Intel Z690 Motherboard Costs Explained

[DeathtoGnomes]

One final point that I didn't make, is that all the board makers are getting MDF (Marketing Development Funds) from Intel, to help them promote Intel based product. Often a large part of their profit comes from MDF rather than pure sales.

Ohh thats a bit of risky business. Intel misses one payment...

 

[mama]

If the new socket increases cost of boards for Intel then AMD's next board will have the same issue. AM5 is switching to LGA, so I understand.

 

[Tomorrow]

If the new socket increases cost of boards for Intel then AMD's next board will have the same issue. AM5 is switching to LGA, so I understand.

Indeed. AM5 will have 1718 pins if im not mistaken. But it is dwarfed by server sockets that go beyond 6000 pins for next gen products.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Ohh thats a bit of risky business. Intel misses one payment...

Risky? They've been doing it since forever.

If the new socket increases cost of boards for Intel then AMD's next board will have the same issue. AM5 is switching to LGA, so I understand.

Most likely, yes.

$10-15 is a lot for cheapest motherboards. Socket manufacturers must have cheaper models ready by now, for boards without DDR5 and PCIe5.

Also, @TheLostSwede , are the companies we talk about most often really the largest desktop motherboard manufacturers these days by volume? Lesser known companies that make stuff for HP/Dell/Lenovo, like ECS and Foxconn, may be at/near the top of the list. (And they sure are interested in procuring cheap sockets for their H610 boards.)

Well, I don't think I know anyone at Foxconn...
Dell make their own boards afaik, but maybe that was some time ago.
ECS seems to have lost a lot of the OEM/ODM business.

The article is based on the cost of current Z690 motherboards from the Taiwanese consumer brands. As to what pricing will be when the lower tier chipsets from Intel are released, I don't know. It's very likely that costs will go down as volumes go up, it's usually the case, but I expect there to still be a higher cost than what we've seen in the past.

 

[Yraggul666]

Pretty sure my z690 does not have ALC8xx audio codec

NO it doesn't have the ALC8xx chip, Asus official site says it's a ALC4080;
but it's a 500$+ board so it would be ridiculous...on second thought not so ridiculous...

I'm already seeing price reductions on low end Z690 boards from Australian online retailers, in combination with reduced price of AL chips as well. Don't know if this is a global trend or not?

At one of our "trusted" etailers i can only see 2x 250$ boards; all the rest are 350$+ or way above...
Have no clue if it's a trend or a global one, i didn't follow the Z690 prices too closely.

 

[Wirko]

I'm already seeing price reductions on low end Z690 boards from Australian online retailers, in combination with reduced price of AL chips as well. Don't know if this is a global trend or not?

DDR4 or DDR5? Retailers must be sitting on tall piles of unsellable DDR5 motherboards.

 

[Chrispy_]

I'm going to ignore >$500 premium-tax flagship boards. Those are mostly just milking the whales and pure markup because if people are willing to hand over far more money than something is worth, you shouldn't turn down that opportunity - especially not when your endgame as a business is higher profits.

If sensible entry-level Z590 boards had a $200 median and the equivalent Z690 boards have a $300 median then that extra $100 is split about 40/40/20 on the socket/power phases/PCB+slots+misc respectively. Does that sound about right? Whatever the cost to the manufacturer is usually results in at least a doubling of the cost to the end user after all.

 

[Wirko]

I'm going to ignore >$500 premium-tax flagship boards. Those are mostly just milking the whales and pure markup because if people are willing to hand over far more money than something is worth, you shouldn't turn down that opportunity - especially not when your endgame as a business is higher profits.

If sensible entry-level Z590 boards had a $200 median and the equivalent Z690 boards have a $300 median then that extra $100 is split about 40/40/20 on the socket/power phases/PCB+slots+misc respectively. Does that sound about right? Whatever the cost to the manufacturer is usually results in at least a doubling of the cost to the end user after all.

I think we're yet to see the entry-level Z690 boards, those that early adopters wouldn't want anyway. Does it make sense for *all* Z690 boards to have a PCIe5 slot, for example?

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Why would you buy a Z board and not expect a PCIe 5 slot? Z is the top, i can understand not getting 5 lower down.

 

[Chrispy_]

Why would you buy a Z board and not expect a PCIe 5 slot? Z is the top, i can understand not getting 5 lower down.

Unlike when PCIe 4.0 launched, there are no products a consumer can buy that can take advantage of Gen5.

Yes, perhaps towards the end of 2022 there may be some PCIe 5.0 GPUs by then but you're not going to use it for a hypothetical SSD before then because it's only the PEG slot that gets Gen5, so you'd need to cripple your GPU by running it using chipset lanes, hampered by both the latency of the extra hop and the limited DMI bandwidth that's shared with absolutely everything else. All that just to run a PCIe 5.0 SSD in the PCIe 5.0 slot and get bigger benchmark numbers in sequential QD32 testing, but near-zero real-world benefits.

So, for all intents and purposes, with a high-end board only remaining "high-end" for a short period of time before it's no longer meeting that title, PCIe Gen5 slots on Z690 will be irrelevant during the halo period of Z690. The flagship enthusiasts will have moved on by then and the Gen5 will only be relevant to whoever is buying a cheap, 2 or 3 generation used Z690 board on ebay three years from now.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Why did they even put it on there then. Will AM5 support Gen 5, will AM5 boards have the same useless Gen 5 slot on them too.

 

[Tomorrow]

Why did they even put it on there then. Will AM5 support Gen 5, will AM5 boards have the same useless Gen 5 slot on them too.

Unsure as to why. There's little point. Im guessing they wanted a checkmark in marketing against AMD.
AM5 will launch toward the end of next year. By then we should have Gen5 SSD's and perhaps Gen5 GPU's depending if the 7000 and 40 series are Gen5.

What im hoping for more is a unified Gen5 solution like AMD did with X570 where all slots are Gen4 regardless of their connection to CPU/PCH
Intel's current solution is anything but unified with an odd mix of Gen3, 4 and 5.

 

[Chrispy_]

Unsure as to why. There's little point. Im guessing they wanted a checkmark in marketing against AMD.

Yep.
PCIe 4.0 spec was ratified in Oct 2017 and the first graphics card that could use it launched 21 months later, when AMD simultaneously launched the 5700XT and X570 chipset.
PCIe 5.0 spec was ratified less than six months ago. Intel have made the chipset, but nobody has made anything that needs it yet.

Kioxia have announced plans to start producing PCIe datacenter SSDs in 2022, but these won't be faster than PCIe 4.0 models, they'll simply be using the extra bandwidth to reduce the lanes down to two per drive so that they can cram more SSDs into the same server. It has zero use for consumers so we're still technically at the zero count for even planned PCIe 5.0 products.

 

[TechLurker]

Why did they even put it on there then. Will AM5 support Gen 5, will AM5 boards have the same useless Gen 5 slot on them too.

To encourage R&D and mass-production of general consumer parts, and to sell something "new".

Same reason why AMD jumped to PCIe 4.0 when PCIe 3.0 was considered "good enough". It was new(ish), it was underutilized, and it spurred development of consumer-ready PCIe 4.0 peripherals (NVMe mostly, but also allowed for higher-end bifurcation on certain mobos and also advanced console storage). It also helped AMD further squeeze into the enterprise environment with EPYC utilizing PCIe 4.0 for ever faster PCIe-based I/O.

Further, AMD having PCIe 4.0 was a big enough deal that Intel got some heat for not having their own CPUs PCIe 4.0 ready; we had a few stories here where mobomakers and some shareholders were upset that Intel wasn't able to counter Ryzen's further jump to PCIe 4.0 with CPUs of their own. Now Intel is trying to take the lead again and spur development of consumer grade PCIe 5.0 AICs while also using it to help advance their own enterprise R&D in an attempt to counter AMD's heavily played up marketing of the PCIe speeds AMD was lording over them.

The only thing I wish Intel actually competed in though was marketing 5GbE or 10GbE onto their boards; instead of the pathetic jump to only 2.5GbE. I'd like to see a push for more consumer-ready 5GbE or 10GbE switches/routers. Maybe AMD can use their new partnership to try and push that end of the spectrum too.

 

[Wirko]

Why would you buy a Z board and not expect a PCIe 5 slot? Z is the top, i can understand not getting 5 lower down.

Entry-level Z590 boards exist too. Many lack USB 3.2, for example, even though the chipset supports it. If manufacturers can shave $10 off total cost, which means $20 off retail price, by using a lower grade (PCIe 4 and DDR4) socket and PCB, why not?

 

[AlwaysHope]

DDR4 or DDR5? Retailers must be sitting on tall piles of unsellable DDR5 motherboards.

These are DDR4 boards of course, being already at the cheaper end of the spectrum. In saying that though, I notice another popular online retailer here has expanded there list of DDR5 kits... but as usual - ALL SOLD OUT already!

 

[Chrispy_]

Intel's K-series chips and Z-series motherboards have never been good value - at least not since Sandy Bridge. What will really matter is how much an i5-12400 and B660 DDR4 motherboard will set people back;

@W1zzard's power scaling article yesterday proved that a 125W non-K Alder Lake part is going to be extremely competitive, all Intel have to do is nail the $200 CPU and $100 motherboard market whilst letting people use DDR4. DDR4-3600 is cheap and potent.