Will Motherboard Prices Rise Due to Rising PCB Costs?

PCBs are becoming increasingly expensive to produce, and this is likely to be reflected in the final price of motherboards. Although prices for motherboards rose slightly in August, it’s possible that manufacturers (ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, and ASRock) have, at least in part, absorbed the increase. Unfortunately, if this situation continues, even larger price hikes could be on the horizon!

Motherboards: 3% Increase in August—More to Come? 

Soaring component prices!

The prices of certain components needed to design and manufacture motherboards continue to rise. This is particularly true for capacitors, for example, whose cost has increased by about 50%. Wi-Fi modules are also 10 to 20% more expensive, while PCBs themselves have seen price increases of 15 to 50% depending on their complexity, and manufacturing costs are at least 10% higher.

However, last August, the price increase applied by motherboard manufacturers was around 3%—a rise that is difficult to explain other than by a partial absorption of the cost by the brands. Unfortunately, this situation seems unsustainable to us, and future price increases could be more costly for consumers.

Price increases that affect different brands differently:

Manufacturers do not all take the same approach when implementing price increases. While MSI raised prices across its entire motherboard lineup, ASUS and Gigabyte applied targeted increases. These increases primarily affected the models with the highest sales volumes. One can imagine this happening with entry-level series, for example, where profit margins are the narrowest.

Nova Lake: More Expensive Motherboards? 

With the upcoming arrival of Nova Lake, motherboards could naturally become more expensive. Indeed, with this new generation of CPUs, Intel is planning more cores, support for memory running at higher frequencies, and, potentially, a wider range of connectivity options. All of this makes manufacturing more complex, and as we know, the harder something is to produce, the more it costs. Add to that the various price increases mentioned above…