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Intel Announces Gradual Discontinuation of Desktop Motherboards  

Hardware Canucks > News > Motherboard News > Intel Announces Gradual Discontinuation of Desktop Motherboards
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Posted by skymtl — January 22nd, 2013, 5:02 PM

In an announcement that will likely come as a shock for some, Intel has announced they will be ramping down their desktop motherboard business over the next three years.

In another sign that the desktop market as we know it is facing obsolescence, just minutes ago, Intel announced they will gradually cease production of their self-branded desktop boards.  While the entire process of reallocating the resources from this division will take some time (up to three years supposedly), don’t expect to see Intel desktop boards around for all that much longer.  In fact, the release of Haswell this year will actually mark the final generation of new Intel motherboards.

This is sad news indeed for anyone who appreciated the stability and warranty support behind Intel’s Extreme series and lesser products.  Especially after 20 years of producing top-tier products.  However, this certainly isn’t doomsday for the desktop form factor.  Intel expects the likes of ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI and others to continue carrying the ATX torch well into future so options will still be plentiful.

Support for existing and upcoming boards will continue well into the future and warranties will remain completely intact.

While the days of legendary Intel-branded motherboards are numbered, this could also mark the beginning of a different platform’s renaissance as additional focus is put upon the Next Unit of Computing and other projects.  It should be interesting to see what else Intel has up their sleeves.

Intel’s full release is below.

Intel’s Desktop Motherboard Business will begin slowly ramping down over the course of the next three years. As Intel gradually ramps down its motherboard business we are ramping up critical areas of the desktop space including integration of innovative solutions for the PC ecosystem such as reference design development, NUC and other areas to be discussed later.
 
The internal talent and experience of twenty years in the boards business (which until recently has been largely focused on desktop tower type designs) is being redistributed to address emerging new form factors — desktop and mobile – and to expand Intel’s Form Factor Reference Design (FFRD) work and enable our partners to develop exciting new computing solutions.
 
The Desktop segment continues to be a major focus for Intel with hundreds of products across many subsegments and applications. Intel expects the broad and capable DT motherboard ecosystem (ie Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and many others) to fully support Intel’s growing roadmap and large worldwide customer base. Intel’s Desktop Motherboard Business will not develop any new Intel branded desktop motherboards after completion of Haswell-based 4th gen Core launch products in 2013 and will continue to support all products sold through the warranty period included with the specific product.

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  • Anom

    Well thats that then,OS lockin here we come.Linux Distros better start finding a consumer way forward.

  • Alex

    Actually, sounds more like their boards aren’t selling that well, thus they are simply slowly abandoning that line; I don’t quite see how this decision translates to the death of the PC. If a certain coffee flavour doesn’t sell well at Starbucks, they will discontinue it – doesn’t quite mean that coffee itself is now over. I don’t know one single person who owns an Intel made mobo…

  • MogRules

    Laptops are outselling desktops all across the board and gaming laptops are getting closer and closer to their Desktop counterparts. It used to be that if you wanted to game a laptop was not even a possibility but that is changing. Tech has changed and continues to advance and gets smaller and produces less heat and it will continue to do so and Laptops will continue to advance and replace desktops. Some of the higher end mobile GPUs are already pushing numbers that are on par with some of the higher end desktop cards and are capable of playing everything released today on the highest settings at 1080….

    The PC may not be dieing but it is becoming less and less sought after unless you are a hardcore gamer or an enthusiast who likes to replace parts every 6 months.

  • johndoe

    At last. The 975X Bad Axe was the last great Intel board and that was how many years ago?

    Anything that came after it did nothing other than to suck shit LOL. The SmackOver 2 X58 required appliying every setting in BIOS TWICE…

    Intel boards are neither well built nor have good BIOS’es yet some people still keep on buying them for their primary machines like those Z68′s or Z77′s with the blue color scheme. Oh well, like I said before, ignorance is sadly bliss.

  • BeaveVillage

    Intel boards have never been a top seller. Companies like eVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Abit, Asrock, Elitegroup, and BioStar are/were. Leave the board making to them, Intel, just keep bringing us sweet processors.

    PC Gamers aren’t going anywhere.