This is really a two-for-one for the AI companies: they lock up the hardware market for their growth while also making sure no-one can buy hardware to host models locally.
Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
121–130 of 364 posts
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#122PCs and higher-end IoT devices (like RPi) are becoming less and less affordable. The web is saturated with slop and bot traffic. I wonder how many people think about what this means. We are rapidly losing several of our major technological ecosystems that have driven economic growth in the past few decades. It's not at all clear what economic benefits we will be getting in return.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#123Weren't we supposed to be living in the post-scarcity era?
We are, it's just very unevenly distributed.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#124Shortages or not, there's little demand for cool new motherboards and CPUs from the enthusiast corner of the market because hardware platforms themselves are stagnating performance-wise.
13-14gen Intel Cores are still more than enough for your average home gamer, Zen 5 shows only marginal improvement over Zen 4 except for a very narrow range of workloads, getting wider than 128bit memory bus is prohibitively expensive while relatively cheap consumer boxes like Mac Mini run circles around dual-channel DDR5 setups, so on, so forth.
Sure, presenting this as a consequence of AI boom is convenient for a news outlet, but even before the craze both Intel and AMD were dragging their feet.
I'm not buying it. Both the premise and the new motherboard, that is.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't care to go into detail, that's fine, but your answer is vague. E.g. do you have a hidden, off-grid, underground lair?
No. I don't need to work. I outright own my accomodation. I have no hard technology dependencies.
if you are on land, you are (or someone is) still paying rent to the government. rent can be raised and you will be evicted if you don't pay.
if you are living mobile, you probably need gas or batteries for warmth or cooling. if your climate is currently comfortable, temperatures can be raised.
or maybe you are a nomad hunting and gathering your own food? the wilderness can be pillaged and sold and "secured" until there's nothing left to eat.
there is no perfect security.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#126AI is simultaneously the reason you can't buy a motherboard and the reason you don't need to build a PC anymore. The industry is eating itself from both ends.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#127Motherboards used to be $100, $200 for the high end. Now they want $300+, ram is crazy, storage, video cards, etc. I'm not surprised sales for these components is hitting a wall.
I don't really agree with this. Motherboard prices haven't been moved at all by AI.
I would also say that most consumers, who are almost exclusively buying gaming-oriented boards, do not need anything high end. They can pretty much buy the cheapest board available.
I am shopping around for a mini ITX board and the difference between something at $180 and something at $400 is basically one to two faster USB ports, which are pretty much irrelevant on desktop computers, and a few minor conveniences that I imagine most people can do without.
The higher-end chipsets add no discernible advantage and there are no CPUs that are unsupported by the lower end chipsets (on the AMD side, at least).
The high end stuff is just available for people with a lot of money.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#128Not just motherboards. Cases, PC accessories (fans, etc), consumer SSDs, and more. Cases are especially hard hit, apparently, as they're already quite a low margin business. Personally, I see little reason to upgrade from my AM4 platform. It's never been easier to hold on to aging hardware with the advent of DLSS stretching older cards further, diminishing returns on the newer gen GPUs, and the 'realism' of video gam…
> and the 'realism' of video games plateauing.
I used to think the plateau was here when the Xbox 360 and PS3 came out.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your idea of what "normal people" can afford is a bit off. Normal people aren't buying $1500 computers. And they definitely aren't buying $3000 computers.
An 4K Apple ][ cost the equivalent of around $7K when released. A C64 cost the equivalent of around $2K when released. Both were fairly popular and vastly less useful than a computer today. If the cheapest useful computer ends up costing $3K, it will still be purchased and will still be worth it at around $1/day of useful life.
The C64 sold "between 12.5 and 17 million units" in its lifetime [0], vs. worldwide PC shipments of "71.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025." (emphasis mine) [1] It's truly an apples (hehe) to oranges comparison, and in my opinion it only reinforces the point that "normal people" will no longer be able to purchase computers, just like the C64 was not a mainstream product.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160306232450/http://www.pageta... [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-1-20...
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be owned, someone needs leverage over you or the ability to coerce you. I spent the last half a century making sure they have no leverage and I am not interested in being coerced. It's called security.
If you don't care to go into detail, that's fine, but your answer is vague. E.g. do you have a hidden, off-grid, underground lair?
> If you don't care to go into detail, that's fine, but your answer is vague
No lairs necessary. You can read up on people who do FIRE.