$35 LAN Party...

[Anthony de Boer]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 08:47:23PM -0500, Anthony de Boer wrote:
> > Note also that the latest Intel thing about them getting out of the
> > traditional desktop-board racket is not because desktops are dead, but
> > rather that the ATX form factor is a huge waste of real estate: Intel can
> > do all it wants to do for a high-end machine on a four-inch-square board
> > nowadays.  And that's only about double the size of a Pi.
> 
> The memory and cpu sockets alone take more than that on a high end intel.
> 8 DDR3 slots and a 2011 pin cpu socket takes some space.  And of course
> any high end machine would want at least one PCIe x16 slot for a video
> card (since that is something intel certainly doesn't know how to do yet).

I was quoting from recollection of:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/24/intel_exits_desktop_motherboard_market/

which in turn led to a search that found:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/next-unit-computing-introduction.html

which certainly look like a couple of sweet wee boards.

> But certainly 7 expansion slots are hadly ever needed except by those
> people that seem to think 3 or 4 video cards working together is required.

I think the world in general is moving toward USB-or-faster external
interfaces (Thunderbolt, on one of those NUC boards) in part for
laptop compatibility, and in part to make adding stuff easier and avoid
voided warranties by the sort of user who could cut himself with a
screwdriver.

Granted, you still see dual PCIe slots on that same board, and some
internal slots may always be with us, but the days of _everything_
being a card in an Apple ][ are long behind us.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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