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Is Intel Planning To Kill Enthusiast PCs?
OceanMan7 writes "According to a story by Charlie Demerjian, a long-time hardware journalist, Intel's next generation of x86 CPUs, Broadwell, will not come in a package having pins. Hence manufacturers will have to solder it onto motherboards. That will likely seriously wound the enthusiast PC market. If Intel doesn't change their plans, the future pasture for enthusiasts looks like it will go to ARM chips or something from offshore manufacturers."
Uh, yes. Want to overclock? Those chipsets cost more. Serial port? Do you want to spend extra to get the optical audio output, or is 2-channel analog OK? What about PCI slots, need any? How many 8 or 16x PCI-E slots do you want? Cause it costs more if you want 2 or more. Do you think you'll need 4 RAM slots or is 2 enough? Do you want to spend the extra dough to have 4 6 Gbps SATA ports or is 2 enough? Or do you want to save some more money and just have 3 Gbps ports? Do you want 8 USB 3.0 ports, or just 2? Or maybe none? All different cost structures. eSATA? RAID 5 built into the motherboard?
Yes, there's worth in shopping for a motherboard if you're an enthusiast. You're not. That's OK, but don't brush off everyone else just because we want things you don't care about.