Motherboard PCB costs have risen over 50% in 2026, and ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are reportedly planning to pass it on. What that means for UK buyers.
If you're about to price up a motherboard in the UK, do it this month rather than next. Trade reports circulating in early August 2026 say ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are lining up motherboard price increases for Q3, driven by a reported 50%-plus jump in the cost of the PCBs themselves. That's a different story to the one we've been telling about GPU prices and RAM this year, and it's worth understanding why before you decide whether to buy now or wait.
Nothing here is confirmed pricing. No board partner has put out an official price list, and we won't invent one. But the mechanics behind the report are solid enough, and the buying calculus is clear enough, that it's worth walking through now rather than after the fact.
The headline number, a 50%-plus rise in PCB costs during 2026, is not about chip shortages in the way the GPU and RAM stories have been. Those are largely demand stories: AI datacentres hoovering up DRAM and GPU manufacturing capacity, leaving less for consumer parts. The motherboard story is a materials and margin story instead.
Copper, surface-mount capacitors, power delivery components and the smaller controller chips that sit around the chipset have all got more expensive through 2026. None of that is exotic; it's the unglamorous bill of materials that makes up a board's VRM, its power stages, its I/O. At the same time, DIY PC shipments have been soft, so manufacturers are spreading fixed development, tooling and logistics costs across fewer boards. Higher input costs plus lower volumes is a bad combination if you're the one buying, and it's the same arithmetic that's pushed up prices in plenty of other categories this year.
Worth being precise here, because it's easy to read "PCBs are up 50%" and assume your next board costs 50% more. It doesn't work that neatly. The bare PCB is one line item in a finished motherboard, alongside the VRM components, chipset licensing, BIOS chip, connectors, packaging and shipping. A 50% rise in one input doesn't translate one-to-one into a 50% rise at the till.
That said, the direction of travel is what matters for buying decisions, not the exact multiplier. Board partners have shown this year, with GPUs especially, that they'll pass through cost increases once demand allows it, and a soft DIY market doesn't necessarily stop them if the alternative is selling boards at a loss. Treat "up to 50%" as the ceiling case for the most exposed boards, not the number to expect across the whole range.
Not every board in the UK market carries the same risk here.
AM5 is where most of the volume sits right now: it's the current mainstream platform for Ryzen builds, with the widest spread of boards from entry B650 to high-end X870E. Because it's the platform most manufacturers are actively building for, it's also the one most exposed to a broad price adjustment. If you're planning an AM5 build, the case for buying sooner rather than later is strongest here. Compare current pricing on our motherboards page before you commit.
LGA1851 boards are newer and already carry a premium over the platforms they replaced, as we covered in our look at UK motherboard pricing across AM5, LGA1700 and LGA1851. There's less headroom to absorb a further cost increase without pushing boards into genuinely uncomfortable territory for mid-range buyers, which makes this the platform to watch most closely if you're leaning Intel.
LGA1700 is the outlier. It's end-of-life, and manufacturers are already running down production rather than investing in new SKUs. That could mean it sees less of the headline increase simply because fewer new boards are being made, but it also means shrinking choice and less incentive for retailers to discount what's left. If you're on this platform, buying availability is the bigger risk, not price.
Our take: if you're actively building or upgrading in the next month or two, don't wait on this one. Price rises driven by component cost tend to show up at retail with a lag of a quarter or more as existing stock sells through, so there's a real window before Q3 pricing lands on shelves. Boards you're looking at today are still priced on last quarter's costs.
If your build is further out, six months or more, there's no need to panic-buy a motherboard you don't need yet. Prices move both ways over that horizon, and locking in a board now just to dodge a rumoured increase can leave you sat on a part while the rest of your platform choice, particularly CPU generation, is still in flux. Budget an extra 10-15% headroom for board cost when you plan that build, and check our CPU buying guide and motherboard buying guide together so the platform decision and the board decision are made at the same time.
A few practical moves that hold regardless of how this plays out:
Nobody in the supply chain has confirmed final numbers yet, and we'd rather wait for real pricing than speculate further. What we will be doing is watching how Q3 stock lands against current shelf prices, and updating our motherboard coverage and price index as the picture firms up. If you're mid-build, that's the practical takeaway: the cost pressure behind this report is real, the exact retail impact isn't locked in, and the next few weeks are a better time to buy than the ones after.
Source: ASUS, GIGABYTE and MSI reportedly plan motherboard price increases for Q3 2026, VideoCardz
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This article was written with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor. Price data is sourced from Amazon UK. For more information, see our About page.