According to a report by ITHome, Intel’s upcoming B760 chipset motherboards will receive a price hike when they launch early next year. Prices will reportedly increase 10% over Intel’s previous generation B660 platform. This will represent a 10% higher cost-to-entry for Intel’s latest mainstream CPU platform, and potentially result in some competition within Intel’s own walls between B760 and B660 – both of which support Intel’s latest Raptor Lake CPUs.
Unfortunately, details on B760 remain minimal since the launch of Raptor Lake. But what we do know is that B760’s feature set will remain largely the same as B660, with the only changes that we know of consisting of PCIe Gen 4 and PCIe Gen 3 reconfigurations. This will include a PCie Gen 3 degradation from eight to four lanes, but a PCIe Gen4 upgrade from 6 to 10 lanes.
As a result, B760’s may be more of a sidegrade than an upgrade for most users. B760 will be able to operate more PCIe Gen 4 enabled devices, but it will be limited to the same amount of connectivity as B660 if there are no PCIe Gen 4 devices installed.
This may make B760’s higher price harder to justify for potential buyers. B760’s Gen 4 capabilities on the chipset will rarely ever be needed for system’s Intel’s B series platform targets, including cheap gaming machines, and cheap workstations. Machines such as these need little more than enough PCIe lanes for the graphics card, and enough USB ports for a keyboard, mouse and headset – and those PCIe lanes the GPU requires come from the CPU anyways.
On the bright side, the B760, will potentially have its Raptor Lake support baked in with BIOS’s already prepped from the factory to support Intel’s latest CPU lineup. But this will only work if most B660 motherboards don’t already have Raptor Lake supported BIOS updates from the factory.
Another potential advantage for B760 will be any potential feature upgrades motherboard manufactures make to these boards themselves, over their own B660 counterparts. This could take the form of superior power delivery setups, better integrated audio gear or better rear I/O. In any case, it would be optimal for motherboard manufacturers to make their B760 boards stand out over their older B660 versions, so as not to cannibalize their own sales.
B760’s price hike is not looking good no matter what potential advantages B760 can offer. With B660 being capable of housing Raptor Lake CPUs, B760 will be always be competing with B660 in some way or form.
