Intel Discontinuing Branded Desktop Motherboard Production

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This just in from Intel, the company says it is leaving the desktop motherboard business to focus on new form factors. Here's the entire announcement:

Hello,

As someone who has covered our boards a while I wanted to let you know the below info about that group that was announced internally here today. This is resource reallocation and alignment to new and emerging form factors and designs, and NUC sticks around for sure. It is good news in that there is a robust ecosystem of board vendors in your friends at Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc…. Also in that these great board engineers we have are moving to cool new form factors where board expertise is even more vital – small form factors, Ultrabook, desktop AIO etc…

We disclosed internally today that Intel’s Desktop Motherboard Business will begin slowly ramping down over the course of the next three years. As Intel gradually ramps down its motherboard business we are ramping up critical areas of the desktop space including integration of innovative solutions for the PC ecosystem such as reference design development, NUC and other areas to be discussed later.

The internal talent and experience of twenty years in the boards business (which until recently has been largely focused on desktop tower type designs) is being redistributed to address emerging new form factors -- desktop and mobile – and to expand Intel’s Form Factor Reference Design (FFRD) work and enable our partners to develop exciting new computing solutions.

The Desktop segment continues to be a major focus for Intel with hundreds of products across many subsegments and applications. Intel expects the broad and capable DT motherboard ecosystem (ie Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and many others) to fully support Intel’s growing roadmap and large worldwide customer base. Intel’s Desktop Motherboard Business will not develop any new Intel branded desktop motherboards after completion of Haswell-based 4th gen Core launch products in 2013 and will continue to support all products sold through the warranty period included with the specific product.
 
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They really just failed to establish any kind of identity for their products. They were middle of the road, and not all that great for value either.
 
I really dont think anyone bought a Intel Branded board on this forum in probably a LONG time. Last time I bought one it was probably 8+ years ago and it was expensive, lacked so many basic features and the board layout sucked a**. But its been running for 8 years straight 24/7 and hasnt created any huge problems yet so I will give them that.
 
I am not suprised really. As they stated there is a relatively robust motherboard ecosystem out there, on top of that, Intels boards really did not pull in anything special. They usually worked as they were supposed to, but unless they were using it to push a new product of for media attention (Skull Trail) they really did not innovate. They also made more, not from the motherboards themselves, but from the reference designs that the motherboards were developed on.

Also, IMO, they have not been as stable. They would have one great board but then the next one would not be as stable. I saw a lot of that when I was contracting at Intel. Average users would not see the quality difference, but having dealt with 100's boards over several generations I really saw a drop in quality. But when you got a good Intel board, it was a good board. To me that was the reason to buy an Intel board. If you got a good one, it would work. May not be the greatest, most feature rich, but the lines that were good would run you a long time.
 
wow... i still pretty much buy intel branded boards for all business machines.... this is crazy... i really liked the recent change of intel putting intel NICs onboard too, thought that was going to be a thing now :(
 
I wish they would at least have continued manufacturing business class motherboards. The DQ77MK has been my absolute favorite mATX workstation/business board, and the fact that there won't be any updates of it for future processor generations saddens me. I know there are other options out there such as DFI, but still...
 
They really just failed to establish any kind of identity for their products. They were middle of the road, and not all that great for value either.

They were all Foxconn boards anyway. Intel isn't really doing anything other than ceasing orders of their own reference designs. They haven't manufactured their own boards in ages.
 
so i guess this kills the idea of cpu's being soldered on motherboards now?
 
so i guess this kills the idea of cpu's being soldered on motherboards now?

No, Intel will simply put "cpu must be soldered down" in all their 3rd party OEM contracts (or they will simply stop making socket-able cpus)

It's just like the BGA nonsense, Intel was tired of getting bent-pin RMAs, so they simply refused to make CPUs with pins
 
Intel boards were always good and cheap for virtualization, they always implemented VT-D correctly. Other makers are always hit and miss, sometimes one firmware would work anod another doesn't. Guess I'll have to save up for supermicro now, or gut a dell workstation.:(
 
Can anyone honestly say they bought a Intel board for anything? They were not budget friendly, and generally never warranted enough features for the price they were asking. So this comes as no surprise.
 
Never bought an intel board.

Only person I know of who bought one was a friend for a P2 system, which didn't OC for crap.
 
I really dont think anyone bought a Intel Branded board on this forum in probably a LONG time. Last time I bought one it was probably 8+ years ago and it was expensive, lacked so many basic features and the board layout sucked a**. But its been running for 8 years straight 24/7 and hasnt created any huge problems yet so I will give them that.

One got reviewed here a ways back surprisingly.
 
I believe I owned 1 or 2, but it was older ones given to me, never bought one.
 
I've own one, very stable, but lacking in some features.

As others have said, its not a big deal though. As long as they continue to make fast CPU, I'm happy. We have Asus, Gigabyte and other company to make great boards.
 
I don't use Intel boards for my personal systems but I won't buy anything but Intel boards in systems at work. This is a bummer.
 
I wish they would at least have continued manufacturing business class motherboards. The DQ77MK has been my absolute favorite mATX workstation/business board, and the fact that there won't be any updates of it for future processor generations saddens me. I know there are other options out there such as DFI, but still...

There is no such thing as a business class motherboard. It's just a motherboard.
 
No, Intel will simply put "cpu must be soldered down" in all their 3rd party OEM contracts (or they will simply stop making socket-able cpus)

It's just like the BGA nonsense, Intel was tired of getting bent-pin RMAs, so they simply refused to make CPUs with pins

No, LGA is electrically superior to pin contacts. There is much less inductance in the connection that way. AMD didn't change because they were being "cheap and cheerful".
 
Intel boards were always just another me-too cashgrab. Never interesting, never unique, just cheap. There are plenty of other board vendors.

Call me cynical but I think this is more of a symptom of the move from desktops to notebooks than anything else. The market is shifting from desktops and notebooks to being from notebook to phone. Intel's decision for Haswell of requiring CPUs be soldered to boards really shows where we're headed. I've come to terms with it, I'll still have plenty of computers to play with, they're just be smaller and I'm down with that.
 
feature-poor and not as user-friendly as the other brands.

Indeed. They are well known for being stable but bare bones. I'm glad Intel will focus on CPU's and other form factors. Smart move with so many motherboard manufacturers that have better boards.
 
No, LGA is electrically superior to pin contacts. There is much less inductance in the connection that way. AMD didn't change because they were being "cheap and cheerful".

This and the fact that the pins were horrible to begin with. Another poster mentioned the business side that did rely on their mother boards, but I seem to have worked on more hp boards then actual intel boards to be honest.
 
They made good server boards because Intel is familiar with Intel's standards and managed to make a stable dual-processor board.

I guess I've never had too much trouble with Supermicro.
 
Bash all you want, but the D975XBX2 Bad Axe 2 is one of the best motherboards I've owned. Their boards are vanilla, but they're very stable and they're great about supporting them with updated drivers and BIOS's and documentation in clear English. I can't say that for a lot of the Taiwanese board makers where everything is in Chingrish and they tend to dump boards on the market and never update them. It's great that some of those Taiwanese boards overclock so well, but if they aren't stable it's really all for shit. A lot of the Taiwanese motherboards are frankly garbage, and Intel was my go to brand when I wanted something that "just works." This makes me sad.

The other thing that scares me about this is it really sounds like Intel is abandoning desktop computers. I fucking hate laptops, and ultrabooks seem especially terrible to me because they're basically extremely expensive throwaways that can't be upgraded or repaired. If Intel is really headed down the path of making all mobile stuff, that's a path I can't follow. You can have my desktop when you pry it from my cold dead hands. If Intel is going to be retarded and stop doing desktop computers, maybe AMD wants my business. I know I'm not alone in wanting a desktop. This whole mobile tablet fad thing needs to go die in a fire.
 
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Had this headline featured ASUS, MSI or Gigabyte I would have fallen off my chair.

With Intel, I am still seated. Yes, maybe it is a sign of the times and what is to come. But maybe even more so an indicator of how good the competition is and how strong their product lines are?
 
I've been using Intel boards in my desktops for 10 years. This is depressing ; ;

Am I gonna have to buy some stupid "MILITARY SPEC" board with gun-shaped heatsinks or some junk now.. sheesh
 
This really sucks, Intel boards tend to be rock solid and have the best warranty support in the UK, the following is true

Smaller systems integrator;-

For gold Intel partners you have an advanced replacement swap out warranty

In a warranty case you will get exactly the same model as a replacement which none of the other manufacturers can guarantee.

BIOS branding and customization tools provided and supported right from the Intel website

There are no other Thin Mini ITX boards available in the channel at the moment, I guess somebody like Gigabyte will have to step up to the plate.


Also partly for the reasons above some of the largest systems integrators here almost exclusively use Intel Desktop boards including;-

Stone Computers (Intel's largest desktop board customer in EMEA apparently)
RM plc
Viglen

This is really sad news to be waking up to.
 
Intel boards were always good and cheap for virtualization, they always implemented VT-D correctly. Other makers are always hit and miss, sometimes one firmware would work anod another doesn't. Guess I'll have to save up for supermicro now, or gut a dell workstation.:(

AFAIK they are not leaving the server and workstation board segment, only the desktop boards. From desktop boards, only Q67 and Q77 boards should support VT-d, Pxx/Hxx/Zxx boards shouldn't.
 
Oh noooooo, they discontinued heavily overpriced middle of the road motherboards.............ohhhhhh I am so saddddddddd
 
I've been using Intel boards in my desktops for 10 years. This is depressing ; ;

Am I gonna have to buy some stupid "MILITARY SPEC" board with gun-shaped heatsinks or some junk now.. sheesh

Couldn't be happier with my P67 sabertooth, thing is built like a tank, as are its components

I've left it on for 9 days straight to render a 22 minute animation for a company, didn't glitch up once, board didn't even get hot, 100% CPU use with a i7 2600k at 4.5Ghz 1.35 volts, highest temp the power phases got was only 52C
 
Where will I be able to buy an expensive board with parallel and serial ports and only two USB2 ports on it now?

Joking aside it was nice to know there were there if you needed a stable no frills option and the customer was willing to pay.
 
I never bought a mb from intel ever in like 15 years, always been a Asus and gigabyte user, same with video card
 
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