Inside Elitegroup Computer Systems: From Taipei to Shen Zhen

Dragontop and ECSM

Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to visit ECS’ Dragontop facilities. Another one of the ways ECS keeps its costs so low is by manufacturing most of its own connectors for the motherboard. Dragontop is a joint venture with AMP, perhaps one of the largest component manufacturers for PC motherboards. Once again, our PC Chips friend, Johnson Chiang, saw an opportunity and jumped all over it when a Hong Kong company put the factory up for sale in the mid nineties. Since we didn’t get a chance to see it, there isn’t really much to talk about. However, if you get a new motherboard and see AMP or ECS written on any of the components, you’ll know it is thanks to another one of Johnson’s factory.

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We are back in factory #20, and its time to cut those motherboard plates in half. While the whole facility has over 60 SMT lines, the floor we were on only contains 12. These are massive machines capable of soldering hundreds of machines an hour. The 60 lines we mentioned are capable of soldering 120,000+ boards per month.

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The next part is fairly fun to watch as well. Most motherboards are constructed in line assembly setups. About 25 workers will sit in a line and plug a few components into the predrilled board. Remember, the SMT machines have already connected north bridges, LAN and other chips. The few connectors and sockets left just slide into the board like some kind of unusual LEGO set. A final worker verifies that the components are all set in place, and then the assembly line puts the board in an oven.

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At this point, the boards continue down an elevator to one more floor where they will be tested for quality. Much to my surprise, the Quality Assurance (QA, but ECS also calls it Manual Inspection) portion of the factory seemed to consume the most time and energy. Below, you can see a worker testing the motherboard CPU socket for correct voltages. This is one of five or so specific component tests.

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Here, a worker actually assembles a full system and starts it up to run. Each component of the motherboard is tested from LAN to CPU. It only took about 5 minutes for this worker to assemble the unit, run about 10 DOS-based tests on it, and then disassemble it. If you ever felt like winning one of those CNET system builder contests, you could get one of these ECS girls to be a pretty sure ringer.

Below, a worker tests the network components of a motherboard.

A specially designed video card that can be removed and inserted into a motherboard without damaging the pins on the motherboard or the card.