Gadgetory

in addition to the socketable GPU tester at MSI's factory in shenzhen china we also found some unique testing and assembly machinery for motherboards each motherboard SMT line in this Factory is 121 metres long would be combined 10 lines responsible for producing 1.6 million motherboards per month although the SMT line works on the same principles and machines of any other SMT line there are a few unique steps that stand out for MSI factory like the robotic in circuit testing and semi-automated system building tools in this video we'll walk through just some of MSI's overwhelmingly large motherboard and video card Factory in China before that this video is brought to you by be quiet and it's straight power 11 series power supplies the straight power 11 PSU is shipped from 450 Watts up to a thousand Watts accommodating most of the gaming PC build requirements you'd encounter and focuses on delivering a higher quality power supply that doesn't sacrifice on efficiency or stability noise is also a heavy point for the straight power 11 using a 135 millimeters silent wins three fan that can spin as low as 200 rpm for quieter low load operation learn more at the link in the description below one of the most interesting tools in an SMT line is the in circuit tester or ICT where motherboards are checked for defects at the end of the service mount line at gigabytes factory in circuit testing was largely a manual process with technicians checking the board's at a special station at the very end of the SMT lines MSI also used to do it this way and still does at some stations but has recently started moving toward more automation ICT machines check for defects like solder shorts bad soldering by the machines missing components sort of like an alternative approach to optical inspection or Aoi automatic optical inspection and tombstoning of components which is when small surface mount devices might start lifting off from the solder pads to machines sit at the end of each SMT line each with two motherboard carriers the machine is equipped with suction cups that grab the board off of the line while the other board is removed by the arm automatically from the ICT machine the new board is then loaded into the ICT machine with digital displays representing whether the machine is holding weight or not if the board's past fed down the line to manual quality checking technicians as for what the motherboard is placed on there's a custom CNC plate for every single motherboard model that has to be seated on the top of the ICT machine the plate helps mask which pins are and aren't exposed to the board with those making contact used for testing the board like for a simple continuity for a common example 95% of all pins on the motherboard are tested with this device often upwards of 1,800 pins total per board and 100% of all motherboards go through these machines MSI also has a custom-built motherboard tester that uses semi-automated processes it's sort of like automatic PC assembly although a few and pieces of imports are missing the lower deck is for supporting the motherboard the upper deck is for the CPU cooler the memory in the video card and then the rear i/o including one cable for every single port on the board this is all pre wired into a carrier and when the technician starts the machine the upper deck automatically lowers and sockets the RAM the video card and the CPU cooler all into the motherboard in one button press the buttons on the machine are labeled top to bottom as start turn on carrier support plate and ascend which should have a pretty obvious usefulness although not fully automatic these buttons are most of what's needed to get things started the rear i/o also pulls forward through automatic connection of all the cables to the motherboard which prepares the board for software testing to ensure that each of these outputs works the back of the machine is how you know that this is a functional solution it's probably one of those things that's built once and then hopefully rarely or never messed with the blue tubes run to each moving parts of the rig with air pressure used to move the plates around the cables have to be manually connected based upon the board which adds some manual work but only on the front end since one type of board is tested for most or all of the day and this saves more time than it ends up costing at the beginning of the day once everything is hooked up the motherboards are run through automatic software testing to ensure everything works tests include PCIe bandwidth testing line-in lineout other audio tests front-end front out audio memory SATA platform module tests LAN and anything else that communicates through the board which is basically everything RGB LEDs are used to illustrate various states of passage or failure throughout the testing and technicians can bend the board's aside if they need to go to QC any boards that fail are sent to quality checking for inspection on the same floor and then after that it's sent from the QC team to a team that manually fixes the defects often by hand with soldering irons MSI splits its tests between real-world and synthetic tests with function testing represented by most of what we just showed real-world testing goes through an operating system BIOS changes some performance testing Network testing and burn ins this test runs about 20 minutes long with the automated testing taking only 5 to 10 minutes as for some of the other manufacturing processes we'll walk through a few of the more interesting steps or Emma sighs SMT lines motherboards SSDs Ram video cards and most other devices with PCBs will go through an SMT line at some point so these are not unique to MSI they're really not unique at all we saw one at Kingston in 2012 we've already detailed the start to finish SMT line process in our gigabyte factory tour but each factory has a few unique elements that allow them to do things differently one of the steps we've explained before is the solder paste the machine which is often the first step in any SMT line solder paste is applied through a screen applied to every area of the PCB where a component will be mounted via pick-and-place machines later and this is eventually refloat to secure the components to the board by going through an oven MSI showed us one of its silk screens for the export 70 gaming Pro carbon use the guide solder paste placement when these machines are used one of the other new machines to our channel was the pick-and-place machine specifically tooled for chokes most factories we've toured use manual labour for choke placement but this Factory had one machine that does the work of three operators multiplied across ten motherboard lines and five video card lines that's a lot fewer people required to make the board and for the company that is helpful because we're told that apparently manpower in Shenzhen is getting difficult to come by people just don't want to do it anymore the machines can play six jokes at a time and complete most boards in about twenty seconds total time memory slot power connectors SATA connectors and other large components like vrm heat sinks are still placed by hand some of these it's because it's difficult for the machines to grasp them other ones it's because it's just heavy and would be faster to do by hand than by tooling a machine for it a weighted block is placed at top things like memory slots to keep them as secure as the board goes through another reflow machine because the vibrations from the belt could otherwise knock it loose although insignificant in the scope of this video this small step does show the attention to detail required for every single step of the process of making a complicated product like a motherboard the lake of solder makes another appearance in this line just like the last one we saw but we did get some more information on them as the boards move down the conveyor belts and get dipped in solder the solder has topped off by bricks of solid solder that gets it into the lake the brick lowers on its own over time it's hung from a hook and it melts in the 270 degrees Celsius at Lake below it it takes about three hours for one solder brick to be completely depleted on a line with each motherboard using about 7 grams of solder on its own we also looked again at the pick-and-place machine that plants sockets onto the boards we've previously reported that gigabyte saves large components like sockets for the end of its production line but we didn't 100% know what MSI does the same and our understanding now is that it's easier to move the board through the line and keep it stable during other pick-and-place or soldering steps which might rock the board of it the sockets are checked for bent pins before exiting the machines using a an optical inspector that MSI has worked to customize its automatic it takes functionally a picture of the socket and then is able to find any bent pins or other defects despite being protected some of these are duds one source from the supplier we're told about 0.2% have bent pins from the supply factory another unique step done by MSI is its additional photography step and this is the one that might get you in trouble if you ever are me aboard so what MSI does is they have a as part of the line there's a camera that's hooked up that takes really high-resolution photos of the front of the board if you were to RMA the board at some point and there's maybe a set missing capacitors or something when MSI gets the board back they'll compare the board against the original reference photo and see if something went wrong this is ideally used to figure out if something was wrong at the factory when it went out so it can then be tracked down to the machine and that machine can be fixed alternatively if you do try to pull one over theoretically they would be able to find out so it's got two purposes there but of course who's to say if something happened in shipping before it got to you so that's MSI is part of it the motherboard factory you can check our other video on there socket well GPU tester and you can check our video in gigabytes at some tea line if you want the full start to finish details on what every machine in this line does thanks for watching as always you can support these videos on store documents axis dotnet or patreon.com/scishow and exes or just subscribe to catch the next one we'll see you all next time