PCB shortages hit PC makers with 30-month leads and 1,100% price hikes

A YouTube video titled “PCB Shortage,” by the channel UFD Tech, cites minimum 30-month lead times and a 1,100 percent price hike for the boards PC makers need. Written by Brett Stelmaszek and edited by Jayson van Kerckhoven, with music credited to @UFD-Music.

The channel’s own description ties the squeeze to AI demand already driving memory prices higher. It states that PC makers and others are announcing they cannot keep up with demand because there are not enough raw basic PCBs to mount memory chips in the first place. Companies looking to obtain the boards face those 30-month waits and the 1,100 percent jump, the description says, so parts for machines they want to build next will arrive somewhere near 2030.

That account lines up with reporting published. TechPowerUp, in an Oct. 30 piece by AleksandarK, summarized a Nikkei Asia report in which PC makers described severe trouble securing printed circuit boards. Some manufacturers predicted that orders placed today may not be fulfilled until late 2028. An unnamed executive at an American PC maker told Nikkei Asia: “Even though PC shipments could decline again next year, we are still struggling to secure enough PCB supplies to meet our needs.” TechPowerUp noted that ordering some PCB designs can already take 30 months.

PC Central carried the same Nikkei findings the same day in a story by Marek Novák. The outlet reported that AI server demand is redirecting manufacturing resources, leaving less capacity for consumer hardware and pushing copper-clad laminate prices higher. Anonymous Taiwanese PC makers told the reporting chain that CCL prices have risen 12 times since July 2026. PC Central said the shortage is expected to continue until 2030 and that motherboard and graphics-card availability and pricing face direct pressure as a result.

TweakTown’s Hassam Nasir published a parallel account that same week, also grounding the story in the Nikkei Asia report. Nasir wrote that AI servers use large, high-layer-count boards built from specialized materials and that their buyers pay well, so production lines are shifting toward server and accelerator work. Every line that moves is one no longer making motherboards, laptop boards or graphics-card PCBs. PCB makers say lead times on a significant number of products have already doubled. One Taiwanese PC maker said the price of copper-clad laminate—the sheet of glass fiber, resin and copper foil every circuit board starts as—has risen at least twelvefold since July. One leading laminate supplier reportedly has its order book filled through 2030, even though it plans to triple capacity by 2028. TweakTown cautioned that the twelvefold figure is one PC maker’s claim rather than an industry average, and that laminate is only part of what a finished board costs, so it does not translate into a 12-times jump in motherboard prices.