I think that you could see a $600 ish board with the CPU if there is a customer with a decent volume OEM'ing the platform. The flip side is that someone needs to invest in all of the BIOS, firmware, and software validation work for the AMD platforms. Even if it is not much, spread over low volumes it adds up.
Besides the fact that these Motherboards are intended for the industrial market and carry a premium for that reason, is the BoM of the embedded Motherboards that much higher than mid-high end consumer Motherboards like those that are sold in the 150-200 U$D range (Excluding Processor, obviously)?
If prices were more competitive, I'm sure that there would be a higher demand, too. I see embedded Ryzen/EPYC issues as a chicken-and-egg scenario, is quite hard to find these products somewhere, and when you see a platform based on those, they are quite expensive, so this discourages their possible general purpose popularity. No one would pay the high premiums unless they really need the exact feature set and format.
I'm still confident that embedded Ryzen/EPYC could be a hit if sold to prosumers as a replacement for standard independent Processor + Motherboard combos if the price difference isn't too high. I mean, I can't be the only one that prefers the Embedded Ryzen/EPYC feature set compared to the inferior AM4. I still have wet dreams that we would eventually see a competitor to the traditional consumer Motherboards brands (ASUS, AsRock, Gigabyte, MSI) that would try to position a SoC platform aimed for system builders.
In my particular case, I simply can't stand the consumer market. I'm a disgruntled Hardware enthusiast that hates how the consumer market evolved in a way where everything above mid end is automatically something oriented to gamers or overclockers, and have useless gimmicks like RGB lights, ineffective Heatsink with mutant shapes and logos, and the like. Whenever I want to think about building a new computer for me or any possible friend/client and start by looking at Motherboards, you have either low end Motherboards that are too corner cutted for my taste, and if you step a bit above mid end, you are getting swarmed by Motherboards aimed to gamers and overclockers with useless gimmicks that I (Nor my possible clients) will ever use. I just want a sober, simple, but high quality Motherboard at a reasonable price, and the consumer market simply doesn't deliver that.
Heck, even Supermicro dissapointed me, because when they announced their intentions to enter the consumer market, I was expecting sober Workstation-like products that filled that niche of high quality, gimmickless Motherboards. Instead, they decided to attempt to take on the established brands head on with similar gamer products. I'm not expecting them to be my SoC saviors any longer.
End of Rant.
