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Intel will scale down its processor shipments to the PC DIY distributor market by as many as two million units in the fourth quarter of 2018, which may lead to a 10-20% decline in the quarter's motherboard shipments by Taiwan makers, according to industry sources.

The sources said that Intel has reduced shipments of desktop processors to allow more capacities for notebook and server processors, and is reportedly to cut processor shipments to DIY distribution market to only six million units in the fourth quarter of the year.

The DIY market for graphic cards also sees low sales visibility along with sluggish buying sentiment for motherboards, due partly to the lack of significant price/performance ratio difference between Nvidia's new-generation RTX 2080 GPU platform released in October and existing ones, the sources continued.

Most Taiwan suppliers of motherboards and graphic cards are expected to see their revenues for the fourth quarter trend downward.

TUL may suffer operating losses in the fourth quarter. Gigabyte Technology's revenues for the quarter are expected to drop to the levels seen before the emergence of the crypto mining craze that peaked in the first quarter of 2018. And Asustek's fourth-quarter revenues are estimated to stay flat from the third quarter, with profits for the whole 2018 to decline significantly on year.

Micro-Star International (MSI), however, is likely to see better-than-expected revenue performance in the quarter thanks to strong sales of gaming motherboards and graphic cards.

The sustained mining chill seen since April 2018 caused revenues of supply chain players to drop remarkably, driving up inventories of both mining graphic cards and motherboards. This, coupled with the deferred launch of Nvidia's new GPU platforms, Intel's processor supply shortages and lackluster terminal buying sentiment, resulted in most suppliers posting lower-than-expected revenue and profit performances for the third quarter, traditionally a peak season, according to industry sources.

Among them, TUL, dedicated to supplying graphic cards powered by AMD platforms, tuned into operating losses after seeing its EPS hit a record quarterly high in the first quarter of 2018 before falling sharply in the second quarter. ASRock also saw its motherboard shipments and gross margins shrink notably in the third quarter, while Biostar suffered a loss of NT$1.19 in EPS for the same quarter.