Motherboard Makers Drop Intel 7 Series Board Prices
A new round of price drops is affecting motherboard makers using Intel's 7 series chipset before it is even officially announced.
According to a report by Digitimes, first-tier motherboard makers reduced their prices in an effort to compete for market share.
Apparently, the original plan was to raise prices to make up for higher copper prices, but the price reductions may have been necessary as there are fears of slower growth in the motherboard market that typically lays the foundation for a highly competitive phase with price reductions. Digitimes says that 7 series motherboards dropped by about 3 to 10 percent in Europe and second tier manufacturers lost market share as a result. There was no information on prices for the U.S.
Intel is expected to launch its 7 series chipset sometime in April.

Im all about second "tier" manufacturers
Also please no PCI slots, PS/2, LPT, SATA II, IDE, Floppy or COM ports. They just waste space that can be used on new connectors.
Though for now I could really care less about thunderbolt. The only time I connect an external is for backup purposes. Internal RAID is a must though. I have dual SSD's in RAID 0 and three data hard drives in RAID 0. That way I get extreme speed and capacity for storage and programs.
Imo HDD and storage is the only thing I do not ever never buy used. I mean, this is where you store the precious data. your pc can fail completely, if the hdd survives you still have the data. buying cpu mothoerboards ram gpu wtever doesn't compromises the data. HDD's do. moreover HDD's have a limited lifetime that is limited by the use they had. I buy almost everything used or refurbished including ES cpu's and such but I never ever buy used storage devices.