At 11 a.m. on the 5th, in rainy Guanghua commercial district in Taipei, Taiwan. Between streets lined with giant signs of global IT corporations such as ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Acer, PC parts shops and brand showrooms were packed in tightly. Stepping onto the second floor of the six-story electronics mall Guanghua Digital Plaza (光華商場) at the center of the district, walls filled with custom PC quote sheets came into view. Dozens of price lists for combinations of central processing units (CPU), graphics cards and motherboards were densely posted, and consumers were consulting with store employees about specs to build their own PC quotes.
Korea once had a similar space. Yongsan Electronics Market in Seoul. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, it reigned as the hub of the domestic custom PC culture. But with the emergence of DANAWA, a price comparison platform, and the spread of online shopping, the competitiveness of offline distribution rapidly weakened. On top of that, the decline of domestic PC manufacturers such as Trigem Computer and the shift to the mobile era coincided, and Yongsan lost its center and entered a path of decline.
By contrast, Taipei's Guanghua district kept its lifeline. That is because the electronics market did not remain merely a distribution space selling goods but functioned as part of a hardware ecosystem that grew alongside Taiwan's PC industry. Native PC corporations such as ASUS, Acer, MSI and Gigabyte, which grew around Guanghua, became global brands and later expanded into server manufacturing. As corporations that made PC motherboards, graphics cards and cooling devices entered the AI server and data center markets, the accumulation of the PC industry carried over into the AI industry.
Syntrend, a large IT complex mall next to Guanghua, showcases the latest PCs, gaming devices and AI PCs and serves as a link with the traditional parts district. If Yongsan remained a distribution market, Guanghua evolved together with the manufacturing ecosystem.
Lin Zhong-de (24), who sells PC parts in Guanghua, said, "The Taiwan market isn't big, but demand for PCs is still high," and noted, "People in Taiwan still prefer to pick parts themselves and assemble PCs to match the specs they want." Lin explained, "The number of customers looking for high-performance systems not only for gaming PCs but also for AI development or video editing is increasing."
This building culture went beyond a simple consumer trend and led to industrial competitiveness. Huang Bo-wei (45), met in Guanghua, said, "Many people have been used to assembling and upgrading PCs themselves since they were young," and noted, "It's not uncommon for people with that experience to naturally move into the IT industry or become hardware engineers."
The current state of Taiwan's IT industry was also evident at COMPUTEX 2026, Asia's largest IT and computing exhibition. COMPUTEX, which started in 1981 as a show centered on computers and PC parts, has now shifted into an event focused on AI servers, data centers, liquid cooling and high-performance computing (HPC) technology. This year, booths that put AI server racks, cooling systems and data center infrastructure front and center drew visitors' attention more than general consumer PCs.
Industry officials say the only thing that has changed is product size, while the industry's roots remain the same. An AI server is also a massive computer that combines a central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), motherboard, power supply and cooling devices. The analysis is that the technological prowess and supply chain accumulated in past PC assembly have carried over into today's AI server manufacturing capabilities.
Currently, many Nvidia AI servers are assembled on production lines of Taiwanese corporations such as Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Quanta and Wistron. Traditional PC motherboard companies such as ASUS and Gigabyte are also expanding their businesses into the AI server and data center markets. Capabilities built making graphics cards, motherboards and cooling components have expanded into the AI infrastructure supply chain.
What divided the fates of Yongsan and Guanghua was not only the distribution environment but also whether the district remained at the distribution stage or grew together with the manufacturing ecosystem. Taiwan's hardware industry, which once assembled PCs, is now assembling AI servers for the world.