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Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

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171–180 of 364 posts

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

#171

I was looking into self-hosting deekseek v4 pro since frankly cache reads are an absolute scam and they're 90% of the cost, but then I looked at the ROI and it will never pay off fast enough because the hardware will become obsolete faster even if you were running 10 token generation streams 24/7. The napkin math resulted that renting is around 27 times cheaper than owning (not including power). I think we're really…

Would you mind sharing the napkin maths?

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

#172
post #128
post #2

Not 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.

I still think it pretty much was the last major generational upgrade in graphics. An early PS3 game looked night and day better than a late PS2 game. Meanwhile, an early PS4 game looked only marginally better than a late PS3 game, and most PS5 games don't look noticeably better than a PS4 game.

I don't mind that graphics have plateaued, because they aren't the important bit. If anything, I would rather that devs stop trying to chase graphics and make more games with shorter dev cycles.

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

#174
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…

> I already have home sever rack, and would recommend it for other people. I just want to warn people who haven't heard server-grade hardware in-person before: this is only for people who can put a server rack somewhere unpopulated like a garage or basement. Servers will make you think "wow, leafblowers sure are quiet". They are not suitable for apartment dwellers such as myself. When I was setting up my 1U before sh…

You're right, I may have significantly over-estimated the percentage of people on hn that have dealt with server hardware. It's expensive, big, loud, power hungry and temperature sensitive.

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

#175
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…

This will surely bring new energy into opening these platforms, as it did in days before

why?

I'm interested to know, WHY is PC so open? what led to that?

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I already have home sever rack, and would recommend it for other people. I just want to warn people who haven't heard server-grade hardware in-person before: this is only for people who can put a server rack somewhere unpopulated like a garage or basement. Servers will make you think "wow, leafblowers sure are quiet". They are not suitable for apartment dwellers such as myself. When I was setting up my 1U before sh…

> my 1U 1Us have the most compromised ventilation and compensate with loud fans running at high speeds.

Sure. But are there actual limits on how much noise they're allowed to make?

This is all built to be put in a place where noise is not an issue

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

#177
post #133

Who will be the first motherboard maker to put out a board with 12 slots for legacy RAM?

ASrock have created a "HUDIMM", which is basically a half bandwidth DDR5 DIMM. Basically half the number of chips per DIMM. So kinda a modern day 386SX with its 16 bit bus. Presumably hoping you'll be able get fewer, higher capacity DRAM dice for a competitive price versus a normal DIMM.

On modern systems (all 64 bit AMD, and Intel Core "i" onwards, so quite old now) the memory controller is integrated into the CPU, so what the CPU supports is what you get, and the latest CPUs are DDR5 only. Intel did have a transitional phase of CPUs that can do both DDR4 or 5 depending on motherboard, but AMD it's AM4 = DDR4, AM5 = DDR5.

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

#178

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.

> Motherboards used to be $100, $200 for the high end. Now they want $300+

Entry level motherboards are still $100.

$300+ is a very high end motherboard.

The existence of very high end products is confusing because it can give the impression that you have to buy a $300 motherboard because it exists. If you compare features side by side you're rarely missing anything important for the entry level motherboards.

Some people really want the best of the best and feel the need to buy motherboards with Thunderbolt 4 and other future-proofing measures just in case they might need them, but it's premium and luxury territory.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's a lot of bullshit that can happen between the status quo and everything going tits up. Having FU money means you can say -all things being equal - "Fuck You" when it's appropriate, instead of worrying about becoming homeless or not having enough to eat

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will surely bring new energy into opening these platforms, as it did in days before

why? I'm interested to know, WHY is PC so open? what led to that?

Many vendors, because that means you need specs and that in turn allows for interoperability
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