I would say that since more and more of the world wants/needs sovereignty in this space, more and more options would come up in the next 5 years. They will probably not be the cutting edge we have now but personal computing will not die. It will just get a (healthy) reset.
Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
131–140 of 364 posts
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/20…
> "normal people" will no longer be able to purchase computers,
Starbucks' revenue was almost $10B in the last quarter. Most people can clearly afford $1/day for something as useful as a computer.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#133Who will be the first motherboard maker to put out a board with 12 slots for legacy RAM?
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#134Maybe with AI we can finally kill user-owned computing, and make almost everyone renters. It's really wrong that the common people have access to things like PCs. It leaves a lot of money on the table the corporations can extract, and makes control much harder. PCs should cost at least as much as a car, so only the right people can afford them. Own nothing and be happy.
I'm sure this makes the billionaire class happy but there are some legit economics involved. We all want frontier class models running on our home PC but that takes 100x or 1000x the computer we've been running. The market isn't going to instantly adapt and make that kind of machine for the same price we've been paying for 1% of it, so that we can leave it sitting idle 99% of the day.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
After the recent run-up, where are prices on a per-performance basis? Back to 2019? Computers were incredibly more expensive when I was growing up. People bought them anyway. Is a computer that lasts 5-8 really productive years (and is still serviceable for another 5-7) and costs $1500 really a deal-breaker just because it was $1000 and on sale for $850 a year ago? Even if it doubled again, it still doesn’t price nor…
I just looked at some low-end NAS-oriented HDDs. The cost $/TB is 2x similar ones I bought 5 years ago. That has never before happened in the history of computing, and it violates long-held, fundamental assumptions.
It happened in 2011 when massive flooding in Thailand stopped a huge chunk of global production. Hard drive prices pretty much doubled overnight.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I invested quite a bit in enterprises level homelab equipment 2020 to 2025 (about 10k). Happy I made it before the big bang. Eg. my SAS he8 drives will last at least till 2035. But what then? I want my children to be free, too.
You cannot be fully free if you're attached to physical goods. It may sound like pseudo-Buddhist claptrap, but it's also true. Or, I suppose, Fight Club claptrap. It's still true. The choice is "do you want to participate in society, its benefits and drawbacks". You can't have only one side of that.
The first rule of Buddhist Fight Club is that attachment causes suffering.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#137Motherboards 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.
My parents bought a mid-tier PC for $3,000 (in 1995 dollars) and there was still a thriving PC industry at those prices! While things are getting more expensive now (and that sucks) we have had it really good for a long time.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#138Not 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…
I should have upgraded my GTX 1060 6GB last year. Last year I said I should have upgraded my 1060 last year. I bought it second hand 7 years ago and it is still the same price. I don't do much gaming, and it runs Immich / etc light inference just fine. One thing I don't regret is getting 32GB of DDR4 when I built the system around the time of the GPU upgrade.
Sometimes you just have to accept the current pricing and buy what you need to buy (assuming you need to buy anything at all).
7 years ago it was the same price, but then again, the last 7 years have involved accelerated inflation. So, the same price is actually a lower price.
If you're looking for a card in the sane $300 area, the Intel ARC B580 (12GB) or the RX 9060XT (8GB) are a reasonable value. If you want 12GB+ from Nvidia or AMD the used market in previous generations is a good place to look: maybe something like a RTX 3060Ti (12GB) or RX6800XT (16GB).
I personally don't think the GPU market is incredibly miserable. Maybe I am just used to the pain or something? Nvidia has a bit of a tax where but something like the RX 9070XT is basically the 3rd fastest gaming GPU money can buy and it's around $700. (I'm not sure why the 5070ti costs $200 more even given Nvidia's software advantages. It performs almost identically it just doesn't make purchase sense)
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#139Shortages 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 expensiv…
I wanted to build a Threadripper 9965WX and the math worked out until DDR5 prices come in to play. Instead I got a used Lenovo P620 5975WX and still had to buy DDR4 from Shenzhen to get anything remotely affordable. The IPC of the Zen5 is a meaningful uplift especially for single thread but it is out of reach.
Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Correct. I just aim to get eaten last.