Motherboard sales are reportedly collapsing amid rising DRAM prices

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Club386 | Posted: Dec 1 said:
Rising DRAM costs are not only pricing out many consumers from building new PCs, but are also having drastic knock-on effects for motherboard makers. The problem is so severe, in fact, that major players are reportedly significantly lowering their sales targets, which may be the cause of some product delays.

According to a report by Gazlog, the likes of Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI are reporting a decrease in motherboard sales in the region of 40-50% compared to the same period in 2024. Considering we’re in the run-up to the holidays, with events like Black Friday typically driving up consumer purchasing, it’s safe to presume this drop represents a substantial number of units.

While the decrease in motherboard sales doesn’t surprise me, with all modern platforms outright requiring DDR5 kits, the reported severity of the situation is an eye opener. Manufacturers won’t take such a significant drop off lightly. and it’s likely to prompt a re-evaluation of future releases.

Take the MSI Max motherboard series, for instance. MSI originally told us that this refresh, which includes the MAG X870E Gaming Plus Max WiFi, was scheduled to launch by the end of this year. However, the launch of these motherboards has now been delayed until the start of 2026, and there’s no pricing available for them either. The manufacturer hasn’t confirmed to me that RAM prices are the reason behind this delay, but I’d be very surprised if they weren’t at least partly to blame.
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Full Read Here: https://www.club386.com/motherboard-sales-reportedly-collapsing-amid-rising-dram-prices/
 
I did think to myself yesterday that we might see some price drops on parts like motherboards because they won’t be able to shift any with the price of ram…
 
What's stopped me upgrading is not RAM prices, it's GPU prices. I used to upgrade all the time, yet now have no plans any more to upgrade. The only thing I will spend money on is monitors, which seem to be making strides and still remain competitively priced.
 
If ram doesn't settle to something more reasonable (I don't expect to go back to historic lows, but maybe £200 for 32GB or around there), then motherboard manufactures will just have to lower the prices so people will start building again. We on know they are raking it in, throw rgb on the board and then call it £400 :p
 
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adidan said:
Was looking to skip AM5 and move to AM6 when the time comes.

At this rate it looks like I'll be on AM4 until I start planning my epitaph.
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I laughed but with a tinge of sadness given the current situation and with no real end to the shortage in sight.

I'm hoping to pick up a cheap B650 mATX motherboard to hold onto for a future upgrade but I'm not holding my breath on being able to live anywhere close to comfortably when the whole bubble pops.

Damned if we do experience an AI bubble pop, damned if we don't.
 
Can’t afford the 32mb ROM chips anymore. Side note, the market is built volume sales, so I expect motherboard prices to increase over time not decrease.
 
jonneymendoza said:
LOL When AM6 arrives, thats when we see the peak of RAM prices mate.

RAM prices wont go down for the next 18-24 months at the earliest
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I suppose it might make ddr5 builds more viable if the data centres pivot to chasing ddr6. Flip side, the fabs might just run down ddr5 stockpiles in anticipation, in which case we've got a perfect storm. Assuming the AI infinite money glitch isn't patched.
 
I'm just glad to see sellers om the mm not taking advantage of the ram situation, the mods wouldn't allow it anyway.
 
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clone said:
I'm just glad to see sellers om the mm not taking advantage of the ram situation, the mods wouldn't allow it anyway.
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The rules have changed with regards to profiteering or more specifically to account for trending prices and market fluctuations.

MM changes to profiteering rules and new Collectibles sub-forum

The computer hardware market has changed over the last few years and the OcUK moderating team feel it's time the MM rules were updated to bring us more up to date with recent trends. We accept that sometimes the prices of items rise and therefore the second hand market prices rise as well so...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk
 
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SpellowHouse said:
What's stopped me upgrading is not RAM prices, it's GPU prices. I used to upgrade all the time, yet now have no plans any more to upgrade. The only thing I will spend money on is monitors, which seem to be making strides and still remain competitively priced.
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If the prices of components no drop by the time am due my next upgrade i think i be giving up PC gaming and changing to a console and that really is a huge thing for me as i been into PC gaming since the voodoo 1 came out.
 
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Adrianr said:
Good.gif

Feel like we've needed the wings clipping on motherboard prices for ages now.
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You don't feel like a few RBGs and a thin aluminium shroud over the m2s doesn't merit an extra £100? How do you expect mobo manufacturers to pay for all those "military grade" components? How will they pay to engineer processes to wing clip lower-end boards and then charge more than the prior version?

Pray tell, when they release a new "generation" of boards, how are they to fund the marketing to convince consumers the new board, that's functionally the same as the prior, is actually better?

How will these poor manufacturers make money? Surely not by innovating and selling product at reasonable cost without employing every price-raising scheme in the book.
 
I think it would be nice to see some reasonably priced boards again. I think back a few years, I was able to buy an Asus crosshair vii hero x470 for £250, then the viii x570 was £400, now the x670E and X870E have surpassed £500, for £250 what was once a top end boards price now gets you a basic run of the mill board. I understand the pcie 5.0 and ddr5 make them more complex, but technology is supposed to get better and cheaper, not get better and more expensive. The I/o on the newer boards seems to get worse and worse too. If you look back at lga1155 boards or even lga775 on top end boards you'd get a full I/o with stacks of 4 type A ports, dual nics, etc. now even top end boards have 8 usb ports maybe 10 Inc type c and most of them only have 1 nic. Not to mention the older boards had plx chips, multiple pcie slots with a decent layout for expansion cards and now top end boards are full of useless m.2 slots which steal lanes from your one GPU. It's a pretty sorry state. I guess AMD are partly to blame, by having extremely bad setup where top end "E" board have to have 2 chipsets. Why not just make 1 chipset that's actually decent instead of 2 rubbish ones. Probably why many people have m.2 drive issues on x670e boards.
 
Armadillo said:
If ram doesn't settle to something more reasonable (I don't expect to go back to historic lows, but maybe £200 for 32GB or around there), then motherboard manufactures will just have to lower the prices so people will start building again. We on know they are raking it in, throw rgb on the board and then call it £400 :p
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it will have to because they ramping up making ddr 4 right so this will make ddr 5 even more less of a choice so they gonna have to drop the price or not sell it. same with ddr 5 boards. to the average consumer even gamers there isnt even that much difference with ddr4 to ddr 5 either. hopefully this will level the playing field a bit .
 
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