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Intel Leaving Desktop Motherboard Business
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 really need my high-end desktop computer to do my job. How long until something will happen to this market segment will disappear as well? I cannot, for the life of me, see me doing my graphics, game development and 3D on a tablet unless it gets powerful enough for my needs.
Compared to ASUS and MSI motherboards, Intel ones are much, MUCH better engineered. You get what you pay for.
I have to disagree. Years of using MSI and ASUS has shown great reliability and performance. Every Intel board i have had were total junk. Short lived, cheaply built. Of course, it might have been the processors terrible form factors. Every MSI and ASUS i ever had was AMD powered, and far superior to that LGA crap simply because it had pins and wasn't completely disabled by a little vibration. With my years of experience in the field, i just have to say, i will never buy anything with the Intel badge again.
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.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
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.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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.
Aww. I loved Intel boards. They were the only ones where there were no spelling mistakes in the manuals or bios. =(
Agreed. I've had a brand new system that i just built not boot due to incompatible RAM. It meets all the specs, exceeds some of them, but no good in an Intel board. Drop it in an MSI, works great for years. G.Skill told me it's because they wouldn't pay to be "I7 Certified".
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
I tend to think that the high end ASUS boards are the best money can buy. I've always thought Intel motherboards only compete in the OEM sector.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
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.
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, but they fix it 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.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old