I did not know Intel stayed in the desktop motherboard business as long as they did. I had an AL440LX motherboard-based system that I'm sure still works, after

I did not know Intel stayed in the desktop motherboard business as long as they did. I had an AL440LX motherboard-based system that I'm sure still works, after a few battery and power supply replacements, if it hasn't been disposed of. (I'm sure it has been disposed of) The author fails to understand some things: Not so for the owners of Intel boards. To show just much Intel values its customers, they were informed that BIOS updates were not forthcoming and the newer, faster processors were not supported on Intel boards. That was no doubt particularly galling to the owners of the DZ87KLT boards, which sold for around $300 when new and are worth $150 or more even today (2019). ... After all the hoopla in 2018 about Meltdown and Spectre, guess what happened: Intel somehow magically managed to update the BIOS for those boards after akl. For the DZ87KLT-75K, nothing really changed because the ME firmware did not get updated. But for the DQ87PG board, the 2018 BIOS updates did update the ME firmware as well. It's precisely because Intel "values its customers," or more precisely because Intel understands its value add for customers versus the other motherboard manufacturers, that they would not just slide support for a few extra CPUs into the firmware. To do the job to their own standards they would need to fully retest everything with those new CPUs before officially supporting them. The economics of the Meltdown and Spectre fixes is an entirely separate matter. (it'd be fair to point out that home power users who want to upgrade the CPU on a motherboard after purchase were never a large proportion of the Intel motherboard buying public and, in recent years... there cannot be that many)