[jugglinmike]

Two points that I haven't seen covered yet:

1. Waste. If some component on your motherboard goes, you're on the hook for a new CPU (and vice versa). This seems tremendously wasteful. Maybe bigger repair shops will support mail-in refurbishing? Will people take advantage of that? Or just buy new for convenience?

2. Competition. Smaller motherboard vendors won't be able to sell direct anymore. I'm wondering if anyone can comment on how bad of a thing this is.

[bcoates]

I don't think I understand #2, wouldn't the small vendor just build and sell their boards pre-populated with an intel CPU part? They'd have to carry more inventory but not a crazy amount more.

[jugglinmike]

Yeah, that's a good point. This introduces a new inventory consideration, namely CPU model demands (they'll have to determine the best distribution of proc models across each product). Probably not too big a deal