That's how I felt post-AC'97/Slot1.

If you get a cheap mobo, you still get all that on-board stuff, but at least you don't feel as bad about disabling it in BIOS. Figure out exactly how many slots, ports, etc. you need and maybe the cheap mobo will do.

The answer is simple: computers are now made for stupid people.

MatureTech wrote:

If you get a cheap mobo, you still get all that on-board stuff.

That's exactly my point. If I wanted a cheap PC, I'd buy a mobo with all the video, audio and LAN components already built-in. I wouldn't try to find a good mobo for discrete video, soundcard and all the expansions I'd dream of installing, if I wanted that stuff built-in. Isn't that were laptops come in?

MatureTech wrote:

Figure out exactly how many slots, ports, etc. you need and maybe the cheap mobo will do.

No kidding. That's where my money would get spent since the cheap mobo would offer the same thing. Seriously, how much more money does it cost to tweak a bios and offer some overclocking options? If an expensive atx mobo has to have crud I don't want, can't a cheap mini-atx or itx mobo be made without the onboard crud?

@RacoonRider
Do your images ever get removed? Mine have been removed all the time since recently...

Holering wrote:

@RacoonRider
Do your images ever get removed? Mine have been removed all the time since recently...

I don't know. I don't post porn or ads or anything offensive, why would they be removed?

I think they put it on there just because its SO DAMN cheap to do so. Even top-notch server grade motherboards still come with onboard sound on most boards: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboar … /C600/X9DA7.cfm

Good grief. Did you complain when 486-PCI and Pentium boards started including serial, parallel, floppy and IDE?

RacoonRider wrote:

The answer is simple: computers are now made for stupid people.

To break even as a manufacturer you have to pander to the average customer, who is stupid. This is why we can't have nice things.

At least, that's the dogma. I'd love to see a small manufacturer prove that they can offer motherboards "your way" for less than $300 apiece but I'm not holding my breath. Once you cross the threshold of needing to change the Intel or Via core chipset I think you're screwed by intellectual property problems.

My perception also was that the add-on devices are "cheap" but then I don't get how any mobo should cost $300. I seem to be paying for some combination of window dressing and duplicative add-on devices so that e.g. I have 8 more SATA ports that I will never use. If I were building something that needed that many SATA devices, it would not be a gaming PC and I would not be buying a gaming enthusiast board to begin with.

I don't know if you should be calling people stupid... All I'm saying is, there's audio, LAN, and USB chips added on top of the nbridge-sbridge, and I think a new form factor should allow maximum expansion slot ability with small I/O shield. Why not just avoid avoid those extra chips and hardware even if it is cheap, and optimize the layout some? Wouldn't that have less EMI?

SquallStrife wrote:

Good grief. Did you complain when 486-PCI and Pentium boards started including serial, parallel, floppy and IDE?

That has nothing to do with all the stuff added, besides the mobo chipset. And no I didn't 🤣. Actually, most recent chipsets still have rs232, Parallel, and serial ports, and they're completely masked (and IDE and floppy). I'd much rather have serial and parallel ports that are part of the actual mobo chipset actually, instead of gimmicky sound hardware and LAN chips tacked on later out of nowhere. Otherwise I'd get a Dell, or an Alienware. For the record, I still think socket 7 gave a way better deal than slot 1 ever did.

I think ASRock is a great mobo manufacturer. They seem to offer the most options, while still being low priced. Could've chose them instead of Gigabyte for an 8 phase AM3+ mobo... I remember their 4core dual-vsta mobo's offering amazing options too (had AGP8X and PCIE 4X on the same board with ddr2 for core2 duo!).

I'm not trying to make that MSI z87 mobo look bad either. That really is a great mobo and would like to assemble one!

Holering wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

Good grief. Did you complain when 486-PCI and Pentium boards started including serial, parallel, floppy and IDE?

That has nothing to do with all the stuff added, besides the mobo chipset. And no I didn't 🤣. Actually, most recent chipsets still have rs232, Parallel, and serial ports, and they're completely masked (and IDE and floppy). I'd much rather have serial and parallel ports that are part of the actual mobo chipset actually, instead of gimmicky sound hardware and LAN chips tacked on later out of nowhere.

Sorry, but no. Serial, parallel, IDE and floppy are provided by a separate Super IO chip, it's USB and SATA that are "part of the actual mobo chipset".

Any halfway decent mobo has an Intel or Marvell gigabit chip attached to the PCI-e bus, I don't know what's "gimmicky" about that.

It sounds like your PC knowledge is stuck in 1997, and ain't nothing wrong with that! 😜

SquallStrife wrote:

it's USB and SATA that are "part of the actual mobo chipset".

I didn't know that (not).

Asrock really doesn't suck with the z97 chipset. Here's just some of their good that popped up with a simple google search.

$100. This one's my personal favorite. All slots are in a perfect spot (dual slot card in PCIE16x slot won't block any port), and it's got two pci slots for your epic PCI cards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gc … 0140602145049:s

$124.00 if you want two PCIE 16x slots.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gc … 0140602145048:s

$146.00 for three PCIE 16x slots and no PCI slots.
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=MB-Z97E … FQKSfgodHqcABQ#

Seriously, that's like 100%-300% more money saved, with the same chip (Z97 EXTREME4 still has 12 phase vrm with heatsinks, and separate PCIE power btw). Could use that money for GPU or soundcard, or whatever you want. Okay, I change my mind; the MSI mobo does suck.

Holering wrote:

an exotic soundcard

If everyone supported exotic soundcards, then they wouldn't be exotic. And why shouldn't they be? The days of crummy onboard audio are long past. USB is also probably fine for most people as far as multimedia capture and bluetooth are concerned.

Holering wrote:

Wouldn't that have less EMI?

No one cares. (Well, almost no one.)

.