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How Motherboards Are Made

Posted by Zonk on from the no-elves-involved dept.

Techno-consumerist writes "Ever wonder how motherboards are made? How all those little electronic bits and pieces are put in place, and how each board is tested? PCstats takes a look behind the scenes of the Nan-Ping Gigabyte factory in Taiwan, and documents the amazingly complicated process from start to finish. Very cool, but surprising about how much labour goes into each board."

5 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Profit margin? by Mortiss · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With the amount of work going into making of each motherboard and cosidering the amount of automation in the process how much does it exactly cost to make a single m/b? What is the profit margin when it arrives at my local computer store counter?

    1. Re:Profit margin? by Klivian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >Compared to how much they pay the workers Not so, the profit margin on the manufacturing part are low compared to the other cost. Having worked for 5+ years in that particular industry, in a non low cost country at that. As a rule of thumb we said 20-15% or less of the profit, depending of the amount of manual labor on the boards, was from the manufacturing process. Even with manufacturing in developing countries, you don't get that much higher profitmargins. Although very very very high volume does help a lot, when you accumulate the profit:-)

  2. Awesome by ksilebo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not to sound like an ingrate, because this is really cool, but I'd love to see a video tour of this. Growing up in the 80's I have fond memories of randomly catching Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and watching him tour some factory. I'd like to see that in the factories today.

  3. how much labour goes into each board by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The amount of labour that goes into a board depends entirely on the relative cost of labour and machinery.

    For a long time, we have been able to build completely automated board facilities. Since the seventies, we have been able to build and test boards completely untouched by human hands. Automation is really expensive so even in North America such facilities are rare.

  4. Testing by netrage_is_bad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I find it interesting how much time they put into testing each motherboard. It looks like they spend more time testing it than assembling it.