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How Motherboards Are Made: A Gigabyte Factory Tour
How Motherboards Are Made: A Gigabyte Factory Tour - PCSTATS
PCSTATS takes you on a guided tour of Gigabyte's Motherboard Factory in Taiwan. There's a lot to producing and testing a single motherboard; a mind-boggling host of automated machines, people and processes. Gigabyte has several other factories in Taiwan and mainland China that each manufacture motherboards, videocards, and other products.
Filed under: Beginners Guides Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: Gigabyte Jul 29 2019   M. Dowler  
Home > Reviews > Beginners Guides > Gigabyte

How Motherboards Are Made: A Gigabyte Factory Tour


Without a doubt, motherboards are the most complex and essential part of the modern PC. Not only do they hold the chipsets that pass data from peripherals, drives and memory to the processor, they also provide slots and ports for all your other system components and the circuits through which all data must pass.

Perhaps surprisingly then, motherboards get very little respect in the computing press as compared to other components. They are perpetually the team player and not the star of the show, and are generally priced as such.

With this in mind, it's surprising to learn the amount of work and machinery involved in manufacturing a single motherboard. We'd vaguely imagined some sort of stamping process where all components are slapped onto the bare board in one step and soldered, before being boxed in a big room full of bored workers.

Sure there would have to be some testing, but how intense could it be?

As PCSTATS recent trip to Gigabyte's Nan-Ping factory in Taiwan showed us, there's a lot more to it. In fact, producing and testing a single motherboard involves a mind-boggling host of automated machines, people and processes; so we'd like to detail the whole assembly line we toured while covering Computex, to give you a feel for how things are really made.

Gigabyte's Nan-Ping factory is a modern building in rural Taiwan. Built in 1986, this 8-story factory encompasses 45,000 square meters of work space, and includes 18 SMT lines, 10 DIP lines, and 9 Testing lines.

PCstats Gigabyte Factory Tour
The outside of Gigabyte's towering Nan-Ping factory

Nan-Ping's capacity is 800,000 motherboards and 400,000 videocards a month. Gigabyte has several other factories in Taiwan and mainland China that each manufacture motherboards, videocards, and other products.

PCstats Gigabyte Factory Tour
Nice foyer!

Follow along as PCSTATS walks through the whole motherboard manufacturing process.

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Contents of Article: Gigabyte
 Pg 1.  — How Motherboards Are Made: A Gigabyte Factory Tour
 Pg 2.  Entering the Motherboard Factory
 Pg 3.  First steps in Motherboard Manufacturing
 Pg 4.  SMT Assembly Line
 Pg 5.  SMT Process Continues
 Pg 6.  Pick and Place Chipsets
 Pg 7.  Convection Ovens for PCB
 Pg 8.  In-Circuit Testing and Visual Inspection
 Pg 9.  Gigabyte's Enormous Automated Warehouse
 Pg 10.  SMT Automated Reel Storage
 Pg 11.  The Expensive Goods
 Pg 12.  Manual Assembly (DIP) Line
 Pg 13.  Installing Sockets and Ports
 Pg 14.  Wave Soldering
 Pg 15.  Flowing Over The Molton Solder
 Pg 16.  Buffing and Cleaning
 Pg 17.  Testing Stage 2: Full Hardware Tests
 Pg 18.  Automated Testing Platforms
 Pg 19.  Testing Stage 3: Burn In
 Pg 20.  Final Motherboard Packaging

 
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