SuperMicro Wants to Re-Enter the Gaming Motherboard Market

We used to have motherboard reviews from ABIT, DFI, BioStar, ASUS, Foxconn, AMD, Intel, ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, EVGA, BFG, Soyo, FIC, IWill, ECS and so on. Today, most of those companies are gone or at the very least, they no longer compete in the motherboard market in the US. Today, there are more offerings than we generally cover, but the big names are basically MSI, ASUS, GIGABYTE and ASRock. Sure, EVGA is still around but they aren't really a threat to the other four I just mentioned. More importantly, they don't seem to be the innovators they once were.

I miss my old DFI. Rock solid, OC'd like a dream. Compared to how boards look today, it'd be considered ugly, but it was unique and stood out when put up against all the other boards out there. Sure there were a few other nice looking motherboards floating around, but when sitting at a LAN and people asked about specs, DFI was the brand you'd expect to hear on anyone mentioning a decent OC.

Maybe Supermicro can steal a couple of people from other current vendors so they can end up with a decent appearance, a few people specializing in board design for OCs, then buy the name from DFI and release a Supermicro Lanparty board. Would be interesting, though I doubt they'll do it. Though I suspect DFI would sell off the name pretty cheap at this point.
 
UEFI which is powerful, easily understood, and a stable board.

Drop the glam, increase the horsepower.
 
While the company's consumer-facing lineup is currently Intel only, the company was quick to point out they were first to market with AMD's EPYC platform

A prime example of what Dan was saying about them not understanding the gaming market. On an performance per dollar level for gaming Ryzen has proven itself to be a great competitor in the market. SM is already shooting themselves in the foot not having products for them.
 
I miss my old DFI. Rock solid, OC'd like a dream. Compared to how boards look today, it'd be considered ugly, but it was unique and stood out when put up against all the other boards out there. Sure there were a few other nice looking motherboards floating around, but when sitting at a LAN and people asked about specs, DFI was the brand you'd expect to hear on anyone mentioning a decent OC.

Maybe Supermicro can steal a couple of people from other current vendors so they can end up with a decent appearance, a few people specializing in board design for OCs, then buy the name from DFI and release a Supermicro Lanparty board. Would be interesting, though I doubt they'll do it. Though I suspect DFI would sell off the name pretty cheap at this point.
Yeah, I had no problem buying "no name" Abit, Asrock or DFI boards back in the day based on the reputation. Aesthetics were never a big selling point for me back then, and the garish boards these days kind of turn me off.

If Supermicro comes out with a competitve well-reviewed X570 board I will definitely give it full consideration.
 
Still have an Abit laying around, lost interest in Asus when my p3V4X was a dog, never could get a ramdrive to work with games, just now buy low to mid grade with best reviews, and stay back in tech. Running a 1090t, good ram, and new rx547, ssd drives. Starcraft, photoshop, Dvdfab, etc. Works for me.
 
Yeah, I had no problem buying "no name" Abit, Asrock or DFI boards back in the day based on the reputation. Aesthetics were never a big selling point for me back then, and the garish boards these days kind of turn me off.

If Supermicro comes out with a competitve well-reviewed X570 board I will definitely give it full consideration.

Yeah, I'd consider "lack of garish heatsinks, color schemes and lighting" to be something that tilts me in favor of a motherboard.

I want something much like the workstation boards that used to sit on the border between "gaming" products and the Enterprise world, with Enterprise features such as official ECC and VT-d/IOMMU support as well as good cooling, and VRM's sufficient for hardcore overclocking, yet with more pedestrian aesthetics.

This is what I want back. I'd pay a premium for it, as long as it doesn't compromise in other places.
 
UEFI which is powerful, easily understood, and a stable board.

Drop the glam, increase the horsepower.

It's easy to say this as it makes sense when you think of the concept. However, the "glam" and "horsepower" as you put it aren't mutually exclusive items. The premise is actually false anyway as there is no "horsepower" to speak of on the motherboard. The VRM implementation is the biggest factor in determining a maximum overclock. You've got motherboards like GIGABYTE's X399 Aorus Extreme which has an extremely robust and overbuilt VRM. It's more than you'd ever need even under LN2. So what is Supermicro going to do? One up an already overbuilt VRM? What will that do but drive up costs? Nothing.

The GIGABYTE X399 boards are still clad in plastic and RGB LED's. LEDs are cheap. Injection molded plastic is pretty cheap as well. While the MOSFET coolers are highly stylized in some cases, they are also quite functional. We saw the same ones on the X399 Aorus Extreme and the X399 Designare. Why? Because of cost. I think there is a market for more professional looking and reserved aesthetics on motherboards. I do. Unfortunately, it isn't going to go over well unless such models are either matched by, or vastly outnumbered by garish models because that's what sells.
 
UEFI which is powerful, easily understood, and a stable board.

I'm not quite sure what this means, but personally I consider UEFI a huge leap backwards.

Over my almost 30 years of doing this, I've cloned , resized and copied partitions and drives back and forth numerous times. I've never had as many boot issues while doing so as I have had in the modern UEFI era. I'ts just a terrible unreliable design IMHO.

I could also do without the GUI BIOS. I actually kind of liked the old ASCII/ANSI way of doing things.
 
It's easy to say this as it makes sense when you think of the concept. However, the "glam" and "horsepower" as you put it aren't mutually exclusive items. The premise is actually false anyway as there is no "horsepower" to speak of on the motherboard. The VRM implementation is the biggest factor in determining a maximum overclock. You've got motherboards like GIGABYTE's X399 Aorus Extreme which has an extremely robust and overbuilt VRM. It's more than you'd ever need even under LN2. So what is Supermicro going to do? One up an already overbuilt VRM? What will that do but drive up costs? Nothing.

The GIGABYTE X399 boards are still clad in plastic and RGB LED's. LEDs are cheap. Injection molded plastic is pretty cheap as well. While the MOSFET coolers are highly stylized in some cases, they are also quite functional. We saw the same ones on the X399 Aorus Extreme and the X399 Designare. Why? Because of cost. I think there is a market for more professional looking and reserved aesthetics on motherboards. I do. Unfortunately, it isn't going to go over well unless such models are either matched by, or vastly outnumbered by garish models because that's what sells.
I think there's a stark difference between simple/subdued and garish. In fact, I would classify current gaming boards as garish, at least when rainbow mode is on.
 
I'm not quite sure what this means, but personally I consider UEFI a huge leap backwards.

Over my almost 30 years of doing this, I've cloned , resized and copied partitions and drives back and forth numerous times. I've never had as many boot issues while doing so as I have had in the modern UEFI era. I'ts just a terrible unreliable design IMHO.

I could also do without the GUI BIOS. I actually kind of liked the old ASCII/ANSI way of doing things.

The UEFI is not a "leap backwards" as you put it. The issues you are having with cloning in the UEFI era has nothing to do with the UEFI beyond the complexities that have evolved from transitioning from the legacy BIOS to UEFI. Legacy BIOS ROM support for storage is still in there. Windows can be installed on modern systems in UEFI or legacy BIOS modes. If everything is setup correctly, and consistently cloning shouldn't be a problem.

As for the interface, that depends on the motherboard. You can still basically use them like the traditional BIOS. You do not need to use a mouse at all. I work with these things all the time and I hardly ever use the mouse for anything.
 
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