
The Sad End of Intel Desktop Boards - eaguyhn
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-sad-end-of-intel-desktop-boards/
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seminatl
Now that Intel exited the business, what is the motherboard brand for people
who just want a motherboard that works? One without any lights on it at all.
It seems like supermicro would be the straight-faced alternative, but they
don’t pay attention and often their boards just don’t work. I want a board
that advertises its attention to signal integrity and thermal safety.

~~~
fw_double_e
I've always had really good results (performance and longevity) with Asus
gaming boards despite them having all the LED "features." I just turn all that
junk off in the bios.

~~~
wlesieutre
Anecdotal, but my Asus Z170i from 2015 has been solid for 4 years. Doesn't
have any lights, maybe there wasn't room for them in the miniITX form factor.

EDIT - had the date wrong, it was mid-2016.

~~~
soylentcola
Also anecdotal:

My desktop is still running smoothly on its Asus mobo from 2014 (I believe it
was the Z97-P but I'm not home at the moment to double check). No fancy RGB
LEDs, but I haven't shopped for one in a while so that may be harder to
accomplish now. Not sure.

Either way, they've always been competitively priced and well supported. Used
them to build both gaming and general use machines for friends/family over the
past several years without issue.

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fortran77
I used to buy Intel boards because they were more likely to work well with the
latest CPUs of the day. I've switched to SuperMicro boards for our desktops
(which are mostly dual Xeon boxes) and have had few problems.

I wish they'd come with a TPM. The integration issues are frequently around
the TPM and getting it recognized. It's required for BitLocker whole disk
encryption which is part of our standard build. (If a machine or drive goes
AWOL, we don't have to worry.)

~~~
jaas
In case it's helpful for you to know, you can set up Bitlocker without a TPM.
Google for instructions. It works well.

~~~
fortran77
Don't you need to type in an additional password every time you boot?

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Jaruzel
I have an intel board in my current daily desktop PC, it's socket LGA1150
also, but previous generation, Ivy Bridge. Of all the desktop motherboards
I've had (and I've gone through a lot) it's the most stable I've ever used.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Are you overclocking or doing other fancy things? Last time I had an issue
with a board was core 2 duo times. PCIe would magically cripple itself to 1x
for all slots as soon as I overclocked the CPU. There was a workaround for
that on the gigabyte forums. But that's about every problem I ever had.

~~~
drcross
Overclocking desktops in 2019 is only extremely rarely a productive use of
your time.

~~~
rasz
Overclocking desktop in 2019 is a 10 minute affair to gain a permanent >20%
performance.

~~~
mschaef
I think you're saying the same thing. A one-time 20% bump isn't worth that
much these days to the vast majority of people. (Even if it is only 10
minutes... which I tend to think might be an underestimate, given the testing,
etc. you'd have to do to make sure it's all stable. 10 minutes to an
overclocked boot, fine. 10 minutes to an overclocked configuration that can
run a workload without problems for eight hours a day for several years...
that seems like more of a challenge).

.)

~~~
rhinoceraptor
That's all true (I personally don't OC either), but you should still run
stability checks when you first get your computer. This Coding Horror post is
great:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/is-your-computer-
stable/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/is-your-computer-stable/)

~~~
optimiz3
IMO the use of Linux for out of the box stability testing is poor unless
you're absolutely certain the hardware config works perfectly under Linux
without any specific tinkering.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
Pretty much any PC will boot linux nowadays, maybe you need wifi or graphics
drivers, but that post only uses Linux to test the CPU and disk.

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justin66
I did not know Intel stayed in the desktop motherboard business as long as
they did. I had an AL440LX motherboard-based system that I'm sure still works,
after a few battery and power supply replacements, if it hasn't been disposed
of. (I'm sure it has been disposed of)

The author fails to understand some things:

 _Not so for the owners of Intel boards. To show just much Intel values its
customers, they were informed that BIOS updates were not forthcoming and the
newer, faster processors were not supported on Intel boards. That was no doubt
particularly galling to the owners of the DZ87KLT boards, which sold for
around $300 when new and are worth $150 or more even today (2019).

...

After all the hoopla in 2018 about Meltdown and Spectre, guess what happened:
Intel somehow magically managed to update the BIOS for those boards after akl.
For the DZ87KLT-75K, nothing really changed because the ME firmware did not
get updated. But for the DQ87PG board, the 2018 BIOS updates did update the ME
firmware as well._

It's precisely because Intel "values its customers," or more precisely because
Intel understands its value add for customers versus the other motherboard
manufacturers, that they would not just slide support for a few extra CPUs
into the firmware. To do the job to their own standards they would need to
fully retest everything with those new CPUs before officially supporting them.
The economics of the Meltdown and Spectre fixes is an entirely separate
matter.

(it'd be fair to point out that home power users who want to upgrade the CPU
on a motherboard after purchase were never a large proportion of the Intel
motherboard buying public and, in recent years... there cannot be that many)

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tus88
Ha. I recently upgraded to a 4790s and a intel desktop board. I thought the
restarting problem was a faulty board, now I know better! Wonder how hard it
is to update the ME...when I updated the bios the problem was still there.

~~~
Jaruzel
The intel drivers page for your board should have an update package for the ME
(if one is available).

~~~
tus88
Following a few links and searches there is a github page with all the ME bins
and related tools. The key is installing a newer version of ME than comes with
the board BIOS.

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mindslight
Looking at the attitude of locked down chipsets and ME, would you expect any
better? Intel's goal is to sell a product that fulfills some short-sighted
requirements and never look back.

Their main business customers aren't interested in mixing and matching pieces
of already purchased computers. Just like they don't particularly care that
the whole house of cards is theoretically subservient to some inauditable
backdoor.

~~~
undersuit
That's how I feel about the NUCs. They are only being produced by Intel to try
and advance a market.

Intel makes processors. The will sell things like motherboards, Compute
Sticks, and NUCs just to push their primary line. Even their Flash, Intel
doesn't want to be a Flash Fab, but it helps their processor line in many ways
to have a presence.

It's like the Microsoft Surface. Microsoft will drop support for it in a hot
minute when they feel the Surface has succeeded or failed. They already did it
once with the Surface RT, but maybe I'm wrong and Microsoft is pivoting with
the Surface to be more Apple-like... lol

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rhn_mk1
What does the article mean by the "end" of desktop boards? Is it the end of
sockets accepting multiple generations of CPUs?

I can see that it's not entirely true either, Socket 1151 supports both
Skylake and Kaby Lake:
[http://asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z390%20Phantom%20Gaming%20X/index...](http://asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z390%20Phantom%20Gaming%20X/index.asp)

What change did actually take place?

~~~
MrRadar
They used to make their own motherboards and sell them to consumers. They were
known for being very high quality and very reliable. Now you can only get
boards for their chips from third party OEMs who tend to have much more
variable quality (which vendors are "best" tends to change each board/chipset
generation).

~~~
eropple
I dunno about that. If you're buying whatever's on sale, yeah, you're at the
whims of the stamp-it-out gods. But I build a lot of PCs and Gigabyte, for
example, has been consistently reliable across...five or six generations of
Intel chips? Plus some AMD builds in there. Absolutely zero failures.

Anecdotal, but it also seems to line up with most of what I hear out there.

~~~
kube-system
I see a lot of mentions of Gigabyte and Asus in this thread -- I have had good
luck with MSI boards too.

Maybe the reason Intel quit making boards is because there are lots of good
motherboards now?

~~~
Alupis
It might also matter what "tier" of board you buy.

Getting the "basement bargain" board for $20... well, you get what you pay
for.

But for each of those top brands, Gigabyte, ASUS, and MSI, buying their top
tier products gets you a seriously good board.

The gaming boards tend to have a lot of features a workstation user might not
need, like great overclocking support, etc... but with that quality comes
stability. Worth every penny to get a good motherboard when doing a build.

That... and I no longer get cheap cases either... but that's another story.
The moral? Don't skimp on your components, and you'll wind up with a much
better system that lasts you for years.

~~~
tracker1
With cases, I think it's less about price and more about good airflow design,
which will often mean buying more fans and/or a fan hub. There are really good
cases from as low as $40 that will do better than some $120+ cases.

~~~
Alupis
The problem with cheap cases does tend to be airflow and locations for fans...
but also the build quality of the case.

Things like ports for routing cables without causing a rat's nest... cheap
stamped sheet metal with sharp edges to cut yourself on, decent I/O backplate,
temperature control zones, bottom mounted PSU, etc. A good quality case will
cost you... but you can likely get several builds out of it over the years...
so well worth it.

~~~
tracker1
While I agree... performance is also an issue... Personally, I've been using
the various Fractal Define series cases more often than not. Latest personal
build is a Lian Li O11 Dynamic Razor Edition (frankly regret going RGB on a
Linux box).

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jandrese
I wish Intel would allow third party chipsets again. I liked the days when
companies would compete on features like more PCI lanes and faster
interconnects.

~~~
seminatl
The PCIe root ports are integrated with the CPUs these days. If you want more
slots, get a breakout box. Nobody can get you more lanes.

~~~
josteink
Or get just AMD.

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ngcc_hk
It is not clear the situation, but guess may be you need to have those board.

