Chipmakers chasing massive profits from artificial intelligence have redirected production away from the components that power everyday PCs. The result hits enthusiasts hardest. Motherboard shipments from the industry’s top makers face sharp cuts in 2026. Prices for memory, storage and processors keep climbing. Builders delay upgrades. Retail sales data shows the drop already underway.
ASUS sold 15 million motherboards in 2025. It shipped just over 5 million in the first half of 2026. The company now targets around 10 million for the full year. That marks a roughly 33% decline. Tom’s Hardware first reported these figures, drawn from supply chain sources and Digitimes analysis.
Gigabyte sold 11.5 million units last year. Its revised forecast sits at 9 million. MSI moves from 11 million to 8.4 million. ASRock suffers the steepest projected fall. Its shipments drop 37%, from 4.3 million to 2.7 million. Taken together, the four major Taiwanese vendors see their combined output contract by about 28%. These numbers reflect more than a cyclical dip. They signal a structural shift in how semiconductor capacity gets allocated.
But the pain shows up even earlier at the retail level. German seller Mindfactory recorded drastic falls. In the last two weeks of data from April 2026, combined AMD and Intel CPU sales barely topped 1,000 units. AMD moved 860. Intel managed 140. Compare that to January 2025 levels, nearly 25 times higher. Motherboard sales followed suit. Weekly figures that once reached 3,000 to 5,000 in 2024 now hover just above 1,000. Tracker TechEpiphanyYT, who has monitored the channel for a decade, called the decline the steepest seen. (Wccftech, April 2026)
Shortages started with high-bandwidth memory, the specialized DRAM stacked inside NVIDIA accelerators. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron redirected vast portions of their output to HBM. Up to 80% of capacity in some cases. Conventional DDR5 production suffered. Spot prices for DRAM jumped nearly 700% over the past year. NAND storage followed. In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, 32GB DDR5 kits more than doubled in price within weeks. (Reuters, December 2025)
The squeeze spreads. HP told investors memory now represents 35% of laptop bill of materials, up from 15-18% just one quarter earlier. The company raised prices and began offering lower-memory configurations. Dell adjusted PC and server tags upward. Corsair posted a 5% revenue decline tied directly to component constraints. Intel warned of no meaningful relief until 2028. Micron’s chief executive described the supply-demand gap as the most significant in 25 years. (Bloomberg, March 2026)
PC shipments still grew modestly in 2025. IDC and Omdia recorded gains of around 9% for the full year, helped by Windows 10 refresh cycles. Yet both firms slashed 2026 forecasts. IDC now sees an 11.3% global drop. Omdia points to continued volatility. Entry-level systems face particular pressure. Some analysts suggest that segment could disappear by 2028 as costs make budget builds unviable. Distributors in Taiwan even imposed bundling rules, forcing buyers to purchase motherboards alongside scarce DRAM modules.
Enthusiasts feel it first. A high-end gaming rig now carries a far heavier price tag. GPU costs remain elevated even after earlier corrections. CPU availability from AMD and Intel stays tight because server demand pulls capacity. No RTX 50 Super refresh arrived this year. RTX 60 series rumors point to 2028. AM5 platform longevity helps AMD retain some socket sales, but overall upgrade appetite faded.
Board makers themselves pivot. ASUS, Gigabyte and ASRock expanded AI server businesses to offset consumer weakness. Revenue from data-center motherboards and related gear helps stabilize profits despite lower unit volumes in the DIY channel. MSI described 2026 as potentially its most challenging year in four decades yet highlighted high-end brand strength. The companies lowered shipment targets late in 2025 only to see actual results fall further.
The trade-off looks clear. Hyperscalers pay premiums for guaranteed supply. Long-term contracts from Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta lock in output. Consumer electronics sit further back in the queue. SK Hynix said its chips sold out for all of 2026. Samsung secured HBM orders through next year and beyond. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang acknowledged significant price increases but confirmed his company secured adequate stock.
Broader PC market forecasts paint a difficult picture. Gartner expects shipments to fall more than 10% in 2026. Average device lifetime could stretch 20% as buyers hold onto existing hardware. Smartphone makers already warn of 13-20% price hikes in some models. Console makers and auto suppliers report similar constraints. The memory shortage now affects everything from laptops to cars.
Relief remains distant. New fabrication capacity for conventional DRAM and NAND won’t arrive until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. Even then, AI demand shows no sign of easing. AMD forecasts its server CPU addressable market will grow over 35% annually to exceed $120 billion by 2030. Intel sees AI inference workloads returning CPUs to prominence after years of GPU dominance.
For the enthusiast community, the near term means fewer new builds, higher costs and longer upgrade cycles. Motherboard makers will ship millions fewer boards. Retail data confirms the slowdown already hit German channels hard. And major publications from Tom’s Hardware to Bloomberg document the same forces at work. The AI boom delivers enormous value to chipmakers and cloud providers. Its bill lands squarely on the consumer PC market.
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