What's up with the ridiculous prices?

neverminder

neverminder

neverminder

Associate
Joined
24 Apr 2013
Posts
109
WTF is going on with motherboard prices? 3 years ago I bought here the Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme Intel Z390 for £358.29. It was a top of the line motherboard from Asus and overall one of the most expensive on this site. Today basically the same line motherboard, Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacier Intel Z690 is £1,659.95 which is almost 5 times more expensive. How could the prices skyrocket 5 times within 3 years? This goes way beyond what even scalpers are selling GPUs for.
 
Inflation also says hello - all the money printing (QE) from the bank of England (£900 Billion so far) has devalued the £, causing each unit of currency to be worth less. Thus everything is more expensive, especailly electronics that are also affected by the huge shipping cost increases.
 
Dave2150 said:
Inflation also says hello - all the money printing (QE) from the bank of England (£900 Billion so far) has devalued the £, causing each unit of currency to be worth less. Thus everything is more expensive, especailly electronics that are also affected by the huge shipping cost increases.
Click to expand...

Well last time I checked inflation was like 5%, not 500%. Also my understanding that container based shipping was adding something something like 2% on average BC (Before Corona), so even if you increase that tenfold, that's still only 20%. What's up with this £1.7K motherboard? Is it made out of gold or something? Motherboards used to be the cheapest component since forever, how is it suddenly the most expensive?
 
neverminder said:
3 years ago I bought here the Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme Intel Z390 for £358.29. It was a top of the line motherboard from Asus and overall one of the most expensive on this site.
Click to expand...
When you buy one of the most expensive boards available your just feeding back to the companies that sell these that you're happy to pay top dollar so they will oblige you.
 
Joxeon said:
When you buy one of the most expensive boards available your just feeding back to the companies that sell these that you're happy to pay top dollar so they will oblige you.
Click to expand...

Even at the time it felt expensive, so I hesitated paying almost £400 for a motherboard. But now I sure as ѕhit ain't gonna pay £1700 for the same thing, because that's just beyond insane. I just wanted to find out what caused this crazy rise. I am aware of the chip shortage, but no other part has jumped 5X in price.
 
Only complete fools / tools spend that amount on a motherboard or any other individual components!
 
neverminder said:
WTF is going on with motherboard prices? 3 years ago I bought here the Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme Intel Z390 for £358.29. It was a top of the line motherboard from Asus and overall one of the most expensive on this site. Today basically the same line motherboard, Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacier Intel Z690 is £1,659.95 which is almost 5 times more expensive. How could the prices skyrocket 5 times within 3 years? This goes way beyond what even scalpers are selling GPUs for.
Click to expand...

The same would be the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme. The Glacier is the stupid version of the rip-off board.
 
When people talk about "chip shortage" are they just thinking about large ASICs such as CPU, GPU etc? It might be better to talk about "semiconductor" shortage. The price of everything has increased due to demand outstripping supply. If you want power transistors for 2023 then order them now. Whilst the OP might be correct that the total BOM cost itself may not have increased by a factor of 5, but there are many reasons for price increase apart from BOM. The biggest factor is what consumers are prepared to pay. Look at what happened to iPhone prices and that had nothing to do with component costs.
 
Darujhistan said:
MOBO's are the biggest waste of money compoenent there is.
Click to expand...

If you have high end audio equipment, the audio solutions on the high end motherboards can end up being a cheaper overall solution. For example, the headphones I use for gaming/music/movies/TV are the Sennheiser HD660S. These can't be driven well with bog standard audio found on normal £200 motherboards.


Jump up to £500 motherboards, Maximus Hero level, and you get a hardware amp, hardware USB DAC and fantastic noise isolation. I've tested this vs a standalone USB AMP/Dac solution (which was over £500 alone) and could not tell the difference.

Also if you need huge amounts of fast storage, the high end motherboards have you covered there. My Maximus Hero XIII system has 4 m.2 slots, while my Z690 Maximus Hero (which I'm still waiting to ship) has 5, including one PCI-EV5 slot ready for the gen 5 SSD's next year.

If you don't use high end audio or don't need lots of storage, then I fully agree the the £200-300 boards are far better value, and are mostly equal performance wise. This is especially true since Intel/AMD effectively removed almost all overclocking headroom from their most recent CPU generations, for normal ambient cooling methods.
 
High end motherboards have skyrocketed in price as people have proven they will pay it. Flagship boards are generally £800-1000 now.

Technically the Glacial is the Extreme with a water block so they are in a class of their own in terms of pricing, the regular Extreme is about £950 which is still crazy but less so.

Unless you need tons of M.2 or are building for looks then the MSI Z690A-Pro is pretty much the best board going for Z690 as it has no problems with high speed DDR4 Gear 1 Ram and no issues with overclocked 12900k
 
Supply and demand. Perhaps manufacturers saw that videocards are selling for great profit and are trying it on motherboards.
 
Imo 'normal' entry level motherboards are the cheapest they've ever been. I paid £60 for an MSI b550m pro-vdh last week which I think is a great board, just lacking a better audio chip.

The cheapest board I ever bought was an Intel g31 (bottom of barrel core 2 era) for £25. That's more expensive after inflation than a £30 A320 before you even adjust for £/$.

The manufacturers have created new tiers of extravagance and it appears people are willing to pay for it. And are probably fully aware they don't have to.
 
Dave2150 said:
If you have high end audio equipment, the audio solutions on the high end motherboards can end up being a cheaper overall solution. For example, the headphones I use for gaming/music/movies/TV are the Sennheiser HD660S. These can't be driven well with bog standard audio found on normal £200 motherboards.
Click to expand...
Another bad reason to waste hundreds.

Good sound cards don't cost really much and can be kept over PC upgrades and multiple motherboards giving vastly superior return for money.
Sound cards capable to driving pretty much any headphone cost below £150.
Heck, Creative has Sound BlasterX G6 £75 at B-stock so could have have competent motherboard and that with still half of price of £500 schmuck baits left for some other part.
 
Dave2150 said:
If you have high end audio equipment, the audio solutions on the high end motherboards can end up being a cheaper overall solution. For example, the headphones I use for gaming/music/movies/TV are the Sennheiser HD660S. These can't be driven well with bog standard audio found on normal £200 motherboards.


Jump up to £500 motherboards, Maximus Hero level, and you get a hardware amp, hardware USB DAC and fantastic noise isolation. I've tested this vs a standalone USB AMP/Dac solution (which was over £500 alone) and could not tell the difference.

Also if you need huge amounts of fast storage, the high end motherboards have you covered there. My Maximus Hero XIII system has 4 m.2 slots, while my Z690 Maximus Hero (which I'm still waiting to ship) has 5, including one PCI-EV5 slot ready for the gen 5 SSD's next year.

If you don't use high end audio or don't need lots of storage, then I fully agree the the £200-300 boards are far better value, and are mostly equal performance wise. This is especially true since Intel/AMD effectively removed almost all overclocking headroom from their most recent CPU generations, for normal ambient cooling methods.
Click to expand...

I was wondering how to connect up a small Denon amp/speakers to mine for best sound ... using cheapo Logitechs currently but think my mobo has some of the audio 'goodies' that you mentioned?
P354tj3.png
 
I made a simular thread ages ago and it didnt go down well ( apparently you can just make do with half the features you want and have been using for years )

My example was me buying a Hero in 2014 for 165, then in 2017 £250 and now in 2021 they are a take the P £520. I guess in 2027 they will be £1000
 
EsaT said:
Another bad reason to waste hundreds.

Good sound cards don't cost really much and can be kept over PC upgrades and multiple motherboards giving vastly superior return for money.
Sound cards capable to driving pretty much any headphone cost below £150.
Heck, Creative has Sound BlasterX G6 £75 at B-stock so could have have competent motherboard and that with still half of price of £500 schmuck baits left for some other part.
Click to expand...
Was thinking the same thing, about the only thing you get out of having onboard audio only is a cleaner build.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom