How to Build a Mainboard: ECS Production Tour

Unts writes "Ever wondered how they put a mainboard together? HEXUS.net has taken a tour of ECS's production facilities, following a mainboard from PCB creation, right through to burn-in testing. From the article: 'The final production testing is done by skilled female technicians who have the ability to test two at a time, in tandem. They've got some test hardware that I'm jealous of (fast-removal memory modules, CPU heatsinks that don't need full attachment, PCI and PCI Express logic testers, etc.) and can have a mainboard fully functionally tested in a matter of minutes.'"

Comments

wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

DE JA VU, anybody ? Wasn't there another story just like this about GigaByte lately?

ECS K7S5A

[mrm677]

ECS are great boards if you can deal with kinks. For example, I had random freezes after I upgraded from an Athlon 900MHz to a Athlon XP 1800. I found a site that outlined how to solve the problem by soldering on an additional resistor to adjust the voltage of one of the supply lines to the CPU. Scary procedure, but it worked like a charm!

Re:ECS K7S5A

[stinerman]

I also have one of those, but it is labeled as a PC-Chips M830LR.

As far as being great boards, I'd have to disagree. Boards aren't supposed to have "kinks" in them. And most likely, you probably killed the warranty on your board by using the soldering technique. Although, that doesn't really matter.

AFAIK, no one at ECS/PC-Chips will even acknowlege that there is anything wrong with that model, much less let you RMA it for a working replacement. I'd say that bad products and shitty customer service aren't exactly what most people are looking for in a motherboard.

Gone to the gutter

[Quill_28]

>skilled female technicians who have the ability to >test two at a time, in tandem.

Trolling for vulgar comments I say.

Building Your Own Wire-wrapped PC Board...

[__aaclcg7560]

Does any know of any links or books are how to create a PC motherboard using wire-wrap board?

The local university used to require ten years ago that CS/CE students build a 8088 PC wire-wrapped board. The only big problem is that the lowest end Intel processor on the market today is an 80186 processor. I might have to go with a microcontroller design. I know enough electronics to put something together but not enough create or troubleshoot anything.

Be fair

[MmmmAqua]

If ECS is really producing the volume of boards claimed by the article, then the percentage of boards worldwide which originated at ECS must be fairly large.

So, if you have a company (ECS) that produces 24 million mainboards a year, a different company (say ASUS) that produces 10 million mainboards a year (number pulled out of thin air), and a common burn-in period fail rate of 2% (also pulled out of the air), guess what - you're going to see more failed boards from the larger manufacturer. Because you see a larger amount of boards from them, you tend to think "Hey, these guys are crap", even though their failure rate is the same as the second, smaller, company.

Re:Fun in the Factory!

[RajivSLK]

How grand.

Oh, shut up you fat bloated American pig. There are three billion, yes three billion people on this planet who live on less than $2 a day. Given the rates of starvation disease and suffering in the world the workers at ecs live a relatively good life. Not everyone has the luxury of being born rich in a country full of starbucks latte sipping, SUV driving fatties. And don't say you earned it because you didn't do a damn thing. Most people on this planet work far harder than you do.

Re:they actually test them?

[brontus3927]

ASUS makes rock solid boards. Of the dozen or so I've used the only one that has ever been anything but stable was the very first board I ever used in the very early days before I realized you had to use those stand-offs to keep from shorting out the board on the case. And even then, it still ran, just never quite right.

Now if your looking for a low-cost board, ASRock is bar-none. I've heard rumours that they are the value-brand for ASUS, and I certainly believe that. I've built a handfull of systems with ASRock boards, and have had no problems. They have on-board graphics, audio, LAN, and usually a modem riser.

Re:Fun in the Factory!

[geekoid]

SO beacuse we are American, we can't point out injustices being done to other people? becasue we want everybody to have a life that doesn't mean working 16 hours a day just to survive you lash out qt us?

you know what? fuck you.

People like you do nothing to hwlp these people, and seem to be content knowing that they are barly more then gender repressed slaves.

And do you even DARE to tell me I haven't worked hard and haven't done a dan thing, cause that is a lie.

Re:they actually test them?

[Bishop]

At two million boards a month (about 1 a second) they do not test every board. Especially a functional test as shown in the pictures. Functional tests are very expensive. Even visual testing is expensive. The Hexus guys were probably shown a prototype run. Before a board goes into full production they will run several batches of boards to detect and correct any last minute production issues.

And another data point.

[khasim]

I have never had a single problem with any ASUS motherboard. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

I have had problems with 1 of the 3 ECS boards I've used. Also, in Windows on one of them, the on-board NIC was set to "not optimal" and it took a lot of digging to find that.

The ECS motherboards are very pretty to look at, but I still recommend ASUS.

Re:Fun in the Factory!

[Darth Liberus]

I like how us "starbucks latte sipping, SUV driving fatties" get sneered at for being appalled at the worker's conditions... apparently we should be grateful they're not eating gruel and getting beaten with a stick if they underperform. Darn us evil Americans! Always thinking other people should have the same standard of living that we do!

Re:Fun in the Factory!

[cp.tar]

SO beacuse we are American, we can't point out injustices being done to other people? becasue we want everybody to have a life that doesn't mean working 16 hours a day just to survive you lash out qt us?

I'm so going to get modded down for participating in this flame... but here goes.

I must say that I do find that a bit hypocritical.

You will undoubtedly ask why.
Quite simple, really: your lifestyle depends on people who work 16 hours a day in those sweatshops.
For those people - with whom you sympathise so great a deal - to have a better standard of living, only one thing is needed: money.
If they were better paid, they wouldn't have to work so much.
However, if they were paid better, there would be no reason for your companies to move their production to such countries; the companies do it not for some humane or humanitarian reason, but for profit: spend as little as possible while making it, earn as much as possible while selling it.

Or, in a summarised version for /.-ers:
1. Move production to und(erd)eveloped countries.
2. Pay the workers cheap.
3. Sell the product expensive.
4. Profit!!!

So, if those workers were paid better (for example, just as well as they would be paid in the US), the companies would decide to save up on transport costs and move production back to the US.

For example, I live in Croatia, where our ever brilliant governments sold the Croatian telecomunications monopolist to Deutsche Telekom.
They bought the shares, raised the prices, exploited their monopolistic position just as microsoft does and made us, the users, pay them back the money they'd spent for buying the company. I definitely cannot think of another reason for aDSL to be about five times more expensive in Croatia than in Germany, especially as it is provided by the same company; they really deserve the name Teuer-Com [teuer meaning expensive in German]
This is a typical capitalistic behaviour - and i'm not trolling: look at the name of the doctrine and you'll see what's in its centre. Profit.

So no, you can't point out injustices being done to other people as long as it is you doing the injustice. I'd even quote you a quote from the Bible, but I'm not that familiar with the English translation.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not lashing out at you personally. I have got nothing against you; you probably work hard and pay your taxes and buy the insanely expensive stuff just because some corporate managers have to make a lot of money.

Here in Croatia, the capitalistic system is on a rampage. It has got so bad that some people claim that slaves in Ancient Rome (not to mention Ancient Greece, especially Athens) had much better lives: they worked hard, but they knew they'd have a home to sleep in and some food and clothes. In capitalism, workers just have to work; nobody cares whether they'll have enough for a decent living.

/rant
Carry on, nothing to see here...