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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?"
You end up paying more for a bare-bones motherboard because of their rarity.
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?
Awesome story, again! Google gets DNS jacked and we get to help this fucknut find a motherboard, and it will probably be posted 4 more times this week by timothy and CowboyNeal HOORAY OFR /.
Slashdot sucks
Thank god... one less Windows user out there now. I am sorry to inform you that they no longer make motherboards for Windows as you might as well install Linux or buy a Mac...
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
I can't imagine how much you think you would save with motherboards that support all this stuff going for $65.
Even in server boards, things still get integrated. Different sets of things (SCSI controllers, low-end video hardware). Reasons? It frees up slots (big +++ in 1U 2U rackmount land), and at the same time drops cost (may be hard to believe, but in the log run it does).
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
After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke,
Next time be sure to clean out the registry on a regular schedule.
Companies like via, nvidia, intel produce chips which will tend to the largest market segment, which is how they produce chips with everything on board at a cheap price. If they produced chipsets of different types, the production runs will be smaller, support and testing costs larger and pricing higher. I actually expect the likes of AMD to release CPU+chipset chips with say the top 256MB of ram built-in, along with both the north and south bridge, nic phy, audio and usb and everything else in between. The resulting board+cpu will be cheaper than the current board+cpus.
AMD actually currently integrates the north bridge in the athlon64 if I'm not wrong.
Even if you want architectural simplicity and efficiency, its hard to find a simple ARM, m68k or ppc microcontroller without something built-in specialized for its market.Having just a no-frills set of parts was last seen in the 8086 and 6502 days in which each chip did only one thing. And it was expensive as hell.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
>> 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.
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.
Ive had very good experiences with ABIT barebone motherboards, which I normally use on servers.
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 that's what you really want, you can buy a passive backplane and plug in CPU and peripheral boards, up to and including dual Xeons Passive backplanes are used in specialized industrial applications, and will cost you far more than a "loaded" motherboard. This is not something desktop users buy. But they do exist.
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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
Isn't that Abit's new marketing slogan?
Mwave, TigerDirect, Directron, Newegg....there are many sites that provide these barebones motherboards. I have never seen one for less than 80 dollars though. I have found all in one integrated boards for much cheaper. If you are looking for a barebones system though, try Tyan, MSI, or Giga-byte. ASUS tends to pack everything onto the board, soyo and abit are the same. I havent heard or had much experience with epox, dfi (they also have good reviews, and I believe the lanboy is fairly barebones but expensive). Do about 20 minutes searching and you can find what you are looking for. I personally recommend a Giga-byte board. I have had nothing but great luck with them.
Best of luck in your search.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Actually, I did.
Someone borrowed a Netgear switch from me, and said he had a power supply for it already. Silly me thought he knew what he was doing, and didn't first demand to see the PSU. Whaddya know, a Netgear switch prefers to have 7.5VDC@1A, not 15VAC@.3A
He came back to my office in a panic, because I didn't have any other switches to lend out. Said he let out the magic smoke, something he'd heard me say about hardware before. I went down to the electronics lab with the switch and user in tow, found a 'lytic cap the same as the one that blew, and said "No problem, I'll just put in a new can of smoke. Gimme 15 minutes." Handed him a working switch (with the correct PSU) and I swear he thinks that little canister literally holds smoke inside it.
Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
Radio, radio, rah rah rah!
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.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Completely false.
Pretty much all of the new on-board audio supports multiple channels (OS drivers may be another story!). The bleeding edge on-board audio even supports High Definition Audio.
Most of the high-volume motherboard chipset vendors -- Intel (the big fish), AMD, NVIDIA, SiS, ULi, VIA, ... -- all implement the same advanced features in their chipsets: SATA2 NCQ, USB 2, HD audio, gigabit ethernet, and more. Just wait 3-6 months, and a new-and-spiffy ethernet/SATA/USB/audio feature will appear for free on a modern motherboard. If its a mass-market feature, of course.
Blindly choosing "no on-board devices" is rather silly. Today's mass market motherboard contains on-board devices, which means the cheapest motherboards give you that stuff for free. If the on-board device meets your feature requirements, use it. Sealed silicon interconnects are far more reliable than PCI slots anyway.
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.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools