Non-Integrated Motherboards?

Anonymous Coward asks: "Nowadays no matter where you look, most motherboards have built in everything. Built-in sound, video, LAN, and so on. Are there any reliable manufacturers that still make motherboards without the extras? One example: I want to build a high-end workstation for video processing. Often with on-board audio there are timing issues. Disabling the on-board features doesn't always work. When your on-board NIC fails, a piece of your motherboard is no longer working, not just a replaceable expansion card. What manufacturers are still making 'barebones' motherboards (and what models) without having to buy a server backplane?"

ABIT has some offerings

[PeekabooCaribou]

I've had the same question, and a product search on NewEgg.com brought up three results from ABIT and none from anybody else. I'm thinking about buying the KD7-E [abit-usa.com] in the near future.

It looks to be a powerful board, but I would be making the switch from SDRAM to DDR, which doubles the cost of the upgrade to get any acceptable amount of RAM.

Well, lets take a look at what I run

[da_Den_man]

SOYO makes a fine board. Nothing integrated but the serial/parallel/usb/hdd controllers. I can get models with the video and LAN and sound, but I choose not to. Shuttle makes a few also. ABit does, as I look towards [mwave.com]MWave catalogs.

Yes, Most come with the built on sound, but I turn that option off in the BIOS (the same way I can turn off the serial/parallel/hdd controllers also) and it doesn't affect any operation of the system, because as far as everything is concerned, when it doesn't show up on boot, it is not there.

My question has to be...did you even attempt to look before you asked? You stated that you needed "high-end" boards, however the research I have done seems to illustrate that all the "low cost" systems and motherboards use this method, and the more expensive motherboards don't integrate a whole lot other than the standard that has been in place for years now.

Re:Don't know, don't care

[Examancer2]

you don't know what your are talking about. learn about hardware before posting about it. there are absolutely no circuitry limitations with integrated components. Great video cards can be made extremely small... thats not the point. The reason they suck is because they share the memory bus with the cpu, which creates a huge bottleneck. integrated sound, however, is often extremely good. many motherboard makers are now choosing high quality 6 channel solutions due to the low price premium over crappy sound. also, integrated networking devices are generally faster than pci NICs, because they are optimized with the motherboard's chipset. a motherboard with integrated components is not sacrificing anything. not stability, not expandability, not speed, not quality, not anything. They are, however, offering people added functionality. a motherboard should have all the essential pc components, and its hard denying that sound and networking are pretty essential for most computers today.

Found these @ NewEgg

[blankmange]

Abit KD-7 (very little integrated)

Asus A7V333 or P4B553

Gigabyte GA-8SG667

You are right, however, in saying that non-integrated mobos are difficult to find...I have found that the quality of mobos is on the rise (in general) and the integrated features save me PCI slots for additional cards (and other crap I lust after, but would rarely use..).