£300 Motherboard a Scam?

[Peeratat]

Hey everyone,

I recently had a bit of a shocker with my computer's motherboard. Not knowing much about computers, I trusted a repair guy's suggestion and ended up with the ASRock Taichi Z690 motherboard installed. It was only after everything was set up that I took a peek at the price.

I'm genuinely curious and, frankly, a bit baffled - why is this motherboard so pricey? What makes the ASRock Taichi Z690 stand out compared to others, like my original MPG Z490, to justify such a cost?

Is it the performance, durability, or some cutting-edge technology that I'm not aware of? If anyone can shed some light on what exactly I'm getting for this price, I'd really appreciate it. It's a bit late for buyer's remorse, but understanding might ease the sting a bit.

Thanks in advance.

[Crawl]

Its all about the feature set. Do you actually need those features, well that's a personal call. Personally I think $300 for a higher tier board is pretty reasonable but I also spent $1000 on a Crosshair Extreme and $500 on a Taichi Carrara this generation so my reasonable may not align with others. As has been mentioned though the extra cost generally gets you better power delivery, better IO, multiple/faster NICs, a thicker PCB.

[Guydodge]

you have a solid M.B people like to think theres no difference between a high end
m.b and a 100.00 m.b other than features thats just not the case.i went with a mid tier
m.b once i pulled it out within 3 months and put in a highend board.i will never make
that mistake again.i paid 535.00 for my strix z790.zero issues and zero complaints
its the most important part of a computer all your great hardware means nothing
when you tie it all together in tinfoil.

[pasa]

What's your problem here really? You burn money on needless things like current-gen i9. You already declared all you care is about high numbers on the PR sheet, not reason or best bang/buck or whatever. Of course it's logical to just send you off with high-price board.

OTOH, in this case your supplier has merit too: your cpu choice consume energy like there's no tomorrow and needs solid VRMs and other stuff. So you sorta has to double down after the first commitment and send all your additional money into mobo, AIO and other things.

Yeah, if you were only after solid performance, you could have get the same for like half.

But as it's already in the past, I suggest you just enjoy what you have for now, learn the lesson for the future.

[Guydodge]

Messaggio originale di pasa:

What's your problem here really? You burn money on needless things like current-gen i9. You already declared all you care is about high numbers on the PR sheet, not reason or best bang/buck or whatever. Of course it's logical to just send you off with high-price board.

OTOH, in this case your supplier has merit too: your cpu choice consume energy like there's no tomorrow and needs solid VRMs and other stuff. So you sorta has to double down after the first commitment and send all your additional money into mobo, AIO and other things.

Yeah, if you were only after solid performance, you could have get the same for like half.

But as it's already in the past, I suggest you just enjoy what you have for now, learn the lesson for the future.

burning money building the best system you cant so you can go much further is smart
not dumb you build to last a 13900k has that power and some.and as far as power consumption
again wrong it uses no more than any other high end cpu under normal running conditions
in fact less than amd.so keep listening to ckicken little youtubers and believe that garbage
if you wish.though its not advised.its all for the drama.your comments are amusing though.
my 13900k and 4090oc very very rarely exceed 600watts during gaming with all kinds of
down loading and apps running in back ground and no performance loss in game.
thats also do to the fact of the power of the i9

[Monk]

Mobos for the z690/790 have just gone freaking nuts in price with honestly, no good reasoning for it.

For years I e ran the higher end boards, the £450-550 stuff, so maximus codes, extremes etc. As I had use for the number of ports and connections along with heavily overclocking my systems, however, with upgrading from my ageing 9900k to a 13900k I was frankly blown away by how much stuff had shot up in price while cutting features.

The new versions of my old board is now £1100!!!

Whats worse is a bunch of these 'top tier' boards are far from the best performers, though, they do have the most ports and 'extras'.

I ended up with the 'budget' msi z790 edge, which at release was £400, doesn't even have a basic led error code and severely (for me) lacks headers, but, I got it a bit late into the cycle for only £200 add in £30 of splitters and it's a great board offering all the performance of the 'top tier' offerings.

Heck, go with the itx version and your really only looking at stuff like asus' apex boards out performing it at 3x the price.

So OP, while you paid more than you may of had to, you were not really ripped off too much, even if the taichi is not a great performer (if you are into tuning memory to the max), it's not a bad board or a bad price given the insane prices motherboards are going for now.

I'd advise anyone to research what they really need and if the board is actually any good, like a lot of maximus extremes are struggling to get 7600+ memory running fully stable, not a good sign for an £1100 board advertising 8000MHz.

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

OP, for a CPU like the 13900k, you need a motherboard with beefy VRM.
300 dollar is the least you should go for the motherboard for such a high-tier CPU.

if you put your 13900k in a $120 motherboard, you will lose your boost clock due to weak VRM.

[Peeratat]

Messaggio originale di hackintoshchap:

Motherboard prices have certainly increased in price due to a number of different factors.

DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen 5 have significantly more bandwidth that the motherboard traces must be able to cope with while preventing cross talk and other interference. These factors do genuinely add additional cost. PCIe4 and DDR4 motherboards are cheaper to produce.

You have 2.5GB ethernet and wifi which costmore to produce than previous 1GB featured motherboards used.

You have high end audio and sabre DAC built in, again , this is added cost over cheaper older versions

You now have very high speed USB and Thunderbolt 6 connectivity, which was previously often a very expensive option with an additional add on card required.

The VRM are built to accommodate the latest Intel chips which can consume exceptionally large amounts of power.

Genuine cost of components, manufacturing and shipping have all seen large price increases over the last few years.

Lastly both Nvidia and also AMD have used the same AIB companies that make their graphics cards the scapegoat for very tight margins at a time when they both increased their margins. Some of this has certainly resulted in the same AIB companies deciding that they want/need/ should be increasing margins too.

So an extra 70 to 100 pounds in cost over a good Z490 is a lot. Many good boards can still be had for perhaps 30 - 50 less, but they probably lose the Thunderbolt and better audio at least.

This board, really does have fantastic specification:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z690%20Taichi/

The shock to the change in pricing is understandable, but have a look at Scan, Ebuyer, Overclockers UK, CCL and Currys for Z690 and z790 pricing. You WILL have your eyes opened for sure. :(

Thaks alot for all that info. I don’t know much about PCIE but my GPU is plugged into the top one. I hope that’s the fastest slot?

[Nabster]

It is just top of the line stuff, get charged extra for the last bit of features most people don't use.

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

Taichi Z690 is not remotely a top tier motherboard, it's a fairly basic motherboard that can handle an i9.

if we are talking about top tier luxury motherboard, it could be the MSI Godlike z790.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144561

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

My asus rog crosshair viii hero x570 was 400 dollars.

[Sanctuary]

Messaggio originale di pasa:

What's your problem here really? You burn money on needless things like current-gen i9. You already declared all you care is about high numbers on the PR sheet, not reason or best bang/buck or whatever. Of course it's logical to just send you off with high-price board.

OTOH, in this case your supplier has merit too: your cpu choice consume energy like there's no tomorrow and needs solid VRMs and other stuff. So you sorta has to double down after the first commitment and send all your additional money into mobo, AIO and other things.

Yeah, if you were only after solid performance, you could have get the same for like half.

But as it's already in the past, I suggest you just enjoy what you have for now, learn the lesson for the future.

People have different tasks to do. If you can get away with two core i3, good for you, but that won't perform well as a coding workstation that needs to compile large codebase or 3d workstation for modeling and rendering, or digital audio workstation that needs to process each of multiple tracks and virtual instruments through numerous mixers and effects. Also even for basic home multimedia and gaming, a beefy machine is futureproof, because 4 years ago I had money to build a good or maybe even overkill pc, but now between me and my bank account there is a 1200 km long frontline filled with angry people with guns, and over all of that tons and tons of explosives fly both ways. Thankfully my pc holds up quite well.

[De Hollandse Ezel]

not a scam.

my motherboard was nearly 600 euro in 2016,
yes one could have had another motherboard for socket x99 for 150.. but my version came with all sorts of extra's.
mainstreammotherboards for the more common socket.. did cost 70 euro for a basic model.. and 150 for high end..

nowdays these extreme series and standard series have merged into one.
this means than nowdays you indeed look to 300 euro for a reasonable decent motherboard certainly for the intel variants that are more expensive than amd variants.
and even the most basic models cost well over 150 euro too.

you can ask if you NEED a z chipset though.. you could perhaps gotten a reasonable moterboard for 180-ish too.. if you did drop a few bells and whissles you might not use like that z chipset. (if you never plan to overclock)

what likely has happened (as happened with those repairshops) this is just a model they had lying around.. and know is good. it;s likely a bit overkill for you.. but instead of spending time for every customer to order a motherboard.. they just stick to the model motherboard they know works well.. you get overcharged a bit due having a better part than you need.. but had you really rather had to wait 2 weeks longer for your repair. and pay an hour extra labour for him to order and wait for it to deliver.. a cheaper motherboard?

[hackintoshchap]

Messaggio originale di Peeratat:

t.
Thaks alot for all that info. I don’t know much about PCIE but my GPU is plugged into the top one. I hope that’s the fastest slot?

I don't see any issues there, just make sure that the slot is set up in BIOS/UEFI for either Gen 4 or Gen 5 speeds rather than automatic. To be honest even if it was set at Gen 3, it would make little difference for a RTX 4090.

I think that the computer shop you dealt with has done a good job, sure there are cheaper boards, but the ASRock Taichi Z790 is 500 at Scan and many companies are selling the Z690 version that you have for closer to 450.

[pasa]

Messaggio originale di wrqsdfxcvsdfw:

People have different tasks to do. ...

Of course they are. If all your task is to run the blender benchmark or 7zip, maybe you can find a niche for 13900 indeed. For real life it's so tiny not even worth mentioning. Considering all the options with plenty real cores, not fake ones. At what odds would you bet money OP is in that niche you try to paint?

Especially considering the behavior to pay the bill first without looking then start asking the questions later.

And "overkill"/beefy has pretty little to do vs. optimal/good value. Thinking that whatever is sold for most $$$ or has higher magic numbers PR made up to mislead the easy marks is folly.