Bad news to anyone wanting to build or upgrade a PC in the future: Intel, one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world, is going to start “prioritizing” data centers more and won’t produce as many processors for consumers. It’s yet one more way AI hyperscalers are making it harder for PC gamers in 2026.
On January 22, Intel released its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings and revealed that profits from its AI and data center products had increased by about nine percent for the quarter and five percent for the year. Meanwhile, its consumer PC parts division was down seven percent for the quarter and around 3 percent for the year. This data makes it clear that Intel is making more money from selling AI datacenters the valuable chips and parts they need to operate, even if most of them aren’t even built yet. So it’s not surprising, though it’s certainly still frustrating for PC gamers, that Intel’s CFO David Zinser has made it clear that datacenters are the company’s focus in 2026.
“Obviously, we’re shifting as much as we can over to data centers to meet the high demand, but we can’t completely vacate the client market,” said Zinser. “So we’re trying to support both as best we can and obviously work our way out of this supply issue.”
As reported by Ars Technica, Intel is struggling to make and buy enough chips to meet the massive demand. As a result, the company is going to focus on which chips it can acquire on the side of the business that is far more profitable—AI datacenters—and pivot away from selling as many consumer parts like Core processors. This is likely to lead to shortages of Intel’s upcoming Panther Lake CPU series and higher prices for its processors as stock dwindles. It’s also likely AMD’s CPUs will go up in price as it becomes harder for someone to get their hands on an Intel processor.
Over the last few months, it has become more expensive to build or upgrade a PC. This is largely thanks to AI hyperscalers and tech giants gobbling up PC parts to build datacenters; it’s becoming quite pricey and challenging for your average person to buy PC RAM and graphics cards. Even the prices on prebuilt PCs from companies like HP, Dell, and Asus will increase by 15 to 20 percent, according to PC World. It’s very likely that this will start causing problems for console makers, too.
The companies making these parts aren’t going to ignore the money these AI companies and data centers are offering, which is why Intel is pivoting and also why companies like Micron are going to stop selling RAM for consumers and focus more and more on big companies that buy in bulk. The future looks bleak for those wanting to build a gaming PC, or any kind of PC.
