Out with the Mortars in with the Torpedoes. MSI marketing full steam ahead

These prices are just disgusting...

I know there's a pandemic, the effects of which have hit pretty much every industry, but I don't believe for one second that it's the ONLY thing factoring into the bat-shit crazy pricing on these boards. See, I had a feeling this was going to happen. Saw the prices go up on the AMD side with the introduction of PCIe 4.0 and just knew that as soon as Intel adopted the new standard, the pricing for their boards would go through the damn roof simply because "it's Intel"

I get that, as someone eluded to earlier with the bugatti reference, paying 3 million for a car is completely crazy (unless your a wealthy car enthusiast like Jay Leno) but you can't really compare a motherboard to a car, because unlike motherboards, a great many cars actually INCREASE in value over time, while motherboards slowly become obsolete.

I honestly have no words to describe the prices for these motherboards. I do have some advice for prospective buyers of Intel though: Stick with Z490. Research which companies make boards that have the hardware to run PCIe 4.0 (clock generators and such) if 4.0 is something you REALLY need. If not, just buy whatever Z490 board you wish and pop in a Rocket Lake CPU. But for the love of god, don't encourage these prices by paying them for what is, for all intents and purposes, a mainstream segment. HEDT boards don't even cost as much as the Extreme/Extreme Glacial or Godlike, for fuck's sake!

iuliugOut with the Mortars in with the Torpedoes. MSI marketing full steam ahead

I hope that they release a Nuclear Bomb series motherboard before I upgrade from my current one. I don't want a pitiful firecracker, dammit.

I'm not surprised, higher quality Intel motherboards have always been...historically enthusiastic?

zlobbyOnly because people are buying them for stupid prices.

Nothing drives prices down quite like zero sales.

These motherboard manufacturers complain(in private to press) about loads(warehouses of it apparently) of unsold Intel motherboards in last couple of generations(X299 and likes) and yet they go ahead to create butt tonne of SKUs at absurd prices. These manufacturers like Intel need to go the way of dodo.

Well... A few more price hikes and I could sell my z390 pc without a loss or with some profit.

I always look for the cheapest mITX board with wifi, so there super high end stuff have always been website decorations to me lol

Chloe PriceI hope that they release a Nuclear Bomb series motherboard before I upgrade from my current one. I don't want a pitiful firecracker, dammit.

The did have a big bang series a while back

msimaxgodlike with 2 pcie slots hmm

For overclockers?

then better to wait for B560, for the sub 200$ ones...
or since rocket lake is 14nm,
Similiar to all GPU,CPU that most normal people buy...
just buy a cheap last gen motherboard+cpu and call it a day

B560 might be overclockable, at least per some of the rumors. That might explain the higher price point of the Z590.

Anyway, these prices just push me farther towards getting a 10700K while they are still plentiful and cheap.

But with all the price inflation across the board in everything from lumber to computer chips, I'm starting to wonder if the issue isn't much broader and deeper than just the PC / computer industry. Even gas is starting to go up rapidly.

All this money printing and people staying at home might just be kicking off some big price inflation.

The increase in prices for the last two generations was absurd and set the stage for the ridiculous prices that we see right now.

€1500 translates to CAD $2300. No way, I'll ever pay that much for a board and then add a $600 CPU. This is madness!!

I'll stick to my X99 Mpower with my 6850K OC to 4.7 and wait for another round. And I hope they don't sell many boards, so they have to scale back their pricing.

This would be a concrete proof that Rocket Lake + Z590 is highly competitive against Ryzen 5000+ X570 at any level.

I actually don't care too much about the ultra-high end niche board pricing, but do care that it's creating price hikes across the whole product stack. $200-250 should be the price for a solid upper midrage or low 'high-end' enthusiast-level board that has decent features, even if without the decked-out extras that honestly not many people use. $200 for the lowest-grade board, unless it's effectively one of the solid enthusiast boards and the low-end is simply gone, is clearly too much.

I'm sorry, I know development gets more expensive and Intel asks for a good amount of € for using their chipsets and stuff…. but this is getting ridiculous….

The chipset is still somewhere >14nm, the capacitors and stuff are still mostly the same they use for 5+ years and the production technology improved over the last 10+ years massively, this should have at least lead to a roughly same price-range over the last years. But the top-notch boards increased from 400€ to 500€ and now to 999€ without offering really much more than you got 5 years ago.

What changed massively? A new USB and PCI-E type. But still not more PCIe-slots, usb-ports or anything. x79 boards already had 1 m.2 slot. x99 boards offered up to 2 m.2 x4 slots already and up to 10 sata-3 ports. None of the boards shown here has anything that much different, but especially for asus it's not understandable why a regular STRIX board (yes, those are still "regular" to me, as they are just the upper middle class while the Maximus series was the "high end" series) starts at >300€ where in the past the high end started and except a few very specific boards it ended at around 500€.



I see no reason (not even corvid related) why mid-range boards are valued now at double the price they were 5 years ago. MSI / Asus / Gigabyte Z170 series was between 150 and 250€ for mid-range boards, 300+ for upper class and ended at 550/600 for the "ultimate" versions like he Z270 Maximus from Asus at around 600€ which already created an outrage - and comparing that Z270 board to the "new" Z590 board….. I don't see much more we get here. No "superb design" or technological marvel validating double the price (the Z270 maximus already had a very nice design, good cooling, good power stages/phases, similar amount of usb/sata/etc. connectivity and so on....) for a >900€ board, let alone the 1500€ board with the mono-block …..

In 2012 - 2015 I have read that motherboards will become cheaper and there will be less custom motherboards because technologies moving into system on chip and more features are integrated into CPU

2020: Motherboard which costs 1500

Just don't buy. These greedy corpos doesn't get their $$$ if you ignore this ridiculous offering.

hero1The increase in prices for the last two generations was absurd and set the stage for the ridiculous prices that we see right now.

€1500 translates to CAD $2300. No way, I'll ever pay that much for a board and then add a $600 CPU. This is madness!!

I'll stick to my X99 Mpower with my 6850K OC to 4.7 and wait for another round. And I hope they don't sell many boards, so they have to scale back their pricing.

Correct; it's become so ludicrous people will have to start leveraging their cars/homes as collateral in order to make a loan so they can afford these parts. LOL

piloponthJust don't buy. These greedy corpos doesn't get their $$$ if you ignore this ridiculous offering.

Yes indeed, they keep releasing their quarterly profit margins which are in the billions of profit, then they have the audacity to say they have it so bad, that their cost went up, it's the fault of "COVID" while they are still fully employed etc etc.

Most people need to be able to purchase these parts at normal prices because money is tight, this will enable them to work from home or stay entertained but struggle to do so now because of these imbecilic prices they have set. :roll:

BubsterWho Knew that Covid Virus is gonna be an opportunity for these scumbag OEMs (especially Nvidia) to get rich quick, charge what they want and walk away with it scott free...

Yeah, it’s as if they themselves have turned into the loathsome eBay scalpers

LTUGamerIn 2012 - 2015 I have read that motherboards will become cheaper and there will be less custom motherboards because technologies moving into system on chip and more features are integrated into CPU

2020: Motherboard which costs 1500

back in those days we actually had midrange boards for how much entry level ones cost nowadays, utterly disappointing

Caring1For overclockers?

makes no sense its not like a ram slot where you would get a benefit from removing them.

I'm still rocking my x99 godlike and features that i thought i wouldn't be using comes in handy today
top of the line Mb shouldn't skimp out on features.
on a side note i saw a pic where it seemed like a 3rd pcie was there but covered

msimaxmakes no sense its not like a ram slot where you would get a benefit from removing them.

That was a brain fart, I was thinking Ram slot.
Still, multiple PCI-e slots are heading the way of the dinosaur as single GPU seems to be the future being forced upon us and everything else is built in.

ZoneDymoEDIT: im a bit baffled by all these reactions tbh, like...do you guys go over to some Bugatti forum to complain how outrages it is that they ask 3 million dollars for their new car?
Or are you actually aware that car isnt for you (heck its barely for anyone, the company loses money on ever single one sold) and just go buy that Ford or whatever you were going to anyway?

Except that's a terrible analogy -- Bugattis don't get replaced every 6-12 months, nor do they get worse specs with higher pricing in the newer models. Even with the custom blocks, they sure as hell are not losing a dime on any of these boards -- let's not pretend otherwise.

Intel appears to have moved all their boards up-market.

See Image below. The B560 has moved decidedly upscale. Gigabyte now has a 12+1 power stage VRM on its B560M Aorus Elite, which is better than any of the low end Z490s. The lowly DS3H B560 is now 6+2 while the old B460 was 4+2.

And the Z590, there's not really a direct comparison to previous gen boards there. WiFi 6E and some other connectivity upgrades are there, but the VRMs on these new boards... holy crap. The *lowest end* Asus Z590 Prime has 14+2 power stages. That compares to 8+1 for the Z490. I have the Z490 Prime, so comparing some features - 8+1 vs 14+2 power, 1Gbit Intel Ethernet vs 2.5Gbit ethernet, Dual M.2 on both (but PCIe 4 on the Z590), dual M.2 heatsinks on Z590 vs no m.2 heatsinks on Z490, Thunderbolt 4 header on Z590 Prim vs no thunderbolt on Z490 Prime,

So no, this stuff isn't quite the same.

The B560 / H570 are more comparable to the prior gen Z490s.

B560 supporting DDR4-4000 :


Prime Z590 with better VRM, 2.5Gbit Ethernet, thunderbolt 4 headers :

RandallFlaggIntel appears to have moved all their boards up-market.

See Image below. The B560 has moved decidedly upscale. Gigabyte now has a 12+1 power stage VRM on its B560M Aorus Elite, which is better than any of the low end Z490s. The lowly DS3H B560 is now 6+2 while the old B460 was 4+2.

And the Z590, there's not really a direct comparison to previous gen boards there. WiFi 6E and some other connectivity upgrades are there, but the VRMs on these new boards... holy crap. The *lowest end* Asus Z590 Prime has 14+2 power stages. That compares to 8+1 for the Z490. I have the Z490 Prime, so comparing some features - 8+1 vs 14+2 power, 1Gbit Intel Ethernet vs 2.5Gbit ethernet, Dual M.2 on both (but PCIe 4 on the Z590), dual M.2 heatsinks on Z590 vs no m.2 heatsinks on Z490, Thunderbolt 4 header on Z590 Prim vs no thunderbolt on Z490 Prime,

So no, this stuff isn't quite the same.

The B560 / H570 are more comparable to the prior gen Z490s.

B560 supporting DDR4-4000 :


Prime Z590 with better VRM, 2.5Gbit Ethernet, thunderbolt 4 headers :

So you say, it's actually possible for "next gen entry level boards" to inherit benefits of "last gen's top boards" instead of stalling at no improvement whatsoever over generations or even reduced functionality (1xx series to 2xx series boards lost connectivity and functions in most cases for example) ?

Wow, that's totally new and not what should be expected, right? Because why would a new generation have new functions compared to the last one?!


And the power stages are a "very bad example". Why do they have those?
A) Look at the reviews of the last year …. Most entry level boards hat MASSIVE issues with power delivery (even not-oced), overheating VRM's or even cpu's which went into power-lock far below their general multi-core frequency because the board couldn't handle them.
B) the "power hunger" of the last few intel chips (which should have been 10nm for some time but got back-portet again and again to 14+++++++++++++++² nm more than once) grew massively. The new generation will not be less demanding than the last and the producers don't want to run into the same issues as stated in A)
C) VRM's are one of the more expensive elements on the board, besides the grams of copper inside the PCB and the licencing & purchase costs for the chipset, I get that - but again, the board overall still isn't more expensive than 50€, at most. Add another 50€ for production energy costs, labor and someone designing those fabulous packages they ship in and you should be good. Everything on top is overhead and a split revenue between the company producing them, the retailer and the shipping company (in unequal amounts of course). So listing VRM's as a good reason, why upper mid-range-boards went from 150-200€ to a starting point of >300€ is a very bad example :D