Motherboard market hit by cryptocurrency mining slowdown

Sources at motherboard makers told DigiTimes that unit volume of motherboards may decline 10 percent sequentially this quarter as demand from cryptocurrency miners is weakening. The site heard motherboard makers are seeing their mining motherboard inventory pile up as demand is no longer as strong as a couple of months ago.

For the cryptocurrency mining market, high-end graphics cards have been the most important devices, and the sales ratio between mining graphics cards and motherboards are about 8-10 units to one. Although motherboards have seen much smaller demand from the mining segment, they are still making some contributions to the vendors, who are expected to see a 15% on-year decline in worldwide motherboard shipments in 2017.

Furthermore, the new Z370 motherboard series are reportedly seeing weaker-than-expected sales. That's not really a surprise as the availability of Intel's Coffee Lake-S processors is extremely low.