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Contrary take: I believe we will see an expanded market for capable PCs that can be sanely put in a living space. By extension of the gaming PC niche to local A
by c7b 5mo ago
Contrary take: I believe we will see an expanded market for capable PCs that can be sanely put in a living space. By extension of the gaming PC niche to local AI. Both NVidia and AMD are developing product lines in that direction (DGX Spark, Ryzen AI Max). And Linux will be more prominent than ever, due to several independent reasons: MS dropping the ball hard on Windows, SteamOS making Linux attractive for gamers, 'digital sovereignty' as a trend, and Linux being the de facto standard for hosting AI (or anything really).
- hx8 5mo agoGreat take, but if the market is expanding for capable PCs why are motherboard sales decreasing?
- c7b 5mo agoWell, the two chips I mentioned (DGX Spark uses the GB-10) are both a SoC, so no motherboard needed there. I don't know if that's the full explanation, but it could be a factor. The SoC design with unified memory is generally well suited for residential use because it's quite energy-efficient, quiet and small (compared to traditional GPU-powered gaming rigs). Great performance-per-annoyance, so to say.
- justincormack 5mo agoMini PCs (NUC-ish form factor) are selling a lot now too, small, quiet, most people don't need expansion over what you can get from eg USB4.
- c7b 5mo agoYeah, the DGX Spark could qualify as a mini PC too. The AMD chip is sold as a laptop chip I believe, but I've mostly seen it in mini PCs. And the Framework Desktop. A brand that probably carries a lot of trust among the kind of tinkerers who would consider buying a barebone motherboard in the first place.
- stuartq 5mo agoAccording to the article, because components are really expensive right now, particularly RAM and storage.