Intel B760 motherboard could receive price hike over B660

[Daniel Sims]

In brief: In our 2022 B660 shopping guide we noted how rough Intel's mid-range motherboard selection looks compared to AMD's B550 series. New reports indicate the B660's next-generation successor won't offer a much better value when it arrives, likely in January.

According to IT Home, Intel's B760 motherboards will cost around 10 percent more than the B660 chipset. This could make them even harder to justify since current information suggests the B760s will only be marginally better than their predecessors.

Sources told IT Home that Intel has finalized B760's specifications and that board partners should get them next week in preparation for public release in January. Previous reports indicated Intel will unveil H760 and B760 at or just before CES 2023 on January 5, along with the non-K Raptor Like processors, before launching them later that month. However, they could also be available to purchase on January 5.

Raising the price will make the B760 a harder sell if, as current information suggests, it's largely similar to B660. B760 will likely trade some of its PCIe 3.0 lanes for more PCIe 4.0 lanes but offer no other significant changes from its predecessor. It's hard to say how much a potential B760 buyer will benefit from the upgraded lanes, as it's a mid-range chipset for cost-sensitive consumers. Without spending extra money on more PCIe 4.0 components, a user might see little reason to pay the extra 10 percent for the newer board.

As a possible additional advantage, there's a good chance B760 motherboards might come with a Raptor Lake-compatible BIOS pre-installed. It's not much, but it's one less step for those building new systems with Intel's 13th-generation CPUs.

Like the 600 series chipsets, B760 will support both Raptor Lake and the previous-generation Alder Lake processors. It will also retain DDR4 RAM compatibility along with DDR5, letting users save money by starting with DDR4 and upgrading to DDR5 when it's more affordable.

Any other improvements for B760 to justify its price hike will likely need to come from motherboard vendors. Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and others could take the opportunity to improve the audio, power, or I/O ports to increase B760's perceived value. Gigabyte has already revealed the packaging for its B760 Aorus Elite motherboard, which looks extremely similar to its B660 packaging.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96947-intel-b760-motherboard-could-receive-price-hike-over.html

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

Waning demand and falling shipments force PC manufacturers to cut prices
By Rob Thubron Today 5:17 AM

Feel the irony

 

[yRaz]

It's hard to say how much a potential B760 buyer will benefit from the upgraded lanes, as it's a mid-range chipset for cost-sensitive consumers.

That's actually a very valid point, people shopping in this category are more likely to have less peripherals and components. I would speculate that people shopping in this category are also less likely to have bleeding edit components that will benefit from those faster PCI-e lanes.

I have been reading about the physical costs associated with DDR5 sockets on motherboards. They're surface mount rather than through hole and require extra support. Originally I was of the opinion the cost of DDR5 was just the cost of new tech and it would come down. I fear that people aren't talking about the surface mount flaw in DDR5 sockets which could lead to damage during installation of ram or the longevity of DDR5 motherboards. It takes a decent bit of force to install components on motherboards. Causing board flex from adding a new cooler or trying to properly install a 12 pin PCI-e connector into an already installed GPU could damage this. Idly support from the standoff would limit the forced going through the board but I've had to apply a decent amount of force to some coolers and ram modules.

 

[Julnor]

Give it a few more months and we'll get "PC is dying articles" and prices will have to be cut across the board. That's the best time to buy. Now is actually a good time if you find a good bundle, there are some good deals around right now, but the thing is depending on your use case and what you have, you don't necessarily need to.

Last time I did a build was actually for Skylake, I was seeing those articles and low prices at the time. Right now for my use case, gaming mostly indies and older games, 3D v-cache AMD stuff makes the most sense, or just stick with what I have. Obviously other people have different use cases. That's the thing with PCs, you should always build for yourself, and not for what someone else needs the hardware for. E-cores do nothing for me so they don't excite me, current Ryzen 7000s don't have v-cache yet. DDR5 is also too pricey to me anyway. I'll let the prices drop more.

The idea that the seller can set the market when demand is soft is silly. Crypto bubble is gone, WFH needs are already taken care of and won't need updates (plus tbh my employers usually want to send laptops anyway) anytime soon, new console cycle where the consoles are very good but the price for a comparable PC is just way higher, and most of the newer big AAAs being console first and then a poor PC port anyway. If you don't NEED a new content creator centered build, there's really no impetus to rush out to buy now. There's always stronger hardware coming after all.

 

[ColdSoup]

Z790 is already $50-$75 more than Z690 even on equivalent model boards. It is no surprise this carries down the whole series of chipsets. Inflation is real.

 

[Lew Zealand]

That's actually a very valid point, people shopping in this category are more likely to have less peripherals and components. I would speculate that people shopping in this category are also less likely to have bleeding edit components that will benefit from those faster PCI-e lanes.

I'm that person with Intel and AMD B350/360/365/450 mobos only in the house. I do have a 6600XT which is PCIe 4.0 x8 which could take advantage of a B550 or Intel equivalent, but at 1-2% performance loss at 1440p, that's really negligible. And for gaming the speed of a PCIe 4.0 SSD is wasted, even PCIe 3.0 is mostly wasted as games still load from SATA SSDs pretty quickly.

When the time comes that texture streaming is shown to make a difference in Steve's or someone else's tests, then maybe it'll be time to upgrade. But the B350 machine (w/ GTX 1660S) is already 5 years old and it's life can be extended by a cheap R5 5600 if needed which will likely give a far greater performance boost over the current R5 2600 than any PCIe 4.0-class upgrade.