ASRock Launches LiveMixer Series Motherboards

[Ruru]

WTF, someone's doing something different than the all-show RGB bling we see everywhere? Those are without a doubt the coolest-looking boards I've seen in years.

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't care what they look like.
Just make them under $200 FFS.

 

[Valantar]

I don't care what they look like.
Just make them under $200 FFS.

Damn, I feel so old, I keep thinking that any motherboard costing more than $200 is a premium board. I guess I need to adjust my frame of reference to the PCIe 4/5, DDR5, USB3.2, NVMe up the wazoo, materials pricing 2x up, ballooning inflation era that we're currently living in.

 

[Nephilim666]

14 year olds of the world rejoice!
Nice to see something different.

 

[LabRat 891]

While I don't hate the style, It's not preference. The expanded expansion capabilities are quite attractive, however.
Hoping other brands also make similar boards, but perhaps with minimalist or industrial styling.

 

[Chrispy_]

Damn, I feel so old, I keep thinking that any motherboard costing more than $200 is a premium board. I guess I need to adjust my frame of reference to the PCIe 4/5, DDR5, USB3.2, NVMe up the wazoo, materials pricing 2x up, ballooning inflation era that we're currently living in.

IMO anything over $200 *is* a premium board.

"Premium" means non-essential features, and for a single-GPU build that means the following:

• the extra 3 slots and board size of ATX
• decoration, either ARGBLED or stylised heatsinks that cost a lot more but don't actually have additional surface area
• plastic "armour"
• overbuilt VRMs with a focus on overclocking or LN2 support
• upgraded/additional NICs, Audio, storage beyond the default chipset-provided ones
• steel-reinforced RAM and M.2 slots, which are purely decorative since RAM and M.2 drives weigh nothing.

The "B" in B650 stands for budget. AMD said so 5 years ago and it hasn't changed. Here is a budget board for $100 and it has everything you need to build a bleeding-edge PC right now, since the only thing you can't plug into is a PCIe 5.0 SSD, which is still currently unobtainable.

MSI PRO PRO B550M-VC WIFI AM4 MATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

Buy MSI PRO PRO B550M-VC WIFI AM4 AMD B550 SATA 6Gb/s MATX AMD Motherboard with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

At $10 more than the entry-level B550 boards the money is spent wisely, IMO - you get WiFi, a reinforced GPU slot, and an M.2 heatsink.

If AMD want B650 boards to cost four times what a perfectly-good B550 board costs, they can enjoy losing the budget and most of the mid-range end of the consumer market with AM5

 

[INSTG8R]

Damn, I feel so old, I keep thinking that any motherboard costing more than $200 is a premium board. I guess I need to adjust my frame of reference to the PCIe 4/5, DDR5, USB3.2, NVMe up the wazoo, materials pricing 2x up, ballooning inflation era that we're currently living in.

I dunno I just paid $185 USD for an X570S board and it seems like X579 boards are getting hard to find and I just got la lucky deal and was in stock. But Ii absolutely agree with AM5 B660 boards being $199 is kinda crazy and it’s genuinely hurting AM5 sales/adoption.

 

[Chrispy_]

Damn, I feel so old, I keep thinking that any motherboard costing more than $200 is a premium board. I guess I need to adjust my frame of reference to the PCIe 4/5, DDR5, USB3.2, NVMe up the wazoo, materials pricing 2x up, ballooning inflation era that we're currently living in.

Forgot to mention that @TheLostSwede did a BOM analysis article here in the past and he's constantly reiterated that the additional PCB cost of PCIe 4/5 DDR5, and NVMe isn't huge. The markup in these AM5 boards is something else.

Another data point is the prevalence of $150 Intel B660 boards that have LGA socket, DDR5, PCIe 5.0
If Asrock can make that for $150, then it's not the LGA socket module, the DDR5 slots, or the PCIe 5.0 responsible for the ridiculous price of these AM5 boards.

 

[dirtyferret]

finally, a motherboard I can take to play PC games during a rave

 

[Flanker]

IDK I still prefer those ugly green PCBs. Is this an age thing or what?

 

[Chrispy_]

IDK I still prefer those ugly green PCBs. Is this an age thing or what?

Green was chosen for the solder mask as it's a good compromise between legibility of the white silkscreened information and providing enough contrast to see the traces clearly.

Dull yellow is the sexiest colour - it's the true minimalist colour as it's unpigmented and the yellow you see is the natural colours of the fibreglass used in the PCB and the copper: