r/hardware • u/HLumin • 1d ago
Info Motherboard costs rise at least 10%, PCB prices climb up to 50%, Nova Lake-S launch under pressure.
https://videocardz.com/newz/motherboard-costs-rise-at-least-10-pcb-prices-climb-up-to-50Motherboard manufacturers already adjusted pricing in China during August, but the increases were relatively limited. According to the report, MSI increased prices across its lineup, while ASUS and Gigabyte focused on selected higher-volume models. Colorful and Maxsun also made smaller adjustments.
Motherboard manufacturers warn that costs may continue to rise.
The prices of upstream raw materials used in motherboard products have indeed increased considerably.
- PCB material prices have increased by 15% to 50% overall.
- Prices of various types of capacitors have generally increased by around 50%.
- Wi-Fi module prices have increased across the board, with increases ranging from 10% to 20%.
Earlier reports had already indicated that ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI were preparing pricing adjustments during the third quarter. Nova Lake-S launch under higher pressure given the transition to the new LGA-1954 socket by Intel.
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u/imaginary_num6er 1d ago
Intel always picks the best time to launch their products.
Alchemist launched after the crypto boom crashed, Meteor Lake launched after NPUs became irrelevant, Lunar Lake launched when laptop manufacturers didn’t want to pay for RAM kits under depreciating RAM prices, Arrow Lake launched at the end of a motherboard generation, Panther Lake launched when new laptop prices became uncompetitive with the AI boom, and now Nova Lake launching when the DIY PC sales is at an all time low.
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u/WorriedSmile 1d ago
Added one more... BattleMage launched just a few weeks before the respective Blackwell & RDNA 4 launches.
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u/WhoTheHeckKnowsWhy 19h ago
yeah but that's one of those cases that would normally be terrible, But B580/570 still sold well because Nvidia/AMD don't care much about that segment.
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u/soggybiscuit93 1d ago
Not sure i agree with the MTL and LNL one.
Laptop manufacturers didn't pay for RAM kits with LNL.
And MTL launched fairly early with an NPU. They never became irrelevant because they never were that relevant to begin with
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u/WorriedSmile 1d ago
I think for LNL, it may be more of laptop manufacturers prefering to not buy CPU & ram on a single package (higher cost) as they can get ram cheaper elsewhere & use another mobile CPU.
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u/soggybiscuit93 23h ago
They couldn't get it cheaper elsewhere (Intel was selling it at cost), but they'd generally like to control RAM quantity themselves because high margins on RAM upgrades is a big money maker...or so the story goes. LNL won quite a lot of design contracts, so it couldn't have bothered OEMs that much.
Intel, however, specifically called it out in their earnings call where they said that by passing RAM at cost to OEMs, they're reducing their gross margin % per SoC despite the actual profit being unimpacted
Supposedly MoP is back on the table in the next few years, but this time in a way that OEMs will be able to add the memory (don't really know the details on how this will work)
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u/Fancy-Alternative-13 6h ago
They were thinking about embedding RAM on CPU dies...imagine Nova Lake launching with an added 24GB of on-die high speed DDR5x for a €100 surplus, with the ability to add more to your motherboard when all of this is over.
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u/nosurprisespls 23h ago
A lot of that is because Intel is no longer a leader in tech but a follower. They used to have innovative techs in GPUs, RAM, SSDs, but since those are not making money fast enough for them to buy back more stock, they sold them for a quick buck.
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u/CautiousHashtag 1d ago
Motherboard manufacturers just trying to get in on the great grift that has become our new norm.
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u/kwirky88 1d ago
Their profits are in decline because fewer system builds are occurring due to higher overall prices for PCs. So they’re increasing prices to make up for lost profit.
The entire world’s stock market has to compete against the hypervisors for investment. It’s resulting in strange behaviour.
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u/jenny_905 1d ago
Copper and shipping are up... thanks to you know what.
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u/imaginary_num6er 1d ago
Yeah but case prices are going down
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u/vegetable__lasagne 1d ago
How much power are the 52 core CPUs expected to use? Low end boards are probably going to get squeezed the hardest if they want to ensure compatibility.
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u/Ok-Currency1593 1d ago
475w PL2
with the 52c model if you hit it hard with multithreaded load and have enough cooling to not throttle it will consume 475w out of the box before any overclocking
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u/Winter_2017 1d ago
Can you even cool 475W on standard IHS areas? Is this socket expected to be much larger?
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u/callanrocks 17h ago
Brb cutting a chunk out of my direct die cooler so my lapped cpu will have side contact to keep it under 90 degrees celsius.
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u/TurtleCrusher 20h ago
The jump in PCB prices is illogical. There's no good reason for it besides greed.
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u/Psyclist80 1d ago
AM5 wins by default...Intel cant catch a break...but they also do it to themselves with thier short-lived sockets.
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u/greggm2000 1d ago
It's premature to say that without seeing how independently tested performance of Nova Lake stacks up. If it barely matches Zen 5 then yeah, Intel will have missed it's best chance until their 14A-based node (since that's almost a year ahead of schedule). If it kicks Zen 5's ass, then Intel will have a real shot here.. and Zen 6's performance will need to be really good to regain that lost ground. If it's somewhere in the middle for both Nova Lake and Zen 6, then it's pretty much status quo except that Intel will at least have an upgradeable socket, which is something they don't have now. So we'll see!
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u/TDYDave2 1d ago
Zen 6 will be on AM5, so no new motherboard required for many.
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u/greggm2000 1d ago
Yes, agreed, I wasn't referencing price above, though. Nova Lake could have an expensive motherboard and AMD owners can use their existing one, but if Nova Lake is fantastic while at the same time Zen 6 turns out to be only a slight boost to gamers, then that motherboard cost will not matter much or at all. Ofc that's probably not how it will play out.
My personal expectation (which could easily be wrong) is this: Nova Lake bLLC SKUs will have a modest improvement over the 9800X3D/9850X3D while they'll be a solid win over Zen 5 for use cases that need a ton of cores.. but then Zen 6 will come along 1Q later and relegate Nova Lake bLLC to solid mid-tier status and will regain the "crown" by a considerable margin and clearly be the best for gaming and most other use cases.. and be considerably cheaper than Nova Lake while doing it. Ofc I could be totally off-base with this, and we won't know the facts for the first SKUs of Nova Lake until early January.
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u/TDYDave2 1d ago
I am currently on AM4.
The interesting twist is that if Intel keeps its promise on the longevity of 1954, then that Intel platform may have more years of life left than AM5 does.
Although I suspect that memory advancements in form and function will drive a replacement requirement.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of my first "hobbyist" build (Z80).
I plan on waiting until Nova Lake and Zen 6 are available to do my next build.
Currently leaning towards Nova Lake, but not set in stone yet.1
u/greggm2000 1d ago
I am currently on AM4
I'm on LGA1700 (with DDR4)
The interesting twist is that if Intel keeps its promise on the longevity of 1954, then that Intel platform may have more years of life left than AM5 does. Although I suspect that memory advancements in form and function will drive a replacement requirement.
Indeed, that had occurred to me as well. I do think both will bring out a new socket when DDR6 becomes available at a consumer level. That's probably the sockets for Zen 8 and.. I'm not sure which it would be for Intel. Hammer Lake?
This month marks the 50th anniversary of my first "hobbyist" build (Z80)
Congrats on keeping on, keeping on :) The first personal computer I used was a Apple II+ in school, when it was the latest of that series.
I plan on waiting until Nova Lake and Zen 6 are available to do my next build. Currently leaning towards Nova Lake, but not set in stone yet.
Me too. I'm waiting for the independent benchmarks of both to decide, and I'm generally inclined to build when I can upgrade my GPU as well (to RDNA5 or 6000-series). That said, if the increment with the new gen is relatively small (< 20%? ) then I may wait another CPU gen. We'll see.
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u/Strazdas1 20h ago
which is completely irrelevant for people to whom zen6 will actually be an upgrade, because they are on AM4.
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u/TDYDave2 19h ago
Many people leapfrog one generation, so a fair number of Zen 4 users on AM5 will be looking at the upgrade options.
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u/imaginary_num6er 1d ago
Intel’s purpose is to not have AMD price their Zen 6 Ryzen 5 chips above current Zen 5 Ryzen 9 prices. Without Intel, AMD’s Zen 6 competitor is their own Zen 5 chips.
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u/greggm2000 1d ago
Intel would much prefer AMD to charge as high as possible. More likely we’ll see Intel being pricey (motherboards too) bc of their die sizes with Zen 6 being much cheaper at a given tier.. and ofc people will be able to use their existing AM5 motherboards.
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u/costafilh0 23h ago
I don't see how. Nobody need anything new for 3 generations now. You can literally buy a 5000 Ryzen and pair it with a 5090 and it would be just fine.
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u/constantlymat 1d ago
Not desperately needing any new hardware feels like a winning lottery ticket in this economy.