[SOLVED] X299 Motherboards all but extinct and no successor

[Tanyac]

I have two HEDT systems with MSI X299 XPower gaming AC motherboards. For several reasons I wish to get rid of all MSI products I ownb. I am in Australia - Land of the overpriced and exploited. ASRock have no presence in Australia and flat out refuse to honor product Warranties. ASUS are under featured and even more overpriced than other brands. Which leave me with Gigabyte. I believe there is only one model that has the same features as my current board, but it's priced at almost $1200 AUD (about $860 USD).

There is no successor to X299 yet - right?

Yet retailers here stopped selling X299 motherboards some time ago. The few that are left are expensive because they are rare.

I'm also going to get rid of 8 MSI Z370 SLI boards. Again it looks like I am going to be forced to buy Gigabyte, but at least I can get Warranty on them.

I thought about buying from the US, but that almost doubles the prices with Customs ransom, GST, shipping and other costs.

Any [polite] suggestions?

 

[Darkbreeze]

X299 boards are always expensive, regardless where you are. Add to that the fact that hardware in Australia and NZ are always expensive, regardless what hardware it is, and that's a recipe for expensive X299 motherboards for sure.

However, ALL of these are available in Australia, so they don't seem to be all that rare, just slightly expensive.

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#c=126&sort=price&m=7,8,18

 

[Tanyac]

There are only ONE on that list that are truly HEDT motherboards. neither of which I can source. None of the others have any where near the features I need. 99% of theose are not what I would called HEDT (Just because they are X299 does not qualify them as truly HEDT). HEDT was main word in my original post and intended to give a clue as to what I was looking for.

Anyway, I'm not going to play whac-a-mole. I've spent the last 3 months trying to chase down replacement boards and costs aside I keep coming up with "Out of stock", Discontinued" and "No longer available". Almost every retailer I come across lists them on their site, and they sure are available on price aggregator sites like myshopping, staticice, partpicker and so on... Until you visit the site and find that they don't actually have stock. If they did, I would have bought them by now!

I'm not in the habit of making false statements.

EDIT: OMG! I just re-read my original post. It contains all the info needed. No ASRock warranty support - That knocks out 10 of the list. Not a single ASUS has anywhere near the features I need - there goes another 14. That leaves Gigabyte. Only the Designare EX comes close to the features I need. - and I have never seen that available here.

Perhaps I should rephrase my question and have been more specific in what I'm looking for.

Does anyone know of a brand of motherboard that is not MSI, ASRock or ASUS that has the following;

10 SATA Ports
Dual Intel GBe NICs (None of this Killer LAN or other hyped up garbage)
WiFi
3 M.2 Slots. With the ability to use those without knocking out half my SATA ports
4 internal USB 2.0 slots
4 Internal USB 3.x slots
Dual BIOS
3 x PCIe3 slots
Quad Channel Memory support up to at least 3600mhz and supports 3200, 3000 and 2800
At least 4 USB 3.x slots on the back
At least 4 PWM chassis fan headers, not including pump headers
Preferably with a Debug LED.
Preferably has support for S1/S2 sleep states.
ATX or E-ATX only.

uMart is what we call a "Grey marketer". They don't actually carry stock of anything and advertise products that they can't source as a way of driving traffic to their website. You pay for something then you never hear from them again. Then it's a nightmare trying to get your money back. There are several retailers that do that here, particularly cell phone retailers.

Newegg doesn't actually exist in Australia. They ship to Australia, and I already highlighted the issues with overseas purchases. What you don't see in their prices is the import duties and customs charges that add $300+ to the cost. Newegg also don't honor warranties for products shipped to countries outside the US. For example, I purchased an ASRock X99 Taichi in May 2016. It died in Aug 2016. NewEgg refused to accept it s a return and would not honor any warranty. ASRock then who have no presence in Australia either, also refused to warrant the product - not because it was purchased from outside Australia - but because ASRock has no presence in Australia and can't be forced to honor their warranties - Buyer beware!

 

[Karadjgne]

Closest thing I could find that wasn't asus, msi, ASR or Gigabyte is the Evga Dark or FTW, but the only place to get those is ebay and that was $600.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I mean, yeah, if you arbitrarily and restrictively redefine what constitutes "HEDT" and eliminate almost all the most popular motherboard manufacturers from consideration, you're not going to have a lot of options...

Do you actually need every one of the features you listed, or do you want them just because your current mobo has them? Is it acceptable to use add in cards to get more SATA ports and/or NICs?

 

[Darkbreeze]

ALL X299 motherboards are HEDT, according to Intel. The CHIPSET itself is HEDT.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-intel-x299-motherboard-roundup,5217.html

I've talked to two of our moderators who live in Australia, and both of them tell me the same thing which is that they've never heard of any such thing as ASRock not supporting warranties in Australia and that if they DID, due to the consumer laws there, then vendors would not be allowed to sell those products PLUS there are consumer laws requiring the VENDORS to support those products they do sell anyhow.

ASUS is no more overpriced than any of the others, and makes higher quality boards in general anyhow. MSI sucks EXCEPT for on their high end stuff, but I avoid all their motherboard products as a general rule so I can't fault you for that one. Gigabyte generally makes decent quality products, especially motherboards, however they've started a nasty habit of not including some features on a lot of their boards that are standard fare on competitors boards AND were standard fare on their own boards in past years. They've left off some of the granularity they used to have, and that others have had for years, such as being able to make .005v increment adjustments to DRAM voltage instead of their standard .020v increments like most of their boards offer now as well as less meaningful fan controls and some other pet peeves as well.

But in general their boards are good. So if you prefer Gigabyte, that's ok with me, however, ALL of the boards listed at the link I posted above ARE available in your country and ARE protected by consumer law in regard to warranty.

Even if they don't offer warranties, or if the product is no longer eligible for a remedy under the terms of the warranty, anything purchased in Australia is covered by consumer guarantees (which are not the same as a warranty and involve the retailer rather than the manufacturer) and these rights can't be excluded.

It's possible to be so picky that you picky yourself right out of having any options at all, so if it's like that, I don't know what you want or expect anybody to offer in the way of useful suggestions or recommendations. Maybe you don't, I don't know.

I see four Gigabyte boards on that list, all of which are HEDT according to the Intel definition AND what Gigabyte considers to be HEDT. As far as what specs are offered, I assume you're capable of looking at those for yourself since they're clearly listed for each board even with comparisions side by side on each manufacturers website.