Will believe it when will see it. Something tells me, that motherboard makers are not all that eager to cut their sweet margins all of sudden, after gouging the entire market for two years in the row (excluding X570 launch price fiasco).
Moronic high. For example, MSI at launch presented 4 MBOs. Cheapest were $289,99 was MSI X670-P board and $479,99 was X670E Carbon. But later X670E Tomahawk was cheaper.
Lol. X670E Carbon still costs north of $500-550 in a lot of countries. I strongly doubt, that the prices will be driven down, even with the 800 series motherboard launch. Unless the X870/B850 mobos will have significantly broader and better connectivity, there`s barely any difference.
Though, the X870E Tomahawk looks miles better and reasonable, than any other MSI X870E/X870 mobo, so far.
It would be great if there were motherboards with good VRMs and without integrated stuff. I think M2 slots doesn't cost much and can be used for extensions. They can skip SATA ports and if someone needs them, there are cheap M2 SATA controllers. The same with integrated WIFI and Ethernet, you can use discrete card of your choice. The same with audio.
Yeah, but no! With current X870/B850 MBs, having now sometimes even less PCI-E slots than previous X670E, then good luck stuffing in an extention card or two. Especially, with this trend, to put only one fully wired X16 slot, solely for VGA use, and the rest being X8 at best, even while having X16 slot length.
Also, not always the M.2 slot is fully substitute for the proper PCI-E slot. Not only due to electrical and physical contact, but sometimes first two PCi-E slots being directly wired to the CPU itself. So by putting the extention card into the bottom M.2 slot, will just end up divinding the bandwidth with other I/O and devices, that are bound to the south-bridge.
Also, the M.2 is much more fragile. And on top of this, there are tons of existing and perfectly working peripherals and expansion cards, many many people use at work, that physically require the PCI-E slot. Imagine how much hurdle and pain, and money it would cost these people and companies to swap their existing, sometimes even legacy HW, for the M.2 counterparts, just because all of sudden the motherboard maker decided that M.2 is more financially appealing.
And that`'s not the worst. The most ridiculous thing begins with mATX and mITX boards, where are little to none PCI slots, except the one purported for VGA itself. How then would one add any expansion cards is a real question.
You see, while I agree, that some I/O and connectivity is not only unnecessary, but even completely redundant (or even dangerous), there`s still a lot of things, that is much reasonable to put on the MB itself. The point behind putting the I/O and other stuff and devices onboard, is that alot of space on the motherboard, will still be left unused, even after placing all the core/crucial components and wiring. And the chips and controllers often take up much less space on the flat horizontal plane of the motherboard, than if they would be placed on the separate PCB.
While the audio cards are often a complete garbage, with the layers being unprotected, and unshielded, causing huge interference, it still is much better to have a couple analogue inputs and outputs for TRRS 3.5, when it`s needed, rather than rely on HDMI/DP/USB/SPDIF, that requires the additional HW. Since the 3.5 jack devices is still more abundant, and sometimes the quality of the sound is really less important, than the presence of the sound itself. This is just one example, but it equally applies to the other stuff like Ethernet, USB-A and SATA, as these are ubiquitous, and the absolute minimal set, that every MB should have.
With this being said, the problem itself is seems lies not in what is added to the board, but how much would it cost, if the user will have to add these connectivity and controllers separately via PCI-E/M.2 slots. Because it is clear, that the motherboard makers/vendors do not lower down the MB prices, while considerably reducing the options and feature count. And removing the stuff is just another notion, these vendors like very much, and would love to see this trend supported by more people, not only in the consumer area, but by IT folks as well.
Sometimes, less is more, but that`s not the case here. Everyone have already seen the almost bare X670 boards costing north of $400, but with barely any features and connectivity. I don`'t say you or anyone else shouldn`t express the point of view. But cutting down the already handicaped boards, is not the thing worth of admiration.
As I’ve said before- there already is some versalite and crucial feature and device set, that should be onboard: like analog audio, NIC, USB A (2.0) and SATA, and I think it should stay this way. There are situations, where these are so necessary and crucial, that lacking it would render the device unusable. I won`t provide the examples, but I will just repeat, that there are stuff, removing which is impractical, and doesn`t give much benefit, if at all.
Then there’s another issue- how it will affect the technically not-savvy people? What burden will fall on the shoulders of system integrators? Who will do the adding of the ever increasing amount of expansion cards, if the PC is DIY, or has the warranty expired. There are a lot of people, who are scared to interact with PC, in any other way, but to click the "Power on" button.
That's why, the presence of many, even (legacy for some) devices onboard, is actually not that dumb idea.
