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Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

tomshardware.com

141–150 of 364 posts

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, storage prices were still much lower 5 years later.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically the few people not scamming you for cache reads are Deepseek. Everyone else charges a ridiculous amount but Deepseeks API is $0.003625 / M tok. I'm surprised no one talks about this because of how significant it is. GPT 5.5 for example costs a ridiculous $0.50 / M tok cached. It's literally almost 140 times cheaper which matters a lot for tool calls.

it's a temporary promo, deepseek will return to only 10x cheaper after.

Yes Deepseek V4 pro is currently on discount.

> The deepseek-v4-pro model is currently offered at a 75% discount, extended until 2026/05/31 15:59 UTC.

However even when the discount ends its still very cheap. It will go back to $0.0145 / M cache hit. That's still 34x cheaper than GPT 5.5.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#143
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

AI bros and crypto bros. One and the same thing. Same optimism. Same arguments. Same blind faith. Same zero knowledge of how economy, society or even the technology they are evangelizing works under the hood and what are its shortcomings that are impossible to overcome because physics won't allow.

> what are its shortcomings that are impossible to overcome because physics won't allow.

Have you intended to say "because reasons"? There should be a long chain of reasoning connecting "LLMs will never be able to strictly follow instructions written in natural language (as agreed by 90% consensus of experts or some such, because you can't formally verify adherence to informal natural language instructions)" and "physics doesn't allow that." And I can't find it anywhere. Neither in your comment history, nor in literature.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#144

Motherboards 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.

How much money was left to spend on hobbies considering the cost of education and real estate at the time?

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#145

Motherboards 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.

Buying whole 2020 era PCs here for around $200 mark. As long as you don't need crazy CPU or GPU grunt, which is most people, they are almost indistinguishable from a new one.

Windows 10 LTSC + Firefox + uBlock Origin on an i5-9400 feels faster than my M4 Pro MBP. Probably same or better on Linux.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#146
post #59

PC is the last major open platform. While other platforms like Android and becoming less open, PC in general is becoming more open than it's been in a long time as heavy MacOS/Android/iOS competition is creating a focus on open standards and all-time high strong Linux support gives people a place to land and tinker/hack to their heart's content. I think we will see an abandonment of consumer grade PC components and i…

> PC is the last major open platform.

In the whole history of computing PC is the only platform where buying a computer means crazy number of options and configuration mixes to choose from and expect it to work! And warranty would support it too! You can run any OS of your choice on it and that's also reasonable expectation.

Any other platform (SUN, Be, Amiga, NeXT, Apple) it was always buying it from one company only from its list of products. And even running with a different version of OS means warranty doesn't cover it.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#147
post #87

Earlier 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?

> 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.

99% of people who follow that are still completely dependent on the world order and will be just as screwed as everybody else if everything goes tits-up.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#148
post #58
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they own nothing but make believe stocks and life works great for them. The mega-rich are 100% decoupled from physical reality. May as well treat them more like tribal shaman, priests, preachers, and rabbis. Just parroting memes the likewise idiot politicians believe are the magic chants that keep gravity itself pulling together the Earth. "Omg he said the thing! Cut his taxes! Give him welfare!" Our generati…

Nah. The first two thirds of the 20th century was the science and information world. Man gained mastery of the skies, the depths of the sea, the void of space, the atom. We were taming diseases and found a way to end hunger. We started building thinking machines. We were playing with the fire of the gods. Science was working miracles on the daily. It still is, but nobody gives a shit anymore, we are in the financiali…

[dead]

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At current prices, Chinese companies could even produce everything possible (~anything but current gen CPUs and GPUs) on slightly older nodes and make a stonking profit while lowering market prices.

It would unfortunately be considered contraband in the US or tariffed 500%

It'll be the same for Canada. We're already seeing satanic panic style action against things like TP-Link networking equipment and Hikvision cameras. Funny how those are a couple of the brands that can run 100% locally without a connection to the internet.

Re: Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

#150
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller manufacturers will fold, and larger ones will leave the consumer market (like Micron/Crucial did), before the market has a chance to bounce back. If and when it does recover, it will be a market of much fewer choices.

A somewhat comparable historical example is the destruction of the Swiss watch industry in the 70s with the advent of quartz and digital watches. A Rolex Daytona today is known as a very fancy and even hard-to-get watch. In the 70s they were practically giving them away with other watch purchases because electronic watches were taking their lunch. The bigger takeaway, I think, is the destruction and folding eventuall…

Besides watches becoming expensive trinkets, a Rolex Daytona in the 70s was basically the same watch as what you could get from other manufacturers with the same movement inside. Today you have to spend at least 30k to get something comparable to it which is part of the reason that it's in a permanent demand crunch.
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