(Image credit: Future, Matt Safford)

Motherboard sales are now collapsing amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI, causing prices for many major PC components to rise across the board during the past six months, with memory modules and storage drives leading the way. Now those shortages are being exacerbated by chipmakers, like Nvidia, Intel, and AMD, reducing production of consumer chips so they can manufacture more AI processors. The AI infrastructure buildout is also causing shortages for Intel and AMD CPUs (and even high-end Macs ), especially as interest in agentic AI is going through the roof.

Because of this, users who don’t have deep pockets are putting off upgrading their PCs and holding on to their current devices longer.…