The Birth of an Abit NF7 - A Factory Tour
by Kristopher Kubicki on June 11, 2004 10:12 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Environment Testing
Through the tempered glass of the large environmental testing chamber, we can see a network card plugged into an Abit motherboard. This motherboard will be subjected to temperatures from 0 to 40 degrees Celsius while running a benchmark software like 3DMark. Within a few weeks, Rolly anticipates updating these testing chambers to run the same stress tests from -40 degrees Celsius to +70 degrees Celsius. This practice of environmental stress testing is a relatively new practice and only a handful of manufacturers have adopted it.
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This testing chamber is just under 20 degrees Celsius right now; it will climb to 40 degrees before the test is complete.
Click to enlarge.
Other motherboards are selected after this procedure for other more specific quality assurance tests. These include drop and vibration tests. Fully packaged and unpackaged motherboards will be subjected to stress tests similar to rough shipping and handling in order to assure your disgruntled postman delivers the motherboard fully functional.
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fengpc - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link
Visited Suzhou two times, it's a nicer area than ShenZhen IMO. The industry zones look cleaner and more organized. However I believe they will have power issues just like other mfg zones in China soon. Nice article, enjoy reading it.KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/a...Kristopher
Glenngalata - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
An excellent overview of what is involved in the motherboard manufacturing world.The key point to this article is the availability of cheap labor. There would never be a way to produce an American made motherboard product that would be cost effective against the the far east produced items which is unfortunate.
Another key point to the article is the comment of the ABIT quality control being obviously tighter than that of ECS. Anyone who has owned an ECS product can attest to the fact that the lemon rate for their products distinctly shows the quality difference going against ECS. They may be a larger company but they did not get there by catering to buyers who care about any level of satisfaction. Maybe this is why ECS was voted one of the worst quality control entities in the entire motherboard segment.
The choice is yours but ABIT scored my vote on this one.
MadAd - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
yeah please, whats the url?KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
14: I have it - its 23MB though. send me an email, i will drop it somewhere you can pick it up.Kristopher
manzana - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Interesting article. Wish there was a video of that person building the pc within 1 minute ;)araczynski - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
very nice article, makes me miss my days in the industrial automation field, but not the pressures :)KristopherKubicki - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
Jaramin,Like i said in the ECS article also, workers work about 8 to 9 hours a day and are provided with meals/housing. There is very little variation between any company that operates out of China; its kind of all about standardized. If you have any other specific political or economic questions feel free to ask.
Kristopher
Jaramin - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
It would be nice if some more information about the ethical or human ressource aspect of the manufacture would be included. The only thing that was provided here is that the workers are paid 100$/month...Some of us like to know what is the actual human cost of a product. Knowing that company A offers better working conditions than B could certainly weight on my choice of boards.
ViRGE - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
While I don't really have anything of substance to say, I would like to say that this is one of those "wow, that's cool" kind of articles that are always great to see. Kudos for doing these kinds of things, guys.