Overview
- Digitimes reports cited Thursday by Wccftech, PC Gamer, and Tom's Hardware say the big four motherboard makers face a steep year-over-year drop in 2026 shipments.
- Asus sold about 15 million boards in 2025 but shipped a little over 5 million in the first half of 2026 and is pushing to reach roughly 10 million for the full year.
- Forecasts put Gigabyte near 9 million units for 2026 versus 11.5 million last year, MSI at about 8.4 million versus 11 million, and ASRock near 2.7 million versus 4.3 million.
- Shortages and higher prices for memory, storage, GPUs, and even CPUs tie back to manufacturers prioritizing AI chips, with material costs lifting motherboard prices by an estimated 10% to 20% and prompting some spec cuts.
- Fewer fresh desktop GPUs and softer interest in Nvidia’s next cards reduce upgrade triggers for PC builders, while vendors look to AI server sales to help offset consumer-market losses, with shipment figures still framed as supply-chain estimates.