I have always wanted to show you guys the inside of a GPU Factory and thanks
to power color and framework we're finally doing it but there's one small
catch in order to show us absolutely everything from start to finish they
have to shut down absolutely everything from start to finish meaning that it is
costing them hundreds to thousands of dollars a minute and we are going to
absolutely get kicked out after 3 hours
I think you can take notes faster than that with the constraints it's going to
be a bit of a speed run but maybe that's the fun speed fun like the Speedy segue
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description okay it's not completely shut down be pretty boring to an
abandoned Factory but uh we're told that this line would be running it anywhere
from 2 to three times the speed during regular production you can see just
waiting for it while they're better known as powercolor tul has been around
since 1997 and has produced graphics cards under multiple of their own Brands
as well as for partners like diamond in the past they won't disclose their total
manufacturing capacity to us but let's put it this way they're a tier 1 AMD
Manu manufacturing partner and even this small taiwan-based manufacturing line
can turn out about 20,000 units a
month they did invite us right when you're operating at this kind of scale
every little detail matters even the very small ones here's a real good
example of that shipments of surface mount components get inspected via x-ray
to ensure that they are exactly what they say they are and that the right
quantities are on each one of these tapes this is done for both new
shipments as well as reels that have been used multiple times for small
production runs so you can see this one has multiple count stickers on it and is
now down to 3,728
V's they also perform manual spot checks for both incoming surface mount
components as well as pcbs this is an
engineered what flatness meter I guess
it's a super super flat piece of granite and
basically see that if the variance from
one end to the other is more than2
mm it's done it's out now that all our components are validated all we need is
a quick antistatic shower and we're ready to visit the smt line where
they're going to be mounted to our
boards for step one we take those trays of pcbs and load them into the end of
the line our timing is so good we actually get to see that happen right
now here we
go oh look there it goes next up we need
to apply solder paste to every point on
the board where a component will be placed this is done by essentially just
scraping a squeegee that is covered in paste over a stencil with the board
sitting underneath now something to note is that these stencils wear out after a
th000 or 10,000 placements so every time
they run a new model of GPU through they have to inspect it to make sure it still
has the appropriate thickness looks pretty good to me but no one asked me
they asked the machine in here they inspect the application to ensure that
it is accurate and it's the right quantity and if an error gets noticed
the information is looped back to the previous stage so that it knows hm
something's not going quite right next we get reunited with our old surface
mount component friends who are loaded into the pick and place machine in the
optimal locations in order to reach the maximum placement speed of
77,000 components per hour holy crap
look at this thing go I have never seen a machine this fast which makes sense
because this is a state-of-the-art machine that runs at nearly double the
speed of their main lines and you guys have got how many of these things here 1
two three four five of them but this
this investment makes a lot of sense when you consider what this facility is
for they're just 15 minutes from their R&D headquarters so they will often do
things like quality analysis so they can transfer that knowledge to the main line
or development of new products so speed and efficiency is of the essence as you
can see the biggest components go on last with this side of the machine
handling vrms and this side handling display connections and the really good
stuff like memory and GPU dies which I'm
told I get to load into the machine oh
there we go uh oh too far let me you one one time
and you is it in the wrong spot oh I missed you unlock
oh hey okay well I did it mostly right
if your GPU is in the wrong spot you'll know who to
blame and there it is a finished board
at at least in the sense that a pizza with all the toppings on it is finished
now we cook but not in no regular oven
boys this right here is the world's most advanced Pizza Oven not only does it
have different temperature control for the different zones but they build a
special profile for every board that goes through it to ensure that the
solder melts absolutely perfectly and by
perfect I really do mean perfect at the
end of the baking proc process they ensure that the solder melted correctly
and that every component was positioned exactly perfectly by doing a 3D freaking
scan as you can see this one no good
it's got a lifted lead that is so precise now it's done JK
we still don't have a power connector and there's no capacitors there are
still some components that are better placed by human hands so let's go visit
that line at least most of the will 10
to 15% will get pulled aside proactively
and sent to the X-ray inspection room where they can use this machine to get a
3D view my God that is so cool of the
BGA joints under components that cannot be visually inspected like the memory
and the GPU die now they let me in at
the first station each jig gets two gpus and any 8 Pin PCIe power connectors then
we get our fan header followed by capacitors capacitors some more
capacitors and finally
capacitors once that's all done the back side of the board gets sprayed with flux
then it gets pizza ovened again until
the end of this machine where oh my God that is the coolest thing ever the back
of the board runs across a liquid solder
waterfall in order to solder all of the through board components man I feel like
a kid in a digital candy store here after the backside gets soldered our
little tray gets popped onto this little green belt and goes down for manual
inspection oh for some reason I thought it was going to slide but that makes
more sense if there's adequate coverage of solder it goes into the middle and if
there isn't it goes to the next station sometimes there just isn't quite enough
solder or two of the points are accid entally bridged and that can be quickly
repaired by a skilled technician the touched up boards then get cleaned all
the shoo gets removed then all the boards come back together for a final
visual inspection and our QA technician at the end of the line scans a QR code
and says hey I check this it's definitely good to go moving upstairs
you can see we've upgraded the gpus we're working on a little bit here these
are bound for 7800 XT hellhound Sakura
editions just like you saw in our cutest PC video
and stage one is ah yes visual inspection again I guess for what to
make sure nothing broke yeah to be extra
good and sure with that out of the way it's time for assembly to begin in
Earnest starting with little plastic washers over all the screw holes to make
sure the PCB doesn't get scratched IO plate and oh screwing on the io plate
that's very important next up back plates go on followed by those also
being screwed in which is equally important cuz you don't want your GPU to
arrive in pieces is then oh God I love
these coolers that looks gorgeous all the protective peels come off the
thermal pads and pre-applied thermal goop oh that one didn't have any peels
on it I swear I saw one with peels earlier I'm not going to worry about that the point is the fan gets plugged
in here then we've got one two three
stations that all apply screws to the cooler through the back of the card
followed by another visual inspection that I think could best be described as
sanity check you know does the fan spin
also a good thing wait what about second final station where each one of these
cards gets loaded on to a test
bench they got to have a lot of test benches yes they do and unlike the
assembly lines this part of the factory runs
247 with every single GPU being loaded into a full Windows environment and
running a combination of AMD diagnostic tools and Enthusiast ones like you in
heaven and furmark but hold on a second
one of these things is not like the other the motherboard's in sideways and
that doesn't look like any desktop graphics card I've ever seen that's cuz
it's not it's a mobile GPU specifically
the one for investment disclosure framework for the framework 16 massive
shout out by the way to tul for being willing to take on this weird low volume
product in an effort to make laptops less disposable super cool really
appreciate you guys guys and appreciate framework too for helping hook us up
with this tour in the first place oh
sorry sorry it's going back it's going back this next room isn't technically
part of production it's more part of development but on the subject of non-
disposability every new model oh my God
goes through reliability testing in a 45
degree chamber for an extended period
burning to ensure that it's not going to have issues out in the field oh this is
truly awful then when they're done in here they go to the Zer degree chamber
to make sure that I don't know you can game in Antarctica coming back to
production it's time for the final step retail packaging now unfortunately
they're not packaging any gpus right now so half of the line here isn't even in
use but rather they're packing up framework dual m.2 SSD carriers this
first station is flashing firmware then the serial number of the board gets
paired with the QR code on the sticker for the packaging then it gets begged
boxed boxed into a bigger Master carton box and sent off um everyone gets a
souvenir GPU today right nope they all go here instead where they're staged on
pallets in preparation for shipping to markets like Hong Kong and probably to
my friends in the good old usnd a so if you're an American this right here could
be your next GPU that one uh as long as
everything goes according to plan plan if it doesn't it ends up here the team
here handles both internal failures from the production line trying to rework or
Salvage any valuable components as well as failures from end users this station
gives us an error code telling us what exactly is wrong with the card in this
case it's a bad GPU which means it goes
in the pile and gets transferred over to the other side of the RMA department
where the board gets heat it up and the GPU gets removed then we go to my friend
the baller he takes a brand new GPU
installs it in one of these little Jigs and then he's got these little tiny
balls of solder that he basically plays you know those little games that you
play as a kid where you have to get all the little balls and all the little holes well he plays that on a GPU and if
he misses one guess what the cardal
working then it goes in the oven where all of the balls get melted and and it's
ready to be remounted now under normal circumstances when they find a defective
GPU they just send it to AMD to test but
we asked them very nicely to show us the manual reballing process so they did
thanks guys since we were already imposing anyway we asked very nicely if
they could show off the full capabilities of their latest generation
BGA rework station and put a GPU back on
for us so my friend is now applying solder paste to the board itself using
using oh okay yeah another mask now the GPU and the prepared board get loaded
back into the rework station heated
aligned and reapplied obviously guys this is not the
kind of thing that you would want to do very often but for Diagnostic purposes
sometimes it is necessary what an incredible tour massive shout out to tul
for their Hospitality today and of course framework who helped took us up
with this tool asked me to just take one of these random 7800 X T Sakura editions
and put a little signature on it they said if uh if you don't want it they'll
handle the RMA but I'm just going to I don't know put a
little so there you have it if you buy a
7800 XT secure Edition it might be
signed hopefully that's something you want at Linus Media Group the business
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lt6 we'll check this at the end uh guess
we found a broken GPU on the framework line so uh QA it works and you guys
watching to the end of this video works for learning how gpus are made if you
enjoyed this video hey why not check out the Micron factory tour where we saw a
different smt line where I made my own memory module that was pretty cool