2020 saw an unprecedented shortage of PC gaming hardware in the DIY market, and a price hike on some products as well. Mainly, GPUs and CPUs were mostly affected due to a shortage in supply of these chips. We have seen the Nvidia Geforce RTX 30 series, AMD RX 6000 series and Ryzen 5000 series products being out of stock in retail shelves, along with increased demand for these products from gamers in recent months.

Now according to a recent report coming via MyDrivers, the Chinese news outlet claims that Intel’s lower-end motherboard chipsets namely the B460 and H410 are also out of stock. This could ultimately result in increased motherboard pricing during the first quarter of 2021, and beyond.

Sources from the “supply chain” said that the supply and availability of some Intel motherboard chipsets has become very tight.

To make matters even worse, PCBs and other electronic components that are necessary are also either out of stock, or the prices have skyrocketed substantially, as reported by MyDrivers. After January 2021, the supply is going to be severely limited.

The report also claims that motherboard manufacturers have received the last batch of B460 and H410 shipments recently, but the supply isn’t likely to improve in the coming quarter.

Motherboard vendors like Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI have adjusted their shipment and pricing strategies accordingly as well. These manufacturers are likely to increase the price of most of their 400-series motherboard chipsets. However, MyDrivers claims that ASRock and Biostar are in an even worse situation than Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI.

Despite the B460 and H410 chipsets being in a bad situation, and out of stock, the supply for the high-end Z490 Motherboard chipset is somewhat acceptable. This is because the Z490 is built on the 14nm process node, while the B460 and H410 chipsets are manufactured on the older 22nm process node.

AsRock, Biostar and Gigabyte and other vendors have confirmed their motherboards based on the Intel Z490 chipset will also support the future 11th generation Intel Rocket Lake desktop CPUs, and have certified that all of their Z490 motherboards will ship as “PCI Express 4.0-ready”.

Intel also plans to release new 500-series chipset boards this year, and the upcoming 14nm Rocket Lake-S series of processors are also going to support the 500 chipset from the get-go. But the bad news here is that these upcoming 500-series chipsets are also in the same boat.

The Z590 chipset will also likely be manufactured with the 14nm process, while the mainstream and lower-end B560 and H510 chipsets will leverage the 22nm process node. There are also fresh reports that the supply for the Z590 chipset is going to be limited too, although there is less shortage of inventory.

Supply for the B460 and H410 chipsets will likely remain very tight in the coming months though. Expect shortages to last throughout the first quarter of 2021.

Stay tuned for more tech news!