Just like with motherboards. Remember year 2011? Let me give you a reminder:
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The cheapest $140, the most expensive $235.
Fast forward to 2020:
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The cheapest is now $150 (not too much of a difference, albeit it's absolutely barebones) while the most expensive goes for $750 or even more since Maximum XII Extreme Glacial price hasn't been announced yet. Under the pretense of "improving" things for the customer they've raised the prices fourfold. Yes, I'm angry because in my country the average
monthly wage is around $450 while first-country visitors of TPU appreciate everything brand new and cool because you can easily afford it which explains that so many of you are rocking 9900KS/3950X/2080 Ti's not because you need them but because you can. Shows how little you actually care about the people who are that well-off.
Such systems could use their own power delivery standard -
I welcome it. However now we are talking about bog standard ATX/mATX motherboards. And I'm sorry, I'm NOT happy about that.
Expect $1200+ for the liquid cooled boards...
I agree, motherboard prices have gone nuts, but it's also worth considering that modern motherboards have a lot more of everything. This includes PCB quality, PCB layers, power phases, high-speed interfaces, etc. I guess you technically don't get more physical PCIe or SATA slots, but that's about the only thing that hasn't improved. Then we need to take inflation into account, which sadly makes things more expensive. However, the premium models also have, at least in the case of Asus, a 30-40% margin on top of them. How do I know this? Well, because I know a lot of people who works at the various board makers. I'm sure the other board makers have similar margins on their high-end boards too. After all, these companies are for profit businesses.
Yes, it makes it unfair towards those that don't earn a "western" salary. I'm far from a millionaire myself, but I'm lucky and I get a few bits here and there for free for my builds. Still, it's not as if computers are free for me either and we're at a point where a good gaming PC is getting out of reach for a lot of people. I can only guess how frustrating it is when it's something you're into and you can't afford to keep up.
Do I have a high-end PC? Sure I do, but I've had to save up for things as well, but I don't go around being angry at the world because things are expensive. I also use it for work, so it's not just for fun.
We live in an unfair world, but it sounds like you live in a very poor corner of the world, as even in Taiwan, the average salary is 2-3x what you earn and people aren't paid very high salaries in Taiwan. However, taking out your anger here, might not be the best place to do so, as you're only going to get angry reactions back.
Back in the days when I used to get a lot of free gear when I was doing 30-odd product group tests, I used to share what was left behind with friends all over the world. I have sent at least $2,000 worth of computer parts to a guy in South Africa that I met playing Warcraft II online and we still keep in touch to this day. He wouldn't have had nearly as good a computer as he was able to have back then, had it not been for me. If I still was in that situation, I'd be happy to send you some parts, but sadly I'm not. That said, I'm sure if you asked nice, there are people here that would be willing to part with some spare bits and pieces, but I guess it's easier to be angry at the world in general?
On the note of expensive motherboards, until I got the board I have now, I have mainly had mid-range boards, as they've done the job and I haven't needed/wanted the features on the high-end boards. I haven't seen the reason to go with something higher-end. However, this board had a few features I really liked and I had a so so experience with my previous Ryzen rig (which I btw sold very cheaply to a friend who had a potato PC). It wasn't that the board was bad, it just wasn't quite what I expected. I was thinking about getting a Ryzen 3900X, but I came to my senses, as I really don't need the extra four cores. I got the 3800X as I thought it would be a safer bet over the 3700X, as my 1700 wasn't nearly as good as the 1700X and 1800X. I turned out to be a bit of a bust this time around, as it performs within 2-3% of a 3700X, but such is life sometimes. In hindsight, I wish I'd saved $100 and gotten the 3700X. My graphics card was bought for the same as a 2070 Super, as for some reason they were going for "cheap" locally, when the Super cards launched. Yes, it's still a lot of money, but my second hand 4k screen needs a beefy graphics card. Yes, I bought my screen second hand, as there's no way I would've paid the full, new price for it. This is not a system that was paid for in a single lump sum, it's a system that has come together over time, as I always do when I upgrade my system.
But PSU's last longer than motherboards. And yes the implementation cost may be low cost (i highly doubt it's 1$ as nothing in modern mobos is that cheap) but those cost are doubled or tripled and passed on to the consumer. So currently buying a quality PSU that can last 10-15 years is much better than buying a new motherboard every 3-5 years.
As long as HDD's exist SATA will be a thing. Can't see HDD's moving to PCIe bus anytime soon.
And motherboard makers are very conservative with their ports. Hell even brand new 700$+ boards come with a PS/2 port still. And USB 2.0 ports. Atleast we got rid of PCI and DVI/VGA.
Well, I'm not sure I agree with your first statement. PSUs might in theory last longer, because you use the same PSU with two or three builds, but in reality, motherboards are likely to outlast PSUs in terms of longevity, if the system they're in continues to be used long past its prime.
Then you clearly know nothing about the cost of components, nor did you see my link above about the cost of Ethernet controllers. A lot of parts on motherboards costs a cent or two. The motherboard makers buy millions of these parts, so they get massive volume discounts.
Here's an example of a switching Voltage regulator from TI, it costs less than 50 cents if you buy 6k units. Imagine what it costs if you buy 250k units or more.
https://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/TPS56339DDCR
Sure, you need a few more parts, but they don't cost more than a few cents. So yes, it's possible that the additional cost is only $1.
Obviously there are margins added to the final product, but even so, the cost to you for this is not going to be more than $1.50-2.00.
These exact same parts are also inside the PSU you're buying today. So that cost would be removed from the PSU, plus the cost for the extra 14 wires that aren't needed for the main motherboard power connector any more and those wires are likely another 50 cents to a $1, as copper is quite expensive. As such, PSUs should end up being more affordable by moving to a 12V only design.
SATA is dying. It was supposed to be superseded by SATA Express, but that never happened for whatever reason. SATA isn't likely to be part of consumer motherboards in five years time. Hard drives interfaces on the server side are already moving to U.3 (also known as SFF-8639), although this has native support for SATA, SAS and NVMe, to simplify things. Will we see a new interface on the actual drives? I don't know, but there has been talk about a SATA/SAS replacement for years. NVMe is clearly the future for now, regardless of what people in this thread seems to think. Yes, flash storage is still comparatively costly per GB, but it's never been as cheap as it has been for the past year or so.
The PS/2 port is there for people that claim it has lower latency than USB and that it supports N-Key rollover. USB 2.0 are pretty much free, so the board makers throw them in as there's no real cost to them and it ticks a box. VGA and DVI are still both around, have a look on some of the boards that were just announced. All the cheaper boards have them for some reason...
