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AI Hardware

Motherboard Sales 'Collapse' By More Than 25% 36

Posted by BeauHD from the supply-and-demand dept.
Motherboard sales are sharply declining as AI demand drives shortages and price hikes for memory, storage, CPUs, and other PC components. "Because of this, users who don't have deep pockets are putting off upgrading their PCs and holding on to their current devices longer," reports Tom's Hardware. From the report: Asus, which sold 15 million motherboards in 2025, has only shipped a little more than 5 million in the first half of 2026. It's expected that the company will have to push hard for it to even move 10 million units by the end of the year, marking a 33% decrease in sales year-on-year. Gigabyte and MSI sold 11.5 million and 11 million motherboards last year, respectively. However, both companies have revised their internal forecasts for 2026 to 9 million (Gigabyte) and 8.4 million (MSI), a 22% drop for the former and a 24% contraction for the latter.

ASRock will be hardest hit by the situation, with the company's shipments projected to fall by 37%, from 4.3 million in 2025 to just 2.7 million by the end of the year. This marks a contraction of 28% for the overall motherboard market, at least for the big four manufacturers. [...] Aside from this, AMD continues to use the AM5 socket for its latest processors, while Intel's Nova Lake, which will reportedly use LGA 1954, isn't available until later this year. The situation is further compounded by Nvidia not releasing a refreshed RTX 50 Super series this year, while rumors claim that the RTX 60 series will not debut until 2028. This confluence of factors is discouraging PC builders from upgrading their current systems.

Motherboard Sales 'Collapse' By More Than 25% More | Reply

Motherboard Sales 'Collapse' By More Than 25%

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  • Fraction inflation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:07PM (#66132438)

    Asus, which sold 15 million motherboards in 2025, has only shipped a little more than 5 million in the first half of 2026.

    Looks at calendar ... counts on fingers ...

    Uh, 2026 is a third over plus a few days. Asus is on a pace to sell the same number of motherboards in 2026, if my grade school arithmetic is any good.

  • As i predicted, peripherals and components will all drop in price as folks making/buying new computers hold off.
    So if you need anything other than memory or storage youre gonna see some decent deals coming in the later half of the year...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      Don't forget Windows 11.

      We had to buy two new PCs last year just because Windows 11 refused to run on the existing ones. That extra burst of sales is also over.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by evanh ( 627108 )

        I'd argue that is why it isn't worse than 25% already, people are still buying Win11 upgrade boxes. As OP posted, the figures are going to be far worse by the end of the year, unless the AI bubble finally pops.

  • The problem is that you need to have the other components to plug into the motherboards.

    First the shitty crypto bros horded all the consumer GPUs for a ponzi scheme, driving the prices to explode by several hundred percent. Then, as consumer GPU prices start falling the fucking AI bros buying up all the commercial GPUs create a shortage of ram chips (because theyre going on the GPUs) causes the consumer RAM prices to spike by several hundred percent.

    Now "Ram is cheap" is not true.

    Its about time for

    • If the workstation's purpose is your job it may be worth upgrading. That's easily measured with money.

      If it's solely a toy, decide how much fun you can effortlessly afford.
      Non-bleeding edge PCs still do what they were bought to do.

      There are many ways to enjoy computers. Home lab enthusiasts assign roles to their computers to conveniently offload tasks and if so inclined run a variety of OS. Retro gamers often have multiple PCs to suit their OS and software of choice.

      • Honestly outside of people who do heavy 3d rendering, even a computer you use for your job just doesn't need to be that powerful.

        As a programmer who sits at a screen for 8 hours a day, it took a lot of convincing for me to even give up my 10 year old workstation because it was pretty decent when it was purchased and as long as it had decent ram (it had 32GB) I was perfectly fine working on it. Having to reinstall was more of a headache that the benefit of getting a new system.

        Hell my home/play machine is S

      • If the workstation's purpose is your job it may be worth upgrading.

        Kind of doubtful. My 10+ year old Win10/Ubuntu PC has gone through numerous upgrades over the years and was still a pretty damn good workstation. The real reason to get a new motherboard was Win11 compatibility, which is related to work.

    • The problem is that you need to have the other components to plug into the motherboards.

      Partially. My Win10 box was over 10 years old and has had numerous upgrades over the year. It ran great, it just would not run Win11. When I bought a motherboard to build a Win11 system I recycled the "recent" M2 SSD and GPU upgrades to the Win10 box. Letting the Win10 box return to HD and an older GPU. I really only needed to buy RAM and CPU for that new motherboard.

  • Motherboard prices are up like 300% of what they used to be. You used to be able to get one for $50-60 on the lower end, but now they start at like $200. I think, people are just running them longer

  • Happens with other commodities too (Score:3)

    by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:57PM (#66132580)

    > users who don't have deep pockets are putting off upgrading their [product]

    Hasn't the same thing happened to cars?
    Next up are phones.

    • I only buy a new phone when the old phone breaks. Unfortunately, I"m pretty good at breaking phones. We passed the point of diminishing returns on upgrading PCs several years ago. Once you got 4K video and a 1 TB SSD, there is no real reason to change anything until it stops working. I did just spill a glass of water on my gaming laptop though... now it doesn't recharge the battery.

      • This. I built my desktop PC 11 years ago and it still does everything I need. And I have a 5 year old Android phone that's still just fine for watching YouTube in the bathroom.

  • Yawn (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Thursday May 07, 2026 @02:02PM (#66132594)

    Meanwhile, my i7-6700K with 32GB RAM I built many moons ago is still chugging along very nicely. Years ago I started "upgrading" my systems with used 3+ year old components. I saw no benefit in purchasing new components to chase the never ending need to stay "current". The Microslop push to have new PCs for Windows 11 over the last few years has allowed me to upgrade a few of my really old quad core systems dirt cheap. Fuck LLMs.

    • I saw no benefit in purchasing new components to chase the never ending need to stay "current".

      I upgrade to the current generation when it becomes the prior generation, i.e. when the new generation comes out. I built a 5900X system with 64GB of RAM just before the prices spiked. In fact I bought 32GB and then just after it arrived I was like nah, I should have more at this price, and the price had already gone up by about 10% since my first order. Therefore I purchased at the very start of the spike. Last I looked, the same RAM I had bought had gone up 200%.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sodul ( 833177 )

      I've been buying used machines for my home server needs for a while now. The current server we have is a Dell with an i7-2600, 16GB RAM and I put a 1TB SDD in it. The PSU died a few weeks after I got it but a $25 used PSU has been working well for years now.

      The setup is more than enough to handle the web and email services as well as a couple of game servers for my son. Most of the time the machine uses under 1GB of RAM and has low CPU load.

      I would like to upgrade to a more modern machine, but other than ne

  • captain obvious (Score:3)

    by gary s ( 5206985 ) on Thursday May 07, 2026 @02:07PM (#66132610)
    Dont need a motherboard if you cant afford Ram and GPU.
  • ...if you can't get CPU or memory for it?

  • wrong motherboards (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Thursday May 07, 2026 @02:11PM (#66132626)

    They should be selling motherboards with 8 or 16 RAM slots so that you can consolidate existing RAM from multiple 'obsolete' boxes.

    • They should be selling motherboards with 8 or 16 RAM slots so that you can consolidate existing RAM from multiple 'obsolete' boxes.

      That's not trivial, especially when most people want uATX or smaller.

      Also nobody wants to support a bunch of people using old RAM and then filing RMA requests about it.

    • Users with leftover RAM modules have ways to use them including used server boards which are plentiful and cheap in complete systems. Not requiring some "ideal" PC is liberating.

      The cost-effective way to use ewaste is mixing it with other ewaste which has become quite popular, "home lab" enthusiasts being common examples. Another way is using multiple SFF and tiny PCs so each machine can be optimized by the owner. They don't use many modules, but 8 or 16GB can be useful if loads are reasonably limited.

  • Boom meet bust.

  • If you can't afford RAM, only a motherboard, then that purchase of a motherboard isn't going to get you much, functionality wise.
    If you can't afford RAM for your new PC, you basically can't afford your new PC.
    If you can't afford SSDs or HDDs for your new PC, you basically can't afford your new PC.
    If you can't afford your new PC, you won't buy your new PC.
    And if you don't buy your new PC, you would buy the motherboard for your new PC.
    So you won't buy the motherboard.
    Simples.
  • People that build their own PCs are mostly gamers, with Windows 11 being so awful, people like me are no longer building PCs.

    My gaming rig is still on Windows 10 and I have no inclination to build another one and be forced into Window 11. So I am not buying motherboards.
  • Laptops, tablets & smartphones are the gadgets dujour, what would fill a niche and sell quite well is the cyberdeck like Clockwork's uConsole or the Mecha Comet, I am seriously considering one because tablets only have a single type C USB plugin spot and I need more functionality but not too big physically, something durable I can toss in a rucksack and go for a hike in the wilderness and listen to HF radio with a cheap SDR with a longwire, and most laptops are too big for my needs, I could manage to do

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