It appears that these prices are indeed not what we should expect.
A Japanese distributor has gone out with details about the Biostar X670E Valkyrie and it'll have an MSRP of 59,800 Yen in Japan, or about US$415, which is a lot more in line with what a board with that kind of feature set should retail for.
各種PC用パーツやVR関連、オーディオ周辺機器を取り扱う株式会社アユートの公式ホームページです。
www.aiuto-jp.co.jp
Yup. There's this trend for ridiculously-overpriced, overbuilt VRM designs on even entry-level boards now.
I have nothing against flagships at silly money - if there's a market for those then companies should absolutely cater to it if they want. What the mass market doesn't need is an additional $200 of wasteful overkill for something that consumer AIOs and air coolers have no hope of ever cooling. I'm absolutely fine with a 170W CPU being unable to pull more than 230W from the motherboard socket, because the VRMs for the socket are designed to run at only 230W plus some margin for comfort/reliability and variance.
If people want a board that can deliver 300W+ to the socket, then fine, they can buy an OC-focused enthusiast board.
We know it's not PCIe 5.0 adding to the cost, because Alder Lake PCIe 5.0 boards start from something like $129.
X670E boards are a bit more complex with regards to the PCIe 5.0 bit compared to Z690 boards though, but it shouldn't add more than a few bucks overall, depending on the board layout. Obviously som board makers have gone out of their way to make complex implementations, so those boards are going to be a lot pricier.
Even the VRM's don't add that much extra cost, to a point.
