QOTW: What is the most you would pay for a motherboard?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 26 July 2019, 16:31

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), MSI, AORUS, Gigabyte (TPE:2376), AsRock

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The parlous state of the pound, etailers looking to maximise profits, manufacturers hiking their prices. There are many reasons why some PC components feel more expensive than a couple of years ago. This state of heightened pricing is characterised by the cost of decent motherboards.

Looking at etailers, the median cost of an AMD X570 ATX motherboard is £250 or so, Intel's Z390 is £200, and prices seem to creep up week on week.

Of course, there is still value to be had if you are willing to forego features, especially as so much is now baked into the respective chipsets, but getting to this week's question, we are asking what is the most you would pay for a motherboard?

Those with an enthusiast inclination will undoubtedly shell out more, as will those who only want the best, but it will be interesting to hear your views.

So, fire away in the comments section and let us know your upper limit for a motherboard.



HEXUS Forums :: 56 Comments

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It would depend hugely on what I needed it for, what features I expected/needed, and how highly I valued them.

For instance, these days I'm no longer a heavy gamer, so those high-end, feature-laden boards just aren't worth it for me. But I have, in the past, paid substantial sums for multi-processor “workstation” class boards, because I had a need.

The same, by the way, goes for graphics boards. In the past, I topped out at over £1200 for a graphics board. Now? I doubt I could justify topping £200, and even that would be pushing it.
At current prices my limit is around the £160 my present motherboard cost, last August.

I no longer overclock, as I no longer see any need. I don't need built-in high performance wifi as I use a usb adaptor I set up high where it works best. I don't a sound upgrade as I use an external DAC and headphone amp, good enough to make my old Asus Xonar Essence STX sound poor.

Paying more than I did last year, just means paying for features I will never use.
Probably about £250-300 but that's more to do with it being the price to get what I want on the board than a ‘fixed limit’.

I have in the past paid more (and that's before you consider inflation) but that was for a dual processor board etc.
£200 max, not much point in overclocking anymore so I think that should be enough to spend on a board tops.
For my main rig at this moment in time; less than £100 and probably closer to £50.

For what I need the board to do, that is support a single CPU at stock, two sticks of RAM, a graphics card and one M.2 NVME drive, there's nothing a £50 board can't do that a £250 can.