Ripple effect: PC makers have spent most of this year chasing memory and graphics chips while AI data centers bought up everything they could. Now the circuit boards these chips sit on are also reportedly running low. These same factories are busy making far more expensive circuit boards for AI servers, pushing PC orders to the back burner.
Nikkei Asia reports that HP and Dell executives have begun to worry about whether they will get enough boards as they plan their 2027 lineups. Even though PC shipments may fall again next year, an executive at an American PC maker said the company still can’t get enough of them.
The problem is that a high-end AI server board can stack dozens of layers of low-loss laminate and special glass fabric. So each one uses far more material and production time than a desktop motherboard ever would. Cloud giants are happy to pay for it – Amazon even bought a stake worth around NT$1.59 billion in Taiwanese circuit board manufacturer Gold Circuit Electronics in September.
Each of these boards initially consists of a copper-clad laminate board. A Taiwanese PC maker told Nikkei that laminate flooring now costs at least 12 times its July price. Meanwhile, one of the world’s largest laminate suppliers says its backlog already extends into 2030. This is despite plans to triple its capacity by 2028.
Board manufacturers are therefore expecting longer and longer waiting times. One told Nikkei that delivery times for a good portion of its products had doubled. Another said a new order placed today would not arrive until the end of 2028.
Even new factories can’t fix this overnight because they don’t have the engineers. The struggle to hire new workers has reportedly driven up wages across the PCB industry by 20% to 30%.
Outside the PC world, Canon is already feeling this. The camera and medical device maker said this week that AI-related shortages of circuit boards and the parts mounted on them have delayed production since August. Those shortages are one reason the company expects to lose about 90 billion yen in medical device sales this year.
PC buyers are still paying for the latest shortages. Memory and storage prices have risen so much throughout the year that Gartner predicts sub-$500 PCs could disappear by 2028. Even an RTX 5080 is now selling for almost $2,000 at US retailers. Acer’s CEO still thinks PC prices could fall by 2027. But a board ordered today might not even be delivered by then.
