"Angry American" <angryamerican DeleteThis @nospam.net> wrote in message
news:47c78ba1$0$22584$9a6e19ea@unlimited.newshosting.com...
|
| Not really, there is a reason why high-end workstation and server
boards
| cost more, the engineering and components are better quality.
Everything
| from capacitors to chipsets. Just like there is a difference on
quality from
| a 60 dollar board vs. a 300 dollar board, the devil is in the
details.
|
To this I say "not really". In an electronics design/manufacturing
firm you will find the same engineers work on high volume/low-cost as
well as lower volume/high-cost products, there is little distinction
given to "who gets the project" when it comes to the engineer
assigned, imho. I worked in such a business for around 10 years and
saw no particular basis for the assignment of projects to engineers
other than their current work load and/or general expertise (and
sometimes a complete lack of expertise made no difference, the
engineer got the job because his workload was less than his
colleagues).
High-end workstations and server motherboards are lower quantity
manufacturing run products and thus have higher per unit costs for
engineering, tooling and manufacturing equipment design/costs (fixed
and variable overhead should also be considered), thus justifying the
higher price. As to the quality of components, I suspect the total
component cost difference for "low end" passive components such as
caps/resistors versus better or higher quality components amounts to
less than a few dollars per motherboard given the volume buying power
that a large mobo manufacturer can wield. Where chipsets are
concerned, the high end chipsets will be lower volume and higher cost
typically, yet I do not expect the more expensive chipset to have any
higher lifetime reliability unless heatsink/cooling factors are
different in the designs. Keep in mind that it is common practice for
a mobo manufacturer to "lay out" a design that is easily configured
for multiple products, from low end to high end, with the differences
between the products attributable to the presence of a few additional
components, perhaps more heatsinks or a fan/hs combo on the chipset(s)
and a different BIOS. I see more and more mobo designs using surface
mount power devices (e.g., for Vcore circuits) that are essentially
using the mobo as a heatsink for dissipation of device heat, a cheaper
approach than using a separate heatsink but this approach can have
undesirable long term results such as increased thermal expansion
forces applied to the mobo.
One example that comes to mind, Biostar made an M7NCD, a M7NCD-Pro and
an M7NCD-Ultra, and each product used essentially the same bare
motherboard with the differences attributable to components/chips
(such as added sata/raid chips and some passive components for these
added chips) on the mobo and different BIOS versions used. I note the
same can be done with server or work station products. It is only
when one crosses over into the "mil-spec" area of product
design/production costs will one truly encounter the cost of a high
reliability product.
--
Best regards,
Kyle
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