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Are ITX motherboards always expensive?

I am planning to build a mid range small gaming PC (Intel 12400/AMD 5600X + RTX3060 tier). Looking at ITX motherboards, both Intel B660 and AMD B550 have very few options and are more expensive than mATX motherboards. I thought with less DIMM slots, PCIE slots, SATA ports etc. they should be cheaper. Is there some shortage going on right now for ITX boards or are they always expensive? I only need 1 PCIEx16, 1 M.2, 1 SATA and 2 DIMM slots, so building in ATX cases feels pointless since most of the case space and the motherboard features will go unused.

 

Also, for almost all categories the cheapest boards are usually Asrock. Are they reliable products or should I avoid them?

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They are more expensive as it takes a lot more r&d to make sure everything properly works on such a small board.

 

That and it is a more limited production run since itx is just not that popular of a board form.

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They're more expensive because the circuit board is almost always made out of more layers, in order to be able to route traces ("wires") between components. 

So for example a mATX board made with 4 layers may cost them 10$ to make, a 6 layer board may cost them 15-20$ and a 8 layer ITX board may cost 40$ to make. They often have to use smaller components (ex 0402 or smaller parts) when mATX or ATX boards could work with 0603 or bigger, which means they may have to use more expensive chip shooter machines to position the components on the boards while they could use cheaper (already paid for) machines for matx/atx boards and ITX boards also often have a bunch of components on the bottom of the circuit board which translates into extra pass through soldering machines, extra checking and inspections and so on. 

 

The connectors are not that expensive in the "grand scheme" of things, they buy them by the 10k pcs so they get good discounts on them...

 

 

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51 minutes ago, AncientPistol said:

are they always expensive? I only need 1 PCIEx16, 1 M.2, 1 SATA and 2 DIMM slots, so building in ATX cases feels pointless since most of the case space and the motherboard features will go unused.

There is µATX / mATX. These are usually the cheapest ones, because they are most popular.

My build:

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Intel Core i7 9700 8x 3.00GHz So.1151

 

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MSI B360-A PRO Intel B360 So.1151 Dual Channel DDR4 ATX

 

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16GB (4x 4096MB) HyperX FURY black DDR4-2666

 

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8GB Gigabyte GeForce RTX2070 WindForce 2X 3xDP/HDMI

 

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