Ripple effect: PC makers have spent most of this year chasing memory and graphics chips as AI data centers bought up whatever they could. Now the circuit boards those chips sit on are reportedly running short, too. The same factories are busy with far pricier boards for AI servers, so PC orders are getting pushed to the back of the line.

While planning their 2027 lineups, executives at HP and Dell have started worrying about whether they'll get enough boards, Nikkei Asia reports. Even with PC shipments possibly sliding again next year, one manager at an American PC maker said the company still can't get enough of them.

The trouble is that a high-end AI server board can stack dozens of layers of low-loss laminate and specialty glass fabric. So each one ties up far more material and factory time than a desktop motherboard ever would. Cloud giants are happy to pay up for them – Amazon even bought a roughly NT$1.59 billion stake in Taiwanese board maker Gold Circuit Electronics in September.

Every one of those boards starts as a sheet of copper-clad laminate. One Taiwanese PC maker told Nikkei that laminate now costs at least 12 times what it did in July. Meanwhile, one of the world's biggest laminate suppliers says its order book already stretches into 2030. That's despite plans to triple its capacity by 2028.

So board makers are quoting longer and longer waits. One told Nikkei that lead times on a good chunk of its products have doubled.

Source link