ECS Manufacturing in ShenZhen

ECS uses a shop floor integrated system for tracking the components and test results for every motherboard produced by the factory. This is used before and after every process in the production process.

After the power-on test, there is an automatic functional verification test completed in a DOS environment. Before this is completed, the motherboard BIOS is flashed to the ROM. Once that is completed, the board is then tested again under Windows XP. Every function is tested individually and collectively to ensure that there are no dead components on the board.

The interesting thing here is that every station has a different set of hardware. This allows ECS to test each production run with a wide range of components, without actually having to test every board with every configuration. This forms a part of ECS' compatibility testing, to ensure that its products work with components that its customers are likely to use with the board.

Around 1% of the boards produced go through much more thorough testing procedures (that's around 8,000 a month at the Golden Elite Technology campus). These boards are subjected to a 3DMark 2001 3D stress test, to verify 3D functionality, and then they're put through CCWinstone 2003 as part of an overall system stability test. Another 0.2% of the boards produced are subjected to a high temperature test. This test a 72 hour 3DMark 2001 stress test that is completed at temperatures between 30 and 55 degrees celcius.

Finally, the boards are packed, ready for shipping. The boards that we have followed here are OEM motherboards and don't have retail packaging.

It was great to have the chance to go and see components manufactured right from the start, as it gave a whole new insight into the way that the industry works. The whole process is incredibly efficient considering the complexity of a motherboard in this day in age. We'd like to extend our thanks to ECS for giving us the chance to find out a bit more about how its company works. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to record any videos of the Rapid SMD Placement machines at work, because they were truely impressive.

So thanks very much to ECS for having us along!