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?"

Comments

You'll end up paying more

[Anonymous Coward]

You end up paying more for a bare-bones motherboard because of their rarity.

Re:You'll end up paying more

[Trizor]

And besides, there are all sorts of advantages to the redundancy the cards you already have will provide. Should something go bad, you'll have a back up, as well as a control set to compare against test results. I'd say get a board with onboard components and maximise yoru use. 2 NICs is especially nice if you find your self in a situation that requires odd network topology and weird on box configurations.

Re:You'll end up paying more

[NanoGator]

"You end up paying more for a bare-bones motherboard because of their rarity."

I doubt there's much price difference anyway. The reason why mobos have on board lan, for example, is they can add it really cheaply.

Frankly, I wouldn't want a mobo without the frills. Integrated Nic is nice. On-board sounds means there's a backup. On board video, provided you still have an AGP port, can also be used as a backup. When the machine's retired, it can easily be given to somebody else.

Re:You'll end up paying more

[Sique]

There is another aspect: Chip sets.
To have a chipset being accepted by the motherboard manufacturers, it has to come with easy implementable reference designs and with a small board real estate, that is: a minimum of used area for the chips itself and for the connections to other functions. So chip sets tend to integrate as many functions as possible, because thus board manufactures need less additional circuits and wiring to put those functions at the boards. A large portion of the boards in turn are sold to assemblers anyway, which are keen on boards with many functions already builtin, because then they don't need to put additional cards and ports into the boxes they are assembling.
So for a board manufacturer to get into the assembler business to sell boards he has to offer fully integrated boards, and he will choose fully integrated chipsets to deliver.
And if he has once designed fully integrated board series, what's the point in designing stripped down versions again? He will use the same chipsets anyway, because he has all the testing equipment in place for those, he reuses the design of the wiring (once the masks for wiring are done, the manufactunging costs are the same, independent of the number of wires), so all he saves are the few cents for the actual sockets and the soldering of the sockets to the boards.
Basicly a "bare" board then is nothing else than a board without the sockets, but electrically the functions are there. But to manufacture those boards intentionally you need another production process, another QA process, another packaging. It might be cheaper to just sort the boards according to their final testing results and then specify which functions are 'there' (those that work in the tests).

Onboard not that bad

[Psionicist]

I used to reason exactly like you once and tried to use my software preferences when I choose hardware, no bloat etc, but eventually I found out that hardware "bloat" is not that bad, unlike the software kind. My most stable boxes are the ones that use the onboard components, whereas my old plain vanilla motherboard with a 3rd party soundcard hangs pretty frequently because of god-know-what compatibility issues. When you get onboard audio, at least you know it will work with the chipset.

A good reason to buy a no frills MB

[zakezuke]

I see lots of advice that say buy a motherboard with extra stuff and if you need to disable it in the bios. But many new motherboards are making a choice to go with a non-standard IO layout. While usually this means it comes with the ATX plate you need, there are those of us who bought into cases that use an older style of ATX back plate, non-standard size ATX back plate, or in even more rare and cheaper cases no plate what so ever.

For example... my case is an HP Vectra desktop with that Asus a7v333 motherboard. I'm odd I know. In order to get the provided plate to fit properly I'd need to cut the hole larger by about 10cm or so. Further, the audio jacks extend above the size of the hole making the top jack unuseable.

Big-name computers and motherboards

[Quattro Vezina]

As much as I hate HP, I have to admit that they've done one thing right: many of their desktop PCs use Asus motherboards.

I have one HP machine (no, I'm not stupid enough to pay money for one--my parents gave it to me when they got a new one), that has an Asus P4B266 motherboard inside it. It's currently in my closet being used as a server, and I have to say that the board's not bad...

Another old HP machine that used to belong to my parents (which is currently sitting half-dismantled on my bed) also has an Asus board--specifically, a P2B-VE (hey, I said it was an old machine).

There's one site that has a list of what motherboards come with what HP machines. A very large amount of them have Asus boards, and there are also quite a few machines that have MSI boards.

Contrast this with Dell. Dell not only makes their own boards, but they use all sorts of proprietary form factors. A friend of mine, who has a shitty Dell PC, wanted to install a new hard drive. His machine has only one internal 3.5" bay and one external 3.5" bay (taken up by the original hard drive and floppy drive, respectively), so he decided to remove the floppy drive to put the new hard drive in. It turns out that Dell makes their own floppy drives and internal bays, which have their own proprietary screw arangement. Yes, I said proprietary screw arrangement of all things. No storebought drive will fit into that machine's drive bays because of that. To hell with Dell. Also, we found out that Dell uses some kind of oddball heatsink/fan--it actually attaches to the case and funnels air through holes in the case. It's like a CPU fan and case fan in one device. Freaky.

As I said above, I hate HP, but I at least have some respect for them. I have no respect for Dell whatsoever.

mass market economics

[pjrc]

It seems like a waste to buy a board with all the built-in stuff (and probably pay extra for it)

Not really.

The fallacy is that these extra peripherals cost extra. They don't, really. The price you pay is determined by, more than any other factor, the economy of mass producing exactly the same product for such a large market.

Especially in the chipset, those extra transistors come almost for free. It would cost MORE to make another version of the chips with a different configuration. Likewise, even with the same chips, it would cost MORE to make additional models without the extra connectors. There is tremendous savings in manufacturing only one model (or relatively few). Distribution and retail sales also saves costs only having to deal with fewer distinct models.

So just don't use those extra bell and whistles. But don't imagine they're costing you anything extra. The PC motherboard market is extremely competitive, and many companies and individuals shop primarily for the lowest price. If there was an easy way, such as making a different model without some parts, to achieve a lower price, you better believe the manufacturers would do it in a heartbeat.

And there are plenty of budget motherboards. If they could save even a small amount taking off more features, they certainly would. Because they haven't, you can have high confidence those extras aren't actually costing you anything extra.... in the reality of today's manufacturing, distribution and retail marketplace.