Welcome to Overclocking TV. Today we are at the Gigabyte Factory in Nanping Taiwan. And we will show you how to make a motherboard from A to Z. A motherboard uses a lot of components. All of them are assembled on a PCB to be the mainboard that you all know in your PC. The PCB arrives from another factory and the first process is to solder on the board all the SMD. SMD stands for Surface Mounted Devices. SMD is a term used for all the components that don't have pins going right through to the other side of the PCB. But have their electrical connections on the edges like the audio chip or below them like the chipset. Every part of the PCB that will be in the electrical contact with the component gets a special soldering paste. The solder paste acts like a glue for all these chips before going into the reflow oven for definitive soldering. In that way, every small component can stay in the right position before being soldered. As you can see, the solder paste is applied to the PCB space only where you will have the components. All motherboards today have really thin and small components that are directly placed on the board called SMDs. The higher speed chip plays a can play from 5 to 10 components per second. That's really fast. Most of the components mounted by these machines are around a millimeter wide and must be very precisely placed on the PCB. Today's motherboards have components on both sides. The first side that goes into the factory process is the back side. Once the back side is done, a machine switches the mainboard to the other side and the process starts again on the SMT line. After the small components, it's time to mount the chipset, CPU socket and all the other chips that will make your motherboard work. Before being placed on the motherboard, each chip is first verified by different sets of lights to check if there is any problem with the soldering points or alignment of the chip. You can see that chips like the chipset, audio, solder and USB 3 ICs are placed on the board by this machine, the same for the CPU socket. As an example, all the chips bigger than your finger are placed by this machine. At this time, your motherboard has SMDs on the PCB and can go to the reflow oven for the soldering process. The soldering paste is melted by the high temperature and sticks to the components and the PCB. The temperature reaches as high as 245 degrees C as the motherboard moves through different levels. At this point, electrical connections and mechanical connections are made. Your motherboard now has all the small resistors as well as the chips and the socket. It's time for the visual inspection. This inspection avoids any misplacements or missing parts. Components smaller than 2mm can't be checked by visual inspection, but this is why we have the AOI machine. The automated optical inspection machine checks if there are any missing or misplaced components. It also checks all the components that have visible soldering points like the audio chip. And finally, the ICT or Integrated Chip Tester can verify every chip that has soldering points below them like the chipset is well connected. It tests if the chip is well soldered electrically to the board, but does not test if the chipset itself is working. This factory floor is dedicated to additional verification, especially for server components. Some boards are tested by X-ray to verify the quality of soldering. This inspection is a high quality service that allows very high end and server motherboards to be checked in more depth. Once these last tests are made after the SMT, it's time to go to the DUP or dual inline package. The DUP stage is the second big important process when making a motherboard. First you have manual insertion. All the small components and chipsets have already been added. Now it's time to place all the other components that have pins going through the PCB. During this stage, all the components are manually inserted. You can see a long line of employees inserting the IO connectors, power plugs, PCI Express and RAM slots, as well as the chokes and solid capacitors around the CPU socket. Before being finally soldered to the boards, each inserted part needs to be in the right place and well positioned. This is the goal of the inspection before the wave soldering. The principle of wave soldering is simple. The motherboard has components on one side with pins going through the PCB. The wave solder touches the back of the PCB and these pins with melted solder to attach the components to the motherboard. After the wave soldering process, you usually have residues that is cleaned up with a large brush, making the back of your motherboard nice and shiny. Another inspection is made with some touching up with a soldering iron if needed. The heat sinks are mounted on the board before another inspection and check up by the ICT or integrated chip tester. Your board is now fully functional but the biggest quality control still needs to be done. Employees are testing everything from connectivity to the burn and test of the motherboard. The function box allows easy switch-on switch-off of the components as well as peripherals for testing purposes. As part of Gigabits quality testing, 100% of the boards are tested, where basic to advanced functionalities are verified. Once the board has passed all the testing and quality analysis, the boards are sent to the next process, the packaging. This is the final step for your motherboard, where it makes its way into the box you'll see in the shop. At the factory, the boxes are just flat cardboard that is quickly fashioned into a retail box by an automated machine. Employees stick bar codes and reference numbers on the boxes as well as the board then scan the different serial numbers. Your board is almost ready, the bundled accessories that include the manual, driver DVDs and cables are then added and then the boxes closed. Each box goes into a bigger parcel for shipping. These are then weighed and strapped before sending to retail shops. This ends our video, and now you know how Gigabits' motherboards are made at the Nanping Factory in Taiwan. We hope you enjoyed this overclocking TV video and look forward to seeing you all again soon. Thanks for watching!