Motherboards

The RAM memory crisis is no longer a RAM memory crisis. Emulating what happened at the end of 2020, we are immersed in a new component crisis that, unlike that of five years ago, has not been caused by a combination of factors but by something very specific, the AI ​​industry. It is very difficult to buy any component with a NAND chip at a fair price and it is something that It is affecting all devices. The PC was already affected, but now the four largest motherboard manufacturers predict the worst. A shipment contraction of almost 30% on motherboards. Focused away from consumption. To understand why the crisis is impacting motherboards when, a priori, they could continue to be produced at the normal price, you have to look a little further. Nvidia and AMD are fully focused on the artificial intelligence segment, pausing their consumer GPU renewal plans for 2060. For example, the RTX 50 Super series neither is nor expected for this year and already speaks of some RTX 60 that would be released by 2028. Intel, for its part, also recently confirmed that consumer processors were taking a back seat in its priorities, since They were going to focus on the Xeon for servers and data centers. It is a strategy aligned with the great objective: become the great American foundry and sneak into the conversation they dominate TSMC and, at a good distance, Samsung. Update paused. With three manufacturers of the three key components having the focus away from the user and with the three main memory manufacturers (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) focused on memory for AI, what had to happen is happening: not only is buying new parts for a PC very expensive, but sometimes there is no stock, and the enthusiastic user who renews a PC every generation has no reason to do so, even if he had the deepest pockets in the world. That is why they are putting these PC updates on hold, clinging to current devices that they will have to get more out of because the market, directly, is broken. motherboards. And if PCs cannot be built and the companies that build computers themselves have already reported that they are having problems due to the price of RAM and storage, the foundation of the computer stops making sense. That’s where motherboards come in as those ‘foundations’. As we read in Tom’s Hardwarethe four main ones in the market (Taiwanese, too) are shipping units well below expectations. According to the media, ASRock will ship 37% fewer boards, Asus 33% less, MSI 24% less and Gigabyte 22% less. In total, the big four in this segment will ship 28% fewer units than they moved last year, which will push prices up for components that had not yet suffered the blow. In fact, the fact that the four companies are reviewing its shipping and sales predictions for this period could cause a parallel crisis. In a hypothetical scenario (because at the rate we are going it is very difficult for the crisis to be resolved in two days), if tomorrow it is possible to buy RAM and SSD memory at their normal price and people start building PCs again, what would be missing would be motherboards, so the shortage would cause price spikes. No end in sight. But hey, I already say that it is a hypothetical scenario because everything indicates that the NAND chip crisis is not even close to being resolved in the short term. The hyperscalers have the vast majority of the team unemployed full time, but they continue to demand new platforms to continue developing AI. That is why the entire segment has turned its head to look only at a market that is guaranteeing them an unprecedented peak in income. And no, don’t think that Asus, MSI, ASRock or Gigabyte are having a hard time, since they point that manufacturers are also offsetting declining profits in the user segment with growth in data center platforms. In the end, although ‘rare’, they are computers that need motherboards. When will the storm pass? Namely. There are sources that point to 2027 to start seeing green shoots, but others go to 2030 and Nvidia, which in the end has some hand in this mess, considers that there are seven or eight years of wild investment left. Image | Sitraka, Luis Gonzalez In Xataka | There is a shortage of RAM because of AI. That will make your next console much more expensive.