We check the price of every motherboard we list on Amazon.co.uk every six hours, using Amazon's Creators API, and we keep a record of each change. A board appears as a price drop only when its current price is well below what that same board has sold for over the past few months. We never count a saving against the RRP. Warehouse offers are the listings sold by Amazon Resale, shown against the board's current new price. Every price on the site carries the time it was checked, and the price on Amazon at the moment you buy is the one that applies.
Where the prices come from
All prices, availability, product details and images come from Amazon's Creators API, the official data feed Amazon provides to its Associates. We do not take prices from other retailers, so this is a record of Amazon.co.uk only. A board that is cheaper elsewhere will not show up here, and it is always worth a quick comparison before you buy.
We cover desktop motherboards: the consumer AMD and Intel sockets listed on our sockets page. Amazon's motherboard category also contains laptop and server boards, hobbyist development boards and accessories, which we filter out. Each board is then sorted by socket, chipset, form factor and brand from its listing details, so that you can browse the way you would shop.
How often, and what "as of" means
The full list is refreshed every six hours. Beside each price you will see a small "as of" time, which is when we last confirmed that price with Amazon. Amazon's prices can change at any moment, and a good offer can sell out between our checks, so treat what you see here as a recent reading, not a live quote. The price and availability shown on Amazon.co.uk when you place the order are what count.
When a price changes between two checks, we store the new price and the time. Those stored changes are the price history that everything else on this page depends on.
Why a saving against the RRP misleads
The familiar way to present a deal is a crossed-out list price and a percentage. For motherboards that tells you very little, for three reasons.
- Boards seldom sell at their RRP for long. The list price is set at launch. Within months the usual selling price is lower, and it stays lower. A board showing "25% off RRP" may have been at that price, give or take a few pounds, for most of the past year.
- List prices are not comparable. Some listings carry a high list price, some a realistic one and some none at all. Ranking by the percentage off simply favours the listings with the most inflated starting figure.
- The question you actually have is different. You want to know whether today is a good day to buy this board, and only the board's own recent prices can answer that.
How we decide what counts as a price drop
For every board we work out a typical price from our own stored history over roughly the last three months. It is a median weighted by time: each price counts in proportion to how long it actually held. That matters, because listings sometimes jump to a silly figure for a few hours when stock changes hands between sellers, and a plain average would let one such spike distort the picture. A price that lasted two months carries far more weight than one that lasted an afternoon.
A board is listed on the price drops page when its current new price is meaningfully below that typical price, and the list is ordered by the size of the drop. The reference price we show beside it is the typical price, so you can see exactly what the drop is measured against.
Our history for a board only begins when we first start tracking it. Until we have a couple of weeks of data for a board, we fall back on the "was" price that Amazon itself reports for that listing, where there is one, and we label the drop accordingly. An RRP-based saving is never treated as a drop, at any stage. Boards whose main offer is out of stock are left off the list.
One consequence is worth knowing. A board whose price slides gradually over many months will not appear as a drop, because its typical price slides with it. The list is designed to catch boards that are cheaper now than they have been in the past few months, which is the signal that a purchase today is well timed.
How Warehouse offers are found
The offers on our Warehouse page are listings sold by Amazon Resale, the current name for Amazon Warehouse: returned and open-box items, graded and sold by Amazon. For each one we show the Warehouse price, the condition grade Amazon gives, and the saving against the board's current new price, not against its RRP. If nobody is selling the board new at the moment, there is nothing fair to measure against, so we show the offer without a saving figure.
There is an important limit to what we can see. The data feed returns a board's featured offer, the one Amazon puts behind the main buy button, and not the full list of every seller. We therefore see a Warehouse unit only while Amazon Resale holds the featured offer for that board. In practice that means:
- Warehouse offers come and go. Each is often a single unit, and once it sells the listing reverts to the new offer until another return is processed.
- There can be Warehouse units on Amazon that we do not show, because a new offer holds the featured position at the time. If you want a particular board open-box, it is worth looking at the other buying options on its Amazon page as well.
- An offer we show may be gone by the time you click. We remove offers we have not seen again within the last day or so, but we cannot know the moment one sells.
Whether a given saving is worth the risk of an open-box board is a separate question, answered in are Amazon Warehouse motherboards worth it?, and what to do when one arrives is in the used motherboard checklist.
The first-available date
Beside a board's specifications we show the date it was first available, which is the date Amazon records for the listing. It is Amazon's figure, not ours, and for some listings Amazon does not give one. It is not always the board's original launch date, since a listing can be created later than the product, but it is a useful guide to age.
Age changes how you should read a deal. A modest drop on a board released a few months ago is unusual and may be worth acting on. The same drop on a board three years old may simply be the run-down of old stock, with a further fall likely and a successor already on sale. Age also tells you what to check before buying: an older board may need a BIOS update before it will start a newer processor, which is covered in BIOS updates and CPU compatibility.
What we do not do
- We do not test boards, and the order of a deals list is not a recommendation. A large drop on the wrong board for your build is not a bargain. The guides exist to help with that part, starting with how to choose a motherboard.
- We do not track delivery charges, vouchers, or offers limited to particular customers, so your price at checkout may differ slightly.
- We do not rank sellers. Check who is selling and dispatching the item on the Amazon page, particularly when the featured offer is from a third-party seller.
- We cannot guarantee that a parsed specification is right. Socket, chipset and memory type are read from Amazon's listing details, which sometimes contain mistakes. Confirm the specification on the maker's own page before ordering.
Reading a deal, in short
- Look at the "as of" time, and expect the price to have moved if it is some hours old.
- On a price drop, compare the current price with the typical price shown, and glance at the first-available date.
- On a Warehouse offer, look at the saving against new, the condition grade, and whether the new price is itself on a drop, in which case new may be the better buy.
- Confirm the price, seller and specification on Amazon before you order.
Questions people ask
How often are motherboard prices updated?
Every six hours. Each price shows an "as of" time, which is when we last confirmed it with Amazon. Prices on Amazon can change at any time, so the price shown on Amazon.co.uk when you order is the one that applies.
Why do you not show savings against the RRP?
Because motherboards rarely sell at their RRP for long, and list prices vary in how realistic they are. A saving against RRP says little about whether today is a good day to buy. We compare each board with its own recent selling prices instead.
Why has a Warehouse offer I saw earlier disappeared?
Warehouse offers are often single units, and we can only see one while Amazon Resale holds the featured offer on the listing. When the unit sells, or a new offer takes the featured position, it drops off our list. Another may appear when Amazon processes a further return.
Where does the first-available date come from?
It is the date Amazon records for the listing. We show it as Amazon gives it, and where Amazon gives none we say so. It is a guide to how old a board is, which helps in judging whether a discount is unusual or simply old stock being cleared.
Do you track prices from retailers other than Amazon?
No. Every price here is from Amazon.co.uk, through Amazon's Creators API. A board may be cheaper at another UK retailer, so compare before buying.