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Canned Sunshine
Nov 20, 2005

CAUTION: POST QUALITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION



Hasturtium posted:

It’s gotta suck being a motherboard maker, because outside of your spec sheet the only way to differentiate your product meaningfully from your competitors is to play catty-corner games with electrical tolerances to juice out extra performance. And for a while that worked, but CPUs are being built to such increasingly rigid tolerances that those old tricks increasingly impede system stability or even impact component lifespan. I had a feeling there might be a repeat of the AMD issue from last year that was killing some percentage of x3D chips, and while this seems less serious the old “throw amps at the problem” paradigm needs to die.

They just need to put cute cats or animals or mecha waifus on the motherboards to differentiate them!

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FuturePastNow
May 19, 2014


Hasturtium posted:

It’s gotta suck being a motherboard maker, because outside of your spec sheet the only way to differentiate your product meaningfully from your competitors is to play catty-corner games with electrical tolerances to juice out extra performance. And for a while that worked, but CPUs are being built to such increasingly rigid tolerances that those old tricks increasingly impede system stability or even impact component lifespan. I had a feeling there might be a repeat of the AMD issue from last year that was killing some percentage of x3D chips, and while this seems less serious the old “throw amps at the problem” paradigm needs to die.

the power delivery is also one place they cut corners to save a buck for cheaper boards and is now becoming a problem even for the non-unlocked/non-overclocker CPUs

Cygni
Nov 12, 2005

raring to post

FuturePastNow posted:

the power delivery is also one place they cut corners to save a buck for cheaper boards and is now becoming a problem even for the non-unlocked/non-overclocker CPUs

i bet you watched HUBs new vid on B650M AM5 boards toady :v:

Hasturtium
May 19, 2020

And that year, for his birthday, he got six pink ping pong balls in a little pink backpack.

Canned Sunshine posted:

They just need to put cute cats or animals or mecha waifus on the motherboards to differentiate them!

Given that tempered glass is the latest phase of inescapable gamer tat infecting broader PC aesthetics this is inevitable. For what it’s worth I really liked the original Yeston Cute Pet, but cherry blossoms or a mech painted on an oversized stunt gently caress heatsink doesn’t do it for me.

FuturePastNow posted:

the power delivery is also one place they cut corners to save a buck for cheaper boards and is now becoming a problem even for the non-unlocked/non-overclocker CPUs

Yeah, between the “juice the CPUs until just before they hit the Tjunction limit” behavior being imposed by default and the way even chips advertised as 65W like to periodically bounce up to levels we bitched about on AMD FX parts a decade ago, that was also inevitable. I guess I’m glad they haven’t tried to bring quad-channel memory controllers to consumer parts now, I wouldn’t trust them not to gently caress that up too.

Hasturtium fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 13, 2024

Sininu
Jan 8, 2014


Oh my they're finally fixing the checkerboard issue in Chrome! :toot:

Wild EEPROM
Jul 29, 2011


oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.
People demand more rgb and metal covers and those costs have to come from somewhere (not by decreasing the mobo price though)

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan
The Asus Sonic motherboards are pretty cool and I wish that kind of thing happened more often outside of limited edition things.

LightRailTycoon
Mar 24, 2017
I miss green pcbs and beige cases.

Cleuseau Remos
Apr 13, 2024

LightRailTycoon posted:

I miss green pcbs and beige cases.

Do you smoke? That is why they were beige.

taqueso
Mar 8, 2004


:911:
:wookie: :thermidor: :wookie:
:dehumanize:

:pirate::hf::tinfoil:
They were definitely beige fresh from the box

FuturePastNow
May 19, 2014


Everything started out as an off-white beige that turned either orange or brown depending on how much UV light or smoke touched it

Cleuseau Remos
Apr 13, 2024
It's like the restaurants in the 70s. Nobody liked the beige and the amber lighting but all that smoke would make it that way unless it started beige to begin with.

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

My beige inwin full tower will be with me until the day I die and if something manages to kill it before then I have an identical spare

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
I lament the death of cases that can be easily oriented horizontally. I know there are a few out there (I've got a NESO P1 still in a box) but I'd love for a first-tier maker to make one.

Gwaihir
Dec 8, 2009
Hair Elf
Silverstone is a top tier case manufacturer, and they still have a wide range of desktop choices. Lots focused on htpc styling, but not exclusively.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Gwaihir posted:

Silverstone is a top tier case manufacturer, and they still have a wide range of desktop choices. Lots focused on htpc styling, but not exclusively.

Yeah, I'm keeping an eye out - none of their HTPC offerings fit what I want to do*, and Corsair gave up on the Air 540-style design a while ago. The closest thing they've put out since was one of those maddening "let's put glass in front of the fan intake" designs.

Massive knockoff that it is, the NESO P1 is the only case out there that's an O11 copy that can be horizontally oriented.

* I still like massive baby-head-sized HSFs over AIOs, so I need the height, and I like the idea of the weight of them being more evenly distributed by the case instead of imparting shear force on the board over time.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Apr 15, 2024

Harik
Sep 9, 2001

From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars


Plaster Town Cop
i've tried a few horizontal cases and they've been universally awful. Thermals are poo poo, they take up an enormous amount of space and because they're a gimmick case building in them is terrible.

I have one left that the kids use and it bluescreens constantly due to overheating. Same tower coolers as the vertical cases, similar size/number of fans, just terrible airflow anyway.

Josh Lyman
May 24, 2009


Hasturtium posted:

It’s gotta suck being a motherboard maker, because outside of your spec sheet the only way to differentiate your product meaningfully from your competitors is to play catty-corner games with electrical tolerances to juice out extra performance. And for a while that worked, but CPUs are being built to such increasingly rigid tolerances that those old tricks increasingly impede system stability or even impact component lifespan. I had a feeling there might be a repeat of the AMD issue from last year that was killing some percentage of x3D chips, and while this seems less serious the old “throw amps at the problem” paradigm needs to die.
It's not about performance as much as QoL. A requirement for my AM5 motherboard was having a WiFi antenna that connected with cables since my case is in the corner of a room and having the antennas directly screw onto mobo connectors results in a super weak signal. Sure, I could buy a PCIe WiFi card but that $35 is generally larger than the price difference between mobos I'm considering.

Other things I look for (but don't always get):
-Not the Intel ethernet that is finicky
-Optical output
-Aluminum heatsinks for the M.2 slots
-8 layer PCBs and at least 12+2 power stages
-Quality RAM traces that support future faster speeds
-Well thought out placement and labeling for connectors
-7seg display

None of these seem particularly difficult to implement, but there is still room for differentiation. I agree it's harder than in the Athlon days but consistent performance is better for the consumer.

Bofast
Feb 21, 2011

Grimey Drawer
7 segment displays seems like it should be an easy way to differentiate, given how relatively inexpensive it is and how few (none?) of the low-to-midrange boards have it these days.

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

goons that have an external port 80 card sitting in a drawer somewhere say what’s up

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Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



WhyteRyce posted:

goons that have an external port 80 card sitting in a drawer somewhere say what’s up

what's up

not sure where it is, but it's somewhere in here

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