Motherboard Sales Drop by Millions of Units as AI-Induced Shortages Bite

Motherboard sellers are lamenting cratering sales as the AI-induced shortages start to bite across a range of industries. After shortages of memory, GPUs, and lately CPUs have driven up prices across the board, the DIY PC market is suffering the most, with motherboard sales now down 25% at major manufacturers. For companies like Asus, that's as many as 5 million fewer motherboards sold in 2025—and the problem may only just be getting started.

The big demand in AI infrastructure construction has been for graphics chips, but those require a lot of memory (and often a specific kind), which has encouraged memory manufacturers to focus their fabrication efforts there. That has, in turn, pushed up the prices of DDR memory and storage drives, with even hard drives now more expensive. As the DIY PC-building hobby has become less affordable, fewer people are upgrading, and it's affecting a range ...