600 iPad plus keyboard? Both are underpowered, so that can't be it. The iPad does have a touch screen, but is that a $400 advantage, and if so, then why the keyboard? You'll even hear the argument that well, I can leave the keyboard behind and only take it for the times I truly need it -- which is true, but then why do they always have the keyboard with them? Because, they can't admit that a tablet solution wasn't the right solution for their needs and not only did they spend too much, they had to purchase additional pieces to make it work.
Because the average life of the desktop PC can be extended relatively easily and inexpensively, vendors, who depend on ever increasing sales volume as a measure of performance have to switch to a product that allows them to meet that goal, even if it isn't in the best interest of anybody but the shareholders. After all, companies no longer exist primarily to meet a public need, the exist to keep the shareholders happy. If the shareholders are happy, the board is happy. If the board is happy, the executives are happy, etc., etc.
The world has changed and the game is no longer about producing what people need, but instead producing what they will buy, particularly if you can get them to buy it over and over again.
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Companies never existed to meet a private need. That is the foundation of a free market society: To achieve a situation in which parties act only in their own best interests, but in doing so incidentially provide a benefit to wider society.
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Public need, rather. Isn't it annoying when you mistype one word and it completly reverses the meaning?
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Companies never existed to meet a private need. That is the foundation of a free market society: To achieve a situation in which parties act only in their own best interests, but in doing so incidentially provide a benefit to wider society.
Actually Capitalism and the whole concept of supply and demand is predicated on meeting the public (not private) need. Until recent times, if the public didn't need something, the public didn't purchase it and the demand was low. As such, nobody sold it or sold it so low that it wasn't profitable. Think of buggy whips, once the automobile was established.
The other extreme is an economy based on a centralized group (usually the government) determining what will be produced. There the goods are sold, not bec
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Supply and demand does meet the public need. What I meant is that it doesn't depend on altuism. No manufacturer needs to think 'There's a hammer shortage, I'd better make some more before we have a crisis on our hands.' All the manufacturer does is seek to maximise their own profit, entirely selfishly and greedily. They don't care about the public good - but the laws of supply and demand serve to focus them indirectly into providing the goods and services society needs, because that is where the money is to
Overkill (Score:2)
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Which blithely ignores the fact that most of the PC market never "upgrades" anything except perhaps memory.
My company purchases these cheapass HP tower PCs for ~$300 each. They have three drivebays and three expansion slots. Huge wasteful powersupply. They will never be upgraded, the expansion slots will never be used, they will never get an additional drive installed.
WHY is an overkil tower the cheapest corporate PC option? Only because the PC market is a fucked-up dinosaur, completely stuck it's ways.
Just one thing... (Score:2)
If desktop computers just go away, how will we develop the apps for those half-baked non-self-contained computers? It's not like you can run Eclipse on Android, or XCode on iOS.
Re:Overpriced (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overpriced (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Overpriced (Score:4, Informative)
reliability for a basement dweller spending all day on WoW or rebuilding his PC and for something that produces revenue are two different things
i've used MSI, Abit and Asus since the 1990's and they were OK for home use. not for work use
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*shrug* of the three, only MSI has every caused me stability issues. Nonetheless, if you are using it for a business, yeah, you want to be a lot more careful, but then agian, you will probably be buying a pre-built from a vendor at that point.
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That basement dwelling WoW player is actually the one more likely to overpay for newer hardware that's somewhat faster but remarkably more expensive.
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I have to disagree.
I've used a lot of MSI boards, and generally, they are very unstable. ASUS isn't bad - aside from ease of using their support going downhill, they tend to have solid builds. However, I could crash most of the MSIs I've had on demand, regardless of OS.
Intel boards (like, Tyan), can be picky, but as long as you do your research before you buy the board, and get compatible parts, or make sure you aren't buying it for a system with incompatible parts (typically memory or PSU, even if it fits
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I have a Gateway machine from 2001. I'm pretty sure it has an Intel motherboard, and it was running rock-solid until I decided to give it a break a year or two ago. Bad idea; it ran flawlessly up to that point, but about a year with no power seemed to to cause all kinds of things to go wrong with it. And ironically, the motherboard is not one of the parts to go. That thing has been rock-solid, along with its 1.7GHz Pentium 4 processor. Its original hard drive has only begun to show signs of damage a fe
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It probably needs a recap. I had to replace the caps on a Dell Optiplex 280 (wouldn't boot). Now runs flawlessly at a friend's place. cost me about 5$ in capacitors.
Many things today go bad because of either bad caps (Viewsonic VA1912, RCA AV Receiver, that Dell, One of my previous machines, or bad solder joints (thank you lead-free solder, just revived an old 52" RPTV just by resoldering the flyback. Found it on christmas eve, was thrown away because it totally lost its convergence)
Re:Overpriced (Score:4, Interesting)
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Generally, I've found with intel, is that they are very sensitive to RAM voltage, even if it seems the memory would fit - the i7 certified sounds rather silly.
Anyway, do your research before buying any hardware to make sure it is listed as compatible.
The last MSI board I had seemed good, until I tried any two of:
- Run a TV Tuner
- Play an MMO
- Transfer large files over the network (typically local, the internet usually couldn't send me a file fast enough to trigger the issue).
It seemed some combination of mu
Re:Overpriced (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overpriced (Score:4, Insightful)
My expericne:
ASUS will give you slightly better performance and flexibility, but is *SLIGHTLY* less stable. Almost nobody will ever notice the difference.
Intel, is going to be more stable, but you have a slight speed loss and not as much flexibility (i.e. O.C., available feature sets).
There are more reliable board than ASUS, that don't have the drawbacks of Intel, but they are generally much more expensive, and often not worth it, so I'm not sure if they'd detract from the 'best money can buy' statement...
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"Slighty less stable"? Something is either stable or it isn't. Maybe the word you're looking for is "unstable". Not sure who you deal with, but everyone I know would notice and not tolerate instability or a crash. Modern OSes are pretty reliable. Kernel panics and blue screens are so rare that when they happen, it's noticed.
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There are different degrees of stability. A board that crashes once every 5 years is more stable than a board that crashes once every 5 minutes. Are you really arguing that something is stable or it isn't?
Re:Overpriced (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to think that the high end ASUS boards are the best money can buy
My experience with ASUS has been frustration with low quality third party chips used to provide excessive numbers or SATA and USB ports and other features. These chips are never as good as the integrated Intel circuits. ASUS is the best of the non-Intel lot, but the others do the same thing; solder on whatever is cheapest and makes the specs look better, damn the bugs or driver issues. Intel also uses third party stuff but they're nowhere near as cavalier about it. Intel's work is not flawless [anandtech.com], but they fix it [pcstats.com] when they screw up. If some Silicon Image chip on a Megasustrix motherboard doesn't work right they aren't going to fix it, or even acknowledge the problem.
I've always thought Intel motherboards only compete in the OEM sector.
That hasn't been true for years. On Newegg only ASUS has more (Intel based) motherboard models available than Intel; Intel has been very responsive to the market of people that want good boards. People like me have long since stopped debugging the poorly engineered products of all these little Taiwanese board makers. My last three personal machines were Intel boards and they're all still running perfectly. Two survived transition from XP to Windows 7 with no driver drama; the OS recognized all the important bits out-of-the-box, which is exactly what I expected and intended.
Dear ASUS, this is an opportunity beyond simply gobbling up the market Intel leaves behind. Now is the time to step up your engineering and qualification of components and produce a line of grown-up boards. I don't need or want 35 USB ports provided by 3 phy implementations, all different. I want conservative, well engineered boards that run cool and don't leak capacitor juice all over the place three years after I buy it. Thanks.
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Intel mobo = no OC
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OC means running a 150$ CPU at the same specs Intel would like you to pay 800$ for. But yes, for the average user, any modern PC will be fast enough, even the wallmart junk.
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Given the number of BIOS updates for the DQ77MK, and the remaining incompatibilities with various PCIe cards, I have to object. I've had far more luck with ASUS and MSI for motherboards. Even Gigabyte tends to put out good quality boards.
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I'd add Gigabyte to the list. Shame ABit isn't around, they made solid stuff too.
Tyan is also nice, but expensive and requires reading and only buying from the compatible parts list if you don't want it do die in a cloud of smoke... You get listed compatible parts, they work amazing. You don't, they go boom. I suspect their tolerances are much tighter than the industry standards - any anything outside of the range, but within industry standards, really ticks them off. However, it's a trade off, if you can k
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The OK list.
Yeah, that board was made after VIA stopped making decent chipsets. Can't do much about that, and not everything ABit made was good. Even a good manufacturer can make a board on a bad chipset. You look at both.
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And I just replied to two different posts at once.
Fuck me, I need coffee.
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Abit? Really? I'll admit to having limited experience, but the one Abit motherboard I ever owned, the KT7a, was a disaster. Not only for me, but everybody else; it had a reputation.
So, where do we start... There was the burst capacitors, there was the latency issues that caused crackling audio if you used a soundblaster card, there was the false promises about compatibility with future processors (don't sell a motherboard claiming it will support future processors if the very next processor using that socke
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I had a NF7S v2, and nothing crashed the thing, even with decent overclocking. Used a few others as well.
But yeah, that board was made after VIA stopped making decent chipsets. Can't do much about that, and not everything ABit made was good. Even a good manufacturer can make a board on a bad chipset. You look at both.
Heh, MSI and Soyo were my worst experiences, by far.
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Ditto, never had any issues with the two I owned
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You get what you pay for. So, I guess Aleive brand Naproxin Sodium is three times as effective as generic naproxin Sodium? No, you do NOT always get what you pay for. "You get what you pay for" is a salesman's favorite lie.
I disagree. Aleve brand Naproxin Sodium is not, of course, three times as effective as generic. It is, however, far more Aleve. You get what you pay for is, generally, true. But you need to be aware of what, exactly, you're paying for, and ask if YOU value it. Generally, the salesman lies about what, precisely, it is that you're paying for.
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If the company you're buying from spends a lot on marketing and advertising, what you get if you pay more is more adverts.
I consciously try to buy from brands that do not advertise as much (though sometimes this is difficult).
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Depends on the topic.
Spices in the US are the same - as long as it's the same type (dried powder vs. dried powder, whole vs. whole), they are so regulated, it's pretty close to the same no matter what you get.
Some times, there is more money and effort spent in components and QA, in which case, "you get what you pay for" is a VERY safe bet.
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I guess I meant supermarket spices.
In crappy vs. good however, I suspect the issue is more to do with age & handling conditions, which is less of an issue with dried spices, which most people use at home.
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Re:Overpriced (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, Intel's boards seem to be considerably more reliable. I'm sure my sample size is small, perhaps 100 systems per year, but I have had a much, much lower incidence of problems with Intel motherboards than with Asus or Gigabyte, and MSI doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with those two.
Intel boards are actually made by Foxconn, so it's possible that this will be a change in name only, but I do also value the fact that I can get an RMA on a motherboard from Intel within two business days. Neither Gigabyte nor Asus offer anything like that level of service and paying a little extra for it is entirely justifiable.
Don't buy hardware with skulls on it (Score:2)
My last foray into an Intel motherboard was a
X58 adorned with skulls. It didn't work very well.
I replaced it with an Asus.
The fact intel is making hardware adorned with skulls is confusing enough. An amendum to the don't buy audio equipment named after natural disasters rule of thumb, you shouldn't buy computer gear with skulls on it.
Enthusiast hardware isn't going anywhere, but it will be getting more expensive. Intel is a chip company not a motherboard company after all.
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Typhoon, probably.
But yes, I would not even remotely trust an Intel enthusiast-class system board. Their LGA2011 boards aren't really impressive at all.
That's the point when Asus and Gigabyte and some of the other goofy hobbyist brands actually do make sense. For once.
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I've never seen and Intel board with an AMD socket, so assuming you run Intel exclusively.
paying a little extra for it is entirely justifiable.
That depends on your budget. Besides, no matter what you buy, in a few years the board is obsolete. The newest RAM, CPU (and sometimes even video cards/Power supply) will not work with your board and you upgrade or make do. After a few years, you can't get $20 for it on Ebay anyway. It's basically a frisbee if it hurls.
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Why would you have to run Intel exclusively? I have run Intel board machines with Intel CPUs, and nothing at all unpleasant happened to the AMDs on ASUS/ABIT/Gigabyte/Tyan's sitting nearby. Do they come out at night and eat the competators CPUs? Was I just lucky this didn't happen to me?
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Yes. I run Intel exclusively. I don't have a problem with AMD CPUs as such, but no one operating in AMD-land is building system boards as generally reliable as are found on the Intel side of the fence. It does indeed help that there's an extremely narrow range of products where AMD is currently competitive for both price and performance at the moment, but I'd still rather deploy a small fleet of Intel-based systems and have the known-quantity experience than the crap-shoot of what Gigabyte or Asus might hav
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AMD / Asus -> Crosshair motherboards. Built to overclock, and do so stably. I tend to use them for all of my builds, as their tolerances are exceptional. If someone needs more power, I just turn on the overclocking. It's like a free built-in upgrade. ;-)
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I'd have to agree.
That 100 systems a year probably puts you over most of the posters here (including myself).
A thought - You might want to look at Tyan if you want a replacement for Intel. They are finicky as hell when it comes to compatible hardware (particularly memory/PSU), but if you stick to compatible stuff, they are very reliable, and the performance is pretty good too.
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Tyan does not make inexpensive boards for vanilla desktops. I can remember a time when they did, but that was probably the mid-90s.
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It's functionally the same thing in my case. I'm close enough to Intel's Louisville RMA depot that they'll have my RMA'd products the day I get authorization and have another one on a truck back to me the next day.
It still speaks very highly of their logistical operation that they process and ship returns that quickly.
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Don't expect LGA sockets to go away completely. Maybe low and mid-range chips will go BGA, but high-end chips will likely be LGA for the forseeable future. At least in this humble geek's opinion.
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There simply is not a big enough market for that,
The closest you will get is something like a mac mini. You could also start with a shuttle PC and go from there.
Most people do not care about the volume a PC takes up in an office, it sits under the desk. Hell, I bought a workstation ATX case more than 10 years ago and I intend to use it till the day I can't find a motherboard that mounts on some form of ATX, it is drilled for everything from Workstation ATX to mini ATX.
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The mac mini will run Windows 7 fine. Then you can run the software you want.
I am a geek yes, welcome to slashdot. If you want the tiny market device you are talking about you will too have to man up and do it yourself.
It is cheaper to make one case and one motherboard and use it to make the entry level PC and the high end unit.
It is under the desk because that is where the power is. It could be on the desk behind the monitor if that is where the power was. This is not a problem for 90% of users.
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> It could be on the desk behind the monitor if that is where the power was. This is not a problem for 90% of users.
My office PC sits like this. It's about the size of an S1 Tivo can would probably make an acceptable HTPC for most people. You probably don't even have to dress it up any. It already looks like it could belong next to a BluRay player or an AV receiver.
Standard desktop size drives. Room for an after market video card. Smallish.
Office PC vendors like Dell and Compaq have been making machines
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Not if you want RAID1, limited amount of fans or be able to drive very high res screens. Nor are they likely to be available with i7s, most these days are i3s.
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No, you can install windows 7 directly on a mac mini. Replacing OSX.
Your request is reasonable, but there is no real market for it so it likely does not exist. Anything lower spec is not going to have an i7 you wanted. Unless again you are willing to do the work yourself.
Nothing is wrong with it, get more people interested and it may one day exist.
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My Workstation ATX case is tall enough I don't need to put it on a stand to reach ports and disk drives. A monitor has to be visible, the case does not.
I should take your silly claims as insults and leave you without any assistance. I am sadly a better person than that and will instead try to help you find what you are looking for.
The following should be quite close, you may need to select a different model on that website.
http://us.shuttle.com/ConfigurePackage.aspx?package=74GSH61R4-001-SCG-001 [shuttle.com]
My computer
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