alt Hacker NewsI don't really agree with this. Motherboard prices haven't been moved at all by AI.
I would also say that most consumers, who are almost exclusively buying gaming-oriented boards, do not need anything high end. They can pretty much buy the cheapest board available.
I am shopping around for a mini ITX board and the difference between something at $180 and something at $400 is basically one to two faster USB ports, which are pretty much irrelevant on desktop computers, and a few minor conveniences that I imagine most people can do without.
The higher-end chipsets add no discernible advantage and there are no CPUs that are unsupported by the lower end chipsets (on the AMD side, at least).
The high end stuff is just available for people with a lot of money.
I am massively sick of gaming focused boards. I don’t want my board to be “tough” or “mil-spec” or be extra shiny or have fancy-proprietary-auto-overclock. I want a reliable board that complies with all the specs it claims to support. Low idle power consumption would be nice, too.
This is obnoxiously difficult to shop for in the desktop/workstation space.