PC DIY: Market faces massive slump
The market for DIY PCs faces dark times. Motherboard manufacturers are preparing for a slump of up to one third.
(Image: Andreas Wodrich / heise medien)
PC and component manufacturers are preparing for a decline in demand for the rest of the year, which particularly affects the DIY market. According to forecasts, market leader Asus will struggle to reach 10 million motherboard sales this year. In 2025, it was over 15 million.
The situation is expected to be similar for competitors in second, third, and fourth place: Sales of MSI and Gigabyte are expected to fall by around 25 percent each, to between 8.4 million and 9 million units. Asrock could fare particularly poorly with a decline of 37 percent to 2.7 million motherboards. Deliveries of motherboards to PC manufacturers are expected to decline even more sharply in some cases. In MSI's case, a decline of 60 percent is mentioned, affecting partners such as Lenovo, among others.
The Taiwanese Digitimes, which usually has good contacts with the local motherboard manufacturers, reports on the figures. On the plus side: Asus and Gigabyte are said to be doing well in the server business, allowing the companies to cushion revenue losses. The situation looks worse, especially for suppliers. Small companies could face closure. Behind closed doors, sources speak of a “collapse across the board.”
AMD braced for poor figures
In the course of announcing its business figures for the first quarter in early May, AMD's CFO Jean Hu stated that the company expects a drop in gaming revenue of more than 20 percent. The comparison is with the first half of the year, not with the same period last year. Since the holiday and Christmas season at the end of the year is traditionally strong for sales, the year-on-year comparison is likely to be even worse.
For AMD, gaming revenue mainly consists of desktop graphics cards and console processors. The forecast underscores the poor state of the PC market.
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The main reason is the enormous increase and likely further rising memory prices: RAM and SSDs are becoming luxury goods, while cloud hyperscalers are clearing out the market for their AI data centers.
Due to secondary effects such as Nvidia's postponed or canceled Super Refresh of the RTX 5000 graphics cards, there are no incentives to buy new PCs, Digitimes notes from manufacturer circles. The next-generation GeForce RTX 6000 is likely to be delayed until 2028. Furthermore, processor prices are also expected to rise as AMD and Intel focus on server models.
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