- Manufacturers are prioritizing high-profit AI and server hardware over consumer PC parts, such as gaming motherboards.
- Massive cost increases for RAM and SSDs are making new builds and upgrades unaffordable.
- Global PC shipments are expected to decline by more than 10% due to these financial barriers.
In 2026, the custom PC (DIY) business will take a particularly harsh hit, with big gaming motherboard manufacturers being the hardest hit. The most famous Taiwanese businesses have reduced their shipment targets due to a combination of poor demand, increased component costs, memory shortages, a lack of incentives for gaming GPUs, and a shift in production capacity toward AI-related products.
According to DigiTimes, the motherboard market is in worse health than in prior crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the first year of the pandemic, because the issue is not only end demand but also costs and capacity allocation throughout the supply chain.
Nowadays, building or updating a PC has never been more expensive. Memory currently accounts for more than 30% of a computer’s total cost. To maintain profit margins, brands have had to boost prices by 10% to 20% or reduce standards.
In addition, there is a shortage of Intel and AMD CPUs, which have suffered many price rises since the end of 2025. Not to mention the delay in the delivery of the next generation of GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA. All of this diminishes fans’ incentive to upgrade their systems.
Gartner predicts that global PC shipments will decline by 10.4% in 2026 due to rising memory costs. They anticipated a 130% increase in the combined price of DRAM and SSDs, as well as a 17% jump in the typical PC price. Furthermore, they expect RAM to account for 23% of a PC’s material cost, up from 16% in 2025.
This gives budget PCs limited maneuvering space. Another consulting firm, IDC, has changed its projections. It now forecasts an 11.3% loss in global PC shipments in 2026, which is much lower than the 2.4% decline it predicted in November 2025.
RAM and SSDs have been the primary causes of the crisis. TrendForce, a consulting group, revised its projection for the first quarter of 2026 to a 90-95% increase in traditional DRAM and a 55-60% increase in NAND Flash. Specifically, PC DRAM will see a quarterly growth of more than 100%.
Furthermore, in the second quarter, the company anticipates an additional increase of 58-63% in traditional DRAM and 70-75% in NAND. It’s worth noting that vendors continue to reallocate capacity to HBM, servers, and enterprise SSDs, as they’re more profitable. To add to the dilemma, it’s worth noting that Micron’s Crucial brand was withdrawn in the consumer market.
A severe decline in their consumer market, as seen in the case of CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM manufacturers, does not always result in a loss of money. DigiTimes further stated that ASUS, GIGABYTE, and ASRock can offset part of the loss in motherboards and GPUs with the expansion of AI servers. In ASUS’s case, the source forecasts server revenue of €2.71 billion in 2025, up more than 100% year on year. They now hope to reach € 6.77 billion by 2026.
AMD’s data center revenue increased 57% to $5.8 billion in the first quarter, thanks to its AI CPUs and GPUs. Lisa Su increased her projection for server CPU market growth to more than 35% per year, hitting $120 billion by 2030.
At the same time, AMD anticipates reduced PC shipments in the second half of 2026 due to higher memory and component costs, as well as a more than 20% decline in gaming revenue compared to the first half of the year.
To make it simple, the market is not running out of money, but rather, it is being diverted. Servers, AI, HBM, EPYC/Xeon CPUs, and enterprise SSDs account for the majority of capacity, memory, chips, and margins. Consumers, particularly enthusiasts, who previously upgraded their CPUs, GPUs, RAM, and motherboards every few years, now see no reason to do so.
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[Editor-in-Chief]
Sajjad Hussain is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Tech4Gamers.com. Apart from the Tech and Gaming scene, Sajjad is a Seasonal banker who has delivered multi-million dollar projects as an IT Project Manager and works as a freelancer to provide professional services to corporate giants and emerging startups in the IT space.
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