Asus and Gigabyte predict motherboard sales will fall 25% this year as GPU bundles lose...

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Graphics card prices and availability finally returning to (somewhat) normal levels is excellent news for consumers, but motherboard manufacturers are unlikely to be as pleased. Asus and Gigabyte, who combined make up 70% of the mobo market, have warned that they expect sales to fall by around 25% compared to last year. And it seems much of the decline is due to people not needing to buy a new motherboard just to get the bundled GPU.

According to DigiTimes (via Tom's Hardware), Taiwan PC industry sources say the two big motherboard—and other hardware—makers are expecting the market to shrink by around a quarter this year compared to 2021. It's a prediction already seen in the Q2 2022 shipment figures, which experienced a larger-than-expected reduction.

Year	Asus motherboards	Gigabyte motherboards
2022 (projected)	14 million	9.5 million
2021	18 million	13 million
2020	N/A	13 million
2019	16.4 million	N/A

Two factors are being blamed for the shrinking motherboard sales volumes: cooling demand in the Chinese DIY market and the end of GPU/mobo bundles.

We all recall the height of the graphics card crisis when GPUs were in such short supply that, in the case of Ampere, they were priced three times higher than MSRP. It led to desperate gamers buying other items, including pre-built PCs, just to get their graphics cards. Purchasing a motherboard with a bundled card was also a popular alternative.

But as shown in our research, some Nvidia graphics cards are now under MSRP for the first time since Ampere's launch—EVGA is even shuttering its virtual queue system—partly due to crashing cryptocurrency prices making mining unprofitable. As such, motherboard makers can no longer take advantage of the situation by bundling GPUs with their mobos.

Interestingly, DigiTimes' sources say that the launch of AMD's AM5 and Intel's 700-series motherboards is unlikely to give the market a considerable boost. They believe some other scenarios—easing inflation, the end of the Russia-Ukraine war, another cryptomining boom—could send motherboard sales skyrocketing again.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/95097-asus-gigabyte-predict-motherboard-sales-fall-25-year.html

 

[winjer]

After 2 years ripping off consumers, these tech companies are having a though time accepting they can't exploit consumers as much as they did.

 

[bviktor]

Oh no, no more money printing

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

So is there a correlation between absurd motherboard prices and gpu shortages -> bundles, gpu lotteries, etc.?

 

[Faelan]

It’s gonna get worse than that. With the current situation only looking to get worse, a lot of people are going think twice about upgrading to even more power hungry hardware coming out this year. Last thing I read in the news today is that Japan is telling people to turn off everything that they can and only use the bare minimum of AC to prevent heat stroke during the heat wave they’re suffering from.

At the end of the day, food in the fridge, a roof over your head and gas in the tank is just more important than having the latest greatest GPU/CPU unless you actually use those to make a living.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I always thought it was shitty for places to bundle unnecessary crap with a GPU when GPUs were hard to come by.

Come buy this new RTX card!
but it comes with a MB and RAM that you 99.9% of the time don't need, but since we have a GPU you want we're going to bundle crap you don't want so we can make bank off all the people that can't restrain themselves.

Then you had the span of time that newegg was pawning off the gawd awful Gigabyte PSUs that were coming out DOA or dying shortly after being used or even exploding/starting on fire. The worst part of those bundles, you couldn't return a bad item without returning all items....so with these awful PSUs from Gigabyte best you could do was request a RMA for a replacement. Otherwise your two other options were:
1) Accept the fact that you had to pay extra for a shitty PSU and just throw it away
2) Return the PSU and GPU to get your money refunded.

 

[nnguy2]

Newegg is on my sh*tless for pulling these stunts. Never buying from them again.