Hardware Gigabyte GA-X99-Designare EX Review

£560 CPU, £385 board plus £175 memory = no sale !

All these high-end products aren't going to sell any more, well not until the pound recovers against the dollar....

dunx

 

People buy them all the time, pound is not that relivent in that thought process.

You can buy cheaper x99 boards and do the build for £800.

If I was doing it I'd go all out 10 core monster full water cooling.

 

It isn't just the price that is the problem, but also that upgrading cpu and mainboard just isn't really that needed any more:
For general webbrowsing / office use even a used 5 year old ultra budget cpu from ebay is complete overkill
For gaming cpu upgrades provide zero benefit in most games
Even the last stand of raw cpu power (rendering, transcoding and so on) is slowly going away as it slowly but steadily shifts towards using the gpu.

So the only thing all those fancy new mainboards give you when you buy them is what? Faster connectors for ssds and usb 3.1 type c...
and for that even a much lower price would still be too much.

Like buying a Ferrari and sticking to the speed limit due to cameras everywhere, sure some people do it anyway no matter how much they could save because a random old junk car would get to the speed limit as well (plus offer more space), but upgrading cpu / mainboard really has become something done more for the sake of it and the fun of tinkering around than anything resembling necessity.