Intel to stop making desktop motherboards

[Arthur]

I don't think this will affect too many people here.

 

Source: AnandTech

 

Today Intel made a sobering, but not entirely unexpected announcement: over the next 3 years Intel will be ramping down its own desktop motherboard business. Intel will continue to supply desktop chipsets for use by 3rd party motherboard manufacturers like ASUS, ASRock and Gigabyte, but after 2013 it will no longer produce and sell its own desktop mITX/mATX/ATX designs in the channel. We will see Haswell motherboards from the group, but that will be the last official hurrah. Intel will stop developing desktop motherboards once the Haswell launch is completed. All Intel boards, including upcoming Haswell motherboards, will carry a full warranty and will be supported by Intel during that period.

 

[...]

 

It's not too tough to understand why Intel would want to wind down its desktop motherboard business. Intel has two options to keep Wall Street happy: ship tons of product with huge margins and/or generate additional profit (at forgiveably lower margins) that's not directly tied to the PC industry. The overwhelming majority of Intel's business is in the former group. The desktop motherboards division doesn't exactly fit within that category. Motherboards aren't good high margin products, which makes the fact that Intel kept its desktop board business around this long very impressive. Intel doesn't usually keep drains on margins around for too long (look how quickly Intel exited the consumer SSD business).

 

The desktop motherboard business lasted so long as a way to ensure that Intel CPUs had a good, stable home (you can't sell CPUs if motherboard quality is questionable). While there was a need for Intel to build motherboards and reference designs 15 years ago, today what comes out of Taiwan is really quite good. Intel's constant integration of components onto the CPU and the resulting consolidation in the motherboard industry has helped ensure that board quality went up.

 

[...]

 

In the near term, this is probably good for the remaining Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers. They lose a very competent competitor, although not a particularly fierce one. In the long run, it does highlight the importance of having a business not completely tied to desktop PC motherboard sales.

[Ashm]

That's a shame, I've always found Intel boards to be solid. Plus the onboard Intel NICs are damn sight better than the Realtek ones you get on most motherboards.

[SYNACK]

No great loss here, always found their workstation boards to be flake personally.

[gshaw]

Stone, Viglen & co won't be pleased at this news - it's the only way they've been able to provide a stable platform for their products as 3rd party stuff has poor quality NICs \ drivers and the product ranges change lige the wind

[tomgrindle]

Stone, Viglen & co won't be pleased at this news - it's the only way they've been able to provide a stable platform for their products as 3rd party stuff has poor quality NICs \ drivers and the product ranges change lige the wind

 

I agree with this ...

[gshaw]

Seeing as there's one more generation of Intel boards left I'd imagine the OEMs must be having negotiations with one of the big 3 to offer an equivalent platform as I can't see them being able to offer a viable product otherwise.

[CyberNerd]

Almost all of our thin clients are intel mini-itx.

[synaesthesia]

can rarely fault the intel boards tbh. It did irk me a little though when some intel desktop boards came with realtek (or broadcom, cant remember) NICs. Shame really but even the intel kit varies and there's plenty of good value stuff out there otherwise.

[gshaw]

I became very wary of motherboard NIC chipsets a few years back and had anything we were going to buy in volume in on test to double check what it came with before committing to purchase. Had enough aggro with non-Intel NICs and didn't want that again - generally anything from the cheaper range of HP \ Lenovo \ Dell has the nasty NICs in and the Pro ranges have proper Intel ones onboard.

[psydii]

Hmm. So what happens to vPro? I've always found it the quickest way to ensure that the machine isn't cheap and nasty tat, and makes sure it is good for the next generation of Windows.

 

Basically with Intel getting out of the game, only the big boys appear to be left making vpro branded machines... one has to wonder whether they will bother any more.

[glennda]

Thats a shame - Intel motherboards are very good. And as said above the OEMS will struggle now as they use them heavily.