Tuesday, May 8th 2018
A Push for the Higher Margin: Intel Reportedly Discontinues Production of Its H310 Chipset
A report straight out of DigiTimes, citing industry sources, says that Intel has discontinued production of its H310 chipset. The decision has apparently stemmed from lower than expected production capacity for chipsets on the 14 nm process. When that happens, production focus must shift to a specific part: in this case, Intel obviously went with the option with the lower opportunity cost, and increased production of the Z370 chipset: the one with the increased feature-set, and, most likely than not, higher margins.
After a single month of tight supply for the H310 chipset, motherboard makers are now forced to use Intel's B360 chipset in their more cost-conscious options as well - a part which carries higher cost, and thus precludes manufacturers from hitting all the price points they usually would with a fully vertical Intel chipset lineup. Speculation has emerged claiming Intel suspended the supply of H310 because they have chosen to conduct a manufacturing process change from the tight-supply 14 nm (used across almost all of Intel's production stack, both consumer and enterprise) to a 22 nm fabrication technology. Further speculation places this constrained 14 nm supply as existent because of the delay in advancing to 10 nm, a process that Intel expected to be producing in volume by now (and since a while back, to be fair).
Sources:
DigiTies, via ETeknix
After a single month of tight supply for the H310 chipset, motherboard makers are now forced to use Intel's B360 chipset in their more cost-conscious options as well - a part which carries higher cost, and thus precludes manufacturers from hitting all the price points they usually would with a fully vertical Intel chipset lineup. Speculation has emerged claiming Intel suspended the supply of H310 because they have chosen to conduct a manufacturing process change from the tight-supply 14 nm (used across almost all of Intel's production stack, both consumer and enterprise) to a 22 nm fabrication technology. Further speculation places this constrained 14 nm supply as existent because of the delay in advancing to 10 nm, a process that Intel expected to be producing in volume by now (and since a while back, to be fair).
62 Comments on A Push for the Higher Margin: Intel Reportedly Discontinues Production of Its H310 Chipset
Also, B360 is not the only option, there's H370 and Q370. If you don't overclock (and you probably don't if you're looking for cheap mobos), H370 is actually better than Z370.
Some people need a reality check.
Imagine this ratio on a USD $60 board. it will cost BRL 240 + Retailer Margin and other Taxes Fees and Delivery, for a LOW END product. Doesnt believe it? Lemme show ya.
This is the Cheapest B360 Board availabe in the Biggest hardware retailer in Brazil.
Compare the prices and look at the almost 7x increase.
Sure, it sucks that the 10USD difference is closer to a 20USD difference after taxes, but even in 3rd-world countries, if 20USD difference matters significantly you probably have bigger problems than one motherboard costing ~10% more than another motherboard
PS: I'm from a 3rd-world country too, with an even worse exchange rate, and 20 USD isn't that big of a deal when buying computer parts. 50USD is where the caring starts. We do admittedly only have a 15% tax rate on imports, so our money does go quite a bit further in buying bits, but even then!
AM1 was a savior, but now it's dead, so motherboard's costs increased to double or triple of what it was (either A320, H110 or H310). Atom/Celeron/Pentium motherboards are expensive, too slow, and the "feature" of not being able to upgrade/replace the CPU is a neat point.
Exclude taxes and fees, and a person with a Mininum wage will not have money to buy a basic computer after working an entire month.
I've upgraded GPUs every 3 years lately, and now 6 years in I've started looking into upgrading my CPU as well.
Sure, I've also added a server about 2 and a half years ago, and bought a couple laptops in that same timeframe, but those are not exactly essential, I am quite well-off, and I got all of those second-hand. I mean, at this point basically everything but my desktop (minus SSDs... those are second-hand too!), mouse, phone and harddrives are second-hand.
But in the end by the time that budget class reaches that GPU class the game is heavily multithreaded above the level I3 can deliver while a ryzen WILL.
And of course, when someone announces several products at once, we get the usual "confusing lineup" posts.
Keep it up, guys.
Additionally, Intel has given many people plenty of reasons to not purchase their products, but you cannot fault Intel for exchange rates, taxes, and income for countries where they sale products.
Manufacturers only care about enthusiasts because of word of mouth. It does little besides recommending one manufacturer or another to family and friends, but if you manage to antagonize enough of them, you get quite the online backlash. And that can sting.
So I went ahead an built the cheapest Coffee Lake system I could using KaBuM.
i3-8100 - R$509.90
4GB DDR4-2400 - R$229.90
500GB HDD - R$204.90
500W PSU - R$99.90
MATX Case - R$82.90
Windows 10 Home - R$369.90
So the cheapest you can get with a H310 board would be R$1,997.30. The B360 makes the price 2,067.30. For a total price increase of.........drum roll please.........3%. Oh the humanity! Won't someone think of the children!
Of course , I fully expect the overwhelming elitist majority here to dismiss that but as difficult as it might be to understand , someone out there is counting every dollar they have to pay.
Also why do you make the assumption that this is relevant just to independent users ? If a company wants to buy 100 PCs , they will sure as hell care about 3%.
Cheaper is cheaper, this is clearly not a first world problem that you can understand.