Why are Intel boards so expensive?

[BugFreak]

I have been shopping around for a pc to build my daughter and was leaning towards an Intel build since I haven't built one in a while, but WOW some of the motherboard brands I am familiar with get pricey! Being a long time AMD user I was a little shocked at some of those prices that get darn close to $500US just for the board! I am honestly asking what makes them so pricey, do they have more automation or easier to o/c or what? Better parts or is it just an Intel thing? Are there some medium/high level boards that do the job well in the $100-$200 range or am I doomed to spend that much to get a higher-end board? TIA.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

I have been shopping around for a pc to build my daughter and was leaning towards an Intel build since I haven't built one in a while, but WOW some of the motherboard brands I am familiar with get pricey! Being a long time AMD user I was a little shocked at some of those prices that get darn close to $500US just for the board! I am honestly asking what makes them so pricey, do they have more automation or easier to o/c or what? Better parts or is it just an Intel thing? Are there some medium/high level boards that do the job well in the $100-$200 range or am I doomed to spend that much to get a higher-end board? TIA.

Kinda depends on what you want.

I paid $110 CAD for my Gigabyte board in the sig.
It'll support the 3xxx chips as well, but not the 4xxx so...
I consider than not to bad

 

[EarthDog]

For most users, a $150 board is plenty including the ability to overclock.

The $500 boards you speak of are likely from the x79, enthusiast class. Where as z97 is mainstream and it's base pricing is a lot cheaper.

Price has nothing to do with cpu support though. It's all in the chipset as ivy bridge, 3xxx, is a different socket anyway than haswell, 4xxx.

 

[caddi daddi]

look at the asrock extreme6 all the board you will need.
your looking at amd top cpu's at 160 and intel ends in the clouds, just shop it.

the extreme 6 is 169 at micro center.

 

[blazenarrow]

Since no one really answered your question, the difference between a $150 MB and a $400 MB is going to be feautures, add-ons, MB components, etc. Thus if you want to run 64 gb of ram, 3 cards in SLI or crossfire, with Intel's most expensive CPU, then you NEED the $400 board. If you want to game and do normal stuff (i.e. 8-32 gb ram, i5 or i7 4790k) then a $150 board is fine. Just figure out what you need (pci-x, pci-express...) and then select from there.

I personally have an Asrock extreme6 with a i5 4670k @ 4.4, 16 gb ram, and it's been running for a year with out any issues.

 

[caddi daddi]

+1 dscience, and a very well thought out rig.

 

[Woomack]

If you work some more with the hardware then you also notice that most Intel boards are higher quality and better prepared by manufacturers. Manufacturers also care more to release BIOSes more often and fix various issues on Intel boards.
Some may think it's not true but how many manufacturers are saving even on vrm heatsinks or don't care to fix BIOS issues. How much time has passed till ASUS fixed issues with CHVF BIOS ( maybe some remember RAID issues ). The same all 990FX series from Gigabyte still have problems with voltages. For a year they were saying that their boards are perfectly fine till they released new PCB revision.

Some time ago I got APU with highest version of ASRock A88X board. I haven't seen so thin PCB in any Intel board for a long time. Also first board died in couple of hours under full load but maybe that's not related.

Even the fact that every bigger motherboard brand has its "top overclocker" who is taking care of OC records and additional support. Somehow all of them are working almost only on Intel boards. ROG series had no one who was making records on AMD series or who was improving BIOSes. The same ASRock or Gigabyte.

When you add higher chipset price and more time which manufacturers are spending on motherboard design and additional support then I think it's still not that bad with most Intel based motherboards.

As others said if you want good quality Intel mobo then you don't have to pay much. $150 motherboard is more than enough for most users. $80-100 boards are enough if you are not overclocking much or can live with 1 graphic card. Actually cheaper AMD boards with similar features are in similar prices.

 

[Theocnoob]

Basically, for a mainstream system, which would be something like a 4690K with 8-16GB of RAM, all you need is a $150 motherboard. That includes the ability to overclock.

If you want to go low end, you can get into something like an overclockable Pentium G3258 (dual core) and an H97 board for $70 and $85 respectively. Intel isn't expensive. It just includes expensive SKUs. Most of the mainstream stuff is not expensive.

Tell us what kind of system you want, what her usage scenario is and we'll tell you what parts to buy.

 

[caddi daddi]

my 4790k and asrock extreme 9 cost me nearly $600, features that I wanted drove the price to that, I chose to spend that much, I could have gotten in for less.

 

[BugFreak]

my 4790k and asrock extreme 9 cost me nearly $600, features that I wanted drove the price to that, I chose to spend that much, I could have gotten in for less.

Like what features?

Thanks for the replies. I don't usually buy the top board when I build but I do want quality, durablity, and a little future proofing. I usually get the second tier which almost always offered the same abilities without all the bells, whistles, colors, and fancy plastic covers. That being said, when it comes to AMD, the difference in quality between a $75-100 board and the $150-250 boards can be huge (in my opinion). Is that not the case for Intel boards? From the posts so far, the $150 boards seem to be just as good in quality/oc as the $300+ boards, am I reading that right?

Also, I usually stick with Gigabyte or ASUS, I assume those are still good for Intel?

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Also, I usually stick with Gigabyte or ASUS, I assume those are still good for Intel?

Yep both are good brands.

I think it's mostly the quality with expensive Intel boards. Someone will correct me, but I think the enthusiast expensive boards use better (hand picked?) components.

 

[caddi daddi]

features, sli, 16x16, I like to play in the overcloctagon and use gtx760's against 780TI's so that is a feature i wanted.
plenty of usb 30 ports and connectors for my case front usb 30 ports.
plenty of sata ports.
m2 sata (or what ever it is)i may one day want to play with.
it's got dual lan but i don't game online so it's not of value to me.
we don't see many fail here in the forum, a very good feature.


OH! I don't see red, yellow or green and it's blue, the most important feature of all.

 

[Theocnoob]

More expensive boards will have more USB ports, usually more 3.0... More SATA ports and SATA Express ports. More PCIE lanes (via a PLX chip), better components (better LAN, better PWM components, better audio chip and capacitors), and in most cases, the top tier boards have more BIOS updates made for them than the entry level boards do.

The average user using 1 GPU and not using $200+ speakers does not need to spend more than $150-170 though. It just isn't necessary.

Look at the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 for example

It has 12 phase power, decent audio chip with decent audio capacitors, Intel (good) NIC, dual M.2 slots (one is ULTRA M.2!), a DEBUG LCD.... All for $160-175 depending where you shop. It's a winner, and is the most recommended Z97 board on this forum right now.

Other choices are ASUS Z97A, Gigabyte Z97XUD3H, ASRock Fatal1ty, MSI Gaming 5.

I like the ASRock Ex6 the best though.

 

[EarthDog]

Yep both are good brands.

I think it's mostly the quality with expensive Intel boards. Someone will correct me, but I think the enthusiast expensive boards use better (hand picked?) components.

Not handpicked. It's still OTS parts, just better.