Motherboard prices are rising, but don’t blame the chip shortage

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It would be easy to attribute the current global chip shortage to rising motherboard prices, but with the latest Intel Z690 motherboards there is reason to believe that a bigger problem is causing the problem. price increase.

A TechPowerUp article points out that there are a lot of features that need to be built into these new motherboards over previous generations, like PCIe 5.0, DDR5, and the new LGA 1700 socket.

First off, one of the biggest differences between the LGA 1700, which is what we get in the Z690 chipset, and the previous socket, LGA 1200, is the number of pins. In the LGA 1700 socket, we get 1700 small pins in the socket, while we got 1200 in the LGA 1200, which occupied the Z590 chipset. Logically, more pins means more materials, and therefore more money needed to produce.

The question is, how much extra money can 500 extra little pins represent? The answer isn’t concrete, but according to TechPowerUp it’s about four times the price of the LGA 1200.

Funny enough, the price difference between Z590 and Z690 chipsets is only $ 1.

While the new SSDs aren’t ready to go, PCIe 5.0 is ready on the Z690 chipset, which adds about a 10% to 20% price increase over PCIe 4.0. This large price increase is due to the elements required to implement PCIe 5.0.

High-end Z690 motherboards, like the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero, use DDR5 RAM, which has an entirely different operating procedure that must be implemented when designing.

We also cannot ignore the overall design of the processor inserted in these motherboards, which are the 12th generation Intel Alder Lake processors. Alder Lake uses a lot of different features than we’re used to, like dedicated performance cores.

All of the new features in the Z690 chipset cases are unique and we have yet to see AMD include these features. Unfortunately, this is just another sign of the times when PC hardware has become more expensive and inaccessible to gamers who want it.

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