Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Thu, May 07, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

deathanatos wrote: post #225

I'm one of the collapsed sales. My desktop had died, and I had been thinking about rebuilding it. But RAM prices went to the moon, so I instead opted to repair the desktop. (It's only ~15 years old.) It's alive, again, and performs well enough. The HDD in it is pretty old (not as old as the rest of it, it's on its second drive; 15 years would be quite impressive!), and still works for now, but there too, prices are s…

I've been replacing older systems with last gen hardware off ebay. I'm typing this on a Thinkpad T14 i5-1250p 512GB 32GB WWAN I picked up last week for $370 all in.

Since this mess started, I've bought dozens of unused and like-new systems for clients. All with modern hardware - in the $250-$600 range.

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

#242

Post by techpression » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

craftkiller wrote: post #158

hx8 wrote: 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…

Reminds me of when I as a kid got one of those Delta 7000rpm fan powered cpu coolers, my mom promptly asked what it would cost to make that noise (that was heard in the entire apartment) go away. Got a Zalman (back when they were great) and everything was good.

It was a learning experience, and I think everyone should experience that kind of industrial noise at least once to appreciate how quiet consumer hardware is.

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

#243

Post by wg0 » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

red75prime wrote: post #143

wg0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "phy…

Because it is next token predictions and there is no logical part into that. It is like saying I cannot find any research paper on the fact that car collusion might cause fire because gasoline is in the tank.

But the fact is that there's plenty of literature out there on hallucination and unreliability of LLMs already. If you know otherwise, let us inform Dario before next funding round.

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

#244

Post by zahlman » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

the__alchemist wrote: post #240

Aurornis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future proofing is an expensive way to pay for features you don't need and will probably never use. It's smarter to buy a cheap motherboard that meets your needs now. If in the future you find the need for USB4 or some other feature, upgrade the motherboard. More often than not, builders will try to future proof for eventualities that don't arrive before it's time to upgrade to the next CPU socket anyway. There are a…

It's a gamble. I take the opposite mindset now; scarcity mindset. "$1600 is too much for a video card" - me a few years ago on not buying an RTX4090 from nvidia's website. "I only need 32Gb of RAM. If I want more later, I'll just updgrade" - Me a year ago. Both mistakes, with hindsight. I will always future proof from here on out.

Counterpoint:

"$100 is a reasonable amount for a video card, I know this is on the budget side but at least I have a card this way" — me 12 years ago.

"I guess it's worth it to spring for 8GB of RAM..." — me 12 years ago.

Still using the same machine, with no regrets (just the occasional bit of envy).

Different people have different expectations and requirements.

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

#245

Post by 2ndorderthought » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:07 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #82

2ndorderthought wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not to mention the comment agents. The true AI bro/sis won't waste her/his time commenting when an agent can do it for him/her.

Have to efficiently trash the internet of course.

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

#246

Post by BobbyJo » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #231

donmcronald wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 normal people out, IMO. Maybe it's different in the US. In Canada, the median income for 25-54 years old was just under $60k / year in 2024. When you're talking about a $3k USD…

> When you're talking about a $3k USD computer, it's pushing 10% or more of the median after tax income. If it lasts for 10 years, it's more like 1% of the after tax income of a median individual earner over that period. I think a computer is clearly valuable enough that people will entirely rationally spend 1% of their income on it if that's what it costs. (I'm not "cheering it on"; I'm just observing and predicting…

Computers really aren't that valuable to the average person who already has a smart phone. For everyone else, many probably have a work issued computer, and don't need one at home. The market for high end home hardware is really only gamers and tech workers, and gamers will fall back to closed hardware fast if price/perf pushed them to do it. A big reason PC gaming thrived 2010-2020 was PCs were better on a price/perf basis.

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

#247

Post by beloch » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

"Despite this drop in sales, these companies aren’t exactly struggling. Asus, Gigabyte, and ASRock have pivoted some of their production towards AI servers, allowing them to capture some of the investments that hyperscalers are generously pouring into their data centers. But if you’re planning to build a completely new PC from scratch, you might be able to find good deals on motherboard combos, especially as retailers are keen on getting their inventories moving. "

----------------

1. Within a few months, these manufacturers will likely raise desktop mobo and CPU prices with the justification that "volumes are too low".

2. If you're upgrading from an older machine, it likely has a format of RAM that's not compatible with newer boards. Upgrading the cheap parts now and waiting for the expensive bits to come down is simply not an option. It's all or nothing.

Game and application developers should be paying close attention to this. You're used to the average user's system spec going up every year. That's stopped for now. The average memory in new systems may actually retreat!

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

#248

Post by kergonath » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

the__alchemist wrote: post #240

Aurornis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future proofing is an expensive way to pay for features you don't need and will probably never use. It's smarter to buy a cheap motherboard that meets your needs now. If in the future you find the need for USB4 or some other feature, upgrade the motherboard. More often than not, builders will try to future proof for eventualities that don't arrive before it's time to upgrade to the next CPU socket anyway. There are a…

It's a gamble. I take the opposite mindset now; scarcity mindset. "$1600 is too much for a video card" - me a few years ago on not buying an RTX4090 from nvidia's website. "I only need 32Gb of RAM. If I want more later, I'll just updgrade" - Me a year ago. Both mistakes, with hindsight. I will always future proof from here on out.

When you try to future proof, you are basically hedging. It’s a kind of insurance; sometimes it pays off, sometimes it does not. Having more disposable income now than I did 10 years ago I tend to pay more attention to this sort of things, but everyone can choose where they put the cursor. Someone who overestimated their RAM needs when buying a computer last year are probably pretty happy about it, but it could have swung the other way.

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

#249

Post by kergonath » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

estimator7292 wrote: post #224

reactordev wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re dropping that kind of cash, you definitely want to future proof it and not go with the budget lastgen motherboards.

Buy a $300 motherboard now in case you need future features, or buy a $100 motherboard now that does everything you currently need and then buy a second or even third $100 motherboard if you ever actually need those future improvements. Then you get a new board designed for the new features instead of something several years old and you come out $100 on top. Futureproofing is nonsense. PCs just don't work that way, a…

> Buy a $300 motherboard now in case you need future features, or buy a $100 motherboard now that does everything you currently need and then buy a second or even third $100 motherboard if you ever actually need those future improvements.

Right, but the problem is that by now your $100 new motherboard requires a new CPU and new RAM. Which is very much not $100.

In the past we got away with PCI cards to add features without changing the motherboard, but we still ended up changing everything every 2 years anyway…

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

#250

Post by zahlman » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

cryo32 wrote: post #145

post_break wrote: post #116

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.

> Windows 10 LTSC + Firefox + uBlock Origin on an i5-9400 feels faster than my M4 Pro MBP

I don't remember Win10 being particularly lean (although I'm sure 11 is worse). And the M4 is definitely a much more powerful CPU. Can you not run Firefox and uBO on that? Or have they really weighed things down that much with the OS somehow?

> Probably same or better on Linux.

Even with the Cinnamon desktop environment I can vouch it uses considerably less RAM for just the desktop (ordinary applications are probably about the same) and offers much faster filesystem access by default. I'm sure this is at least partly due to not being weighed down by built-in anti-malware (that would do basically nothing for people who are comfortable using Linux in the first place).