Skyrocketing DDR5 RAM prices reportedly have an effect on motherboard sales, which have halved

We all know about skyrocketing RAM prices, but it looks like the huge leap in RAM prices is leading to a major drop in motherboard sales, forcing motherboard manufacturers to "significantly revise" their sales targets downward in the near future.

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In a new report from GazLog from Board Channels, motherboard makers like ASUS, MSI, and GIGABYTE are noticing a whopping 40-50% reduction in motherboard sales compared to the same period of 2024. Motherboard sales are normally higher at this time of the year due to all of the festive season discounts -- Black Friday, etc -- but thanks to skyrocketing DRAM prices, it's now reported that motherboard vendors are completely re-thinking their sales strategies for the near future.

Taiwanese motherboard makers like ASUS, MSI, and GIGABYTE have reportedly decided to lower their sales targets for both November and December 2025, which will make for a very interesting (and hopefully not too depressing) CES 2026 which kicks off in January.

Most motherboard sales occur when a consumer is building a new PC, but the huge rise in DDR5 memory prices has "significantly reduced demand" for new systems. If you're upgrading from an older CPU and motherboard that uses DDR4 memory... well, you're forced into the DDR5 ecosystem with that upgrade... and have to suffer with these insane DDR5 memory prices.

This has led to motherboard sales dropping massively, lining up with the 2-3x price increase on DDR5 memory, and should have an effect on CPU sales in the very near future. We could expect CPU and motherboard prices to start dropping through the reduced demand, which will be great in some ways, but not balanced out by the 2-3x increased pricing on RAM.

It's also not just RAM, as DRAM price increases will be hitting graphics cards shortly, as they all use GDDR6 or GDDR7 memory. It's a sad state of affairs, and it seems nothing will be turning back the clock on RAM prices in the months to come, but cheaper CPU + motherboard prices will be nice to see in the near future.