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Simple, Bare-Bones Motherboards?
basic0 writes "After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke, I tracked the fault to the motherboard. Now I'm in the market for a replacement board, but all the boards I find seem to be all-in-one models with on-board everything. I already have a good graphics card, NIC, USB audio device, etc. I just need a no-frills motherboard like I used to be able to buy. It seems like a waste to buy a board with all the built-in stuff (and probably pay extra for it) when I'm never going to use it. Has anyone else had similar experiences? Do a lot of people actually use the on-board stuff? Is it still possible to purchase a motherboard that's *just* a motherboard?"
Motherboards are so cheap nowadays that you may as well buy one and disable all the stuff you're not going to use. I guess it's because they are produced in such numbers, that onboard audio/network chips cost mere pennies. It would probably cost the manufacturer more to sell two products, one without the extras.
... are cheaper in my experience, since they're geared toward the value market.
quit yer whining and buy a motherboard.
I already have a good graphics card, NIC, USB audio device, etc.
Well you don't want an on-board graphics card. Just ignore that. If you have an on-board NIC you can remove your PCI card and free up a slot. On-board audio is damn good these days. I paid $80 for a gigabyte board with all the on-board shit and I only use on-board NIC & Sound. They aren't very expensive and if you don't like the on-board stuff then don't use it!
Have you metaroderated recently?
I can't imagine how much you think you would save with motherboards that support all this stuff going for $65.
If you are a 31337 g4m3r, integrated graphics is indeed a joke. However, it's good enough for 85% of the users out there, who will almost never run anything more intensive than Word, IE, and the occasional Flash-based game. Same deal with integrated sound -- for Windows event beeps and boops, it's more than plenty.
10/100 Mb/s speeds are now common on integrated Ethernet controllers, and most of them have very little braindamage these days. 1Gb/s on-chip controllers are also already starting to appear.
To put it another way: Parallel, RS-232 serial, and PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports used to require separate expansion cards. Today, they are integrated into the motherboard chipset, and no one thinks the worse for this. For those who need extra ports or special high-performance ports, third-party PCI expansion cards are still available.
So, in short, the way systems are being put together these days, there's no cost savings to be had by breaking out the peripherals you don't need. If you feel a need to put the old parts to good use, donate them to a school, or use them to build a Frankenbox on which to do kernel or driver development :-).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
>> And why do modern boards still have serial and Parralell ports? They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world, why are they even included as standard on ALL boards? On Some us because they still have some value but ALL?
My new (as of January) Dell at work doesn't have them. It just has 6 USB ports (8, if you also count the two on the front).
Dell can remove them, because they are selling a complete system and know that customers don't need a PS2 keyboard slot, for example.
The separate motherboard vendors still include them because it is cheaper to sell one motherboard version than it is to sell two, where one has a reduce featureset.
In a few more years they will be phased out. It just takes time. ISA took forever to be phased out as well. PCI is obsolete now, too, but even you might hope that they keep a few PCI slots around for a few years until all your old PCI add-on cards have been replaced. (Assuming you don't use all motherboard built-in features.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
There's a good chance that the integrated stuff he's going to get for free anyway is actually BETTER than the expansion cards he's so insanely keen on continuing to use.
Welcome to the reality of computer components - there's no value in trying to save old tech.
paintball
If you're running Windows, the integrated on-board stuff will work fine, and as another poster says, you could use the built-in graphics to run a second monitor, which you'll find very addictive. If you're a gamer, you'll probably want to use your own video card, but otherwise it's nice to have your system be cooler and quieter with the built-in video.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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