Title says it pretty much, I’m not new to building PC’s and stuff like that, but I was browsing parts today and was wondering why motherboards, a pretty large piece of tech that’s responsible for a lot of different tasks, are usually so much more cheap than the GPU or CPU even RAM sometimes, a much smaller part. Just curious, thanks for any info.
In: Technology
Motherboards contain mostly relatively small integrated circuits that are fairly generic, both of which makes them cheap. There are also some passive components (capacitors, resistors, connectors, etc.) that are very cheap. The PCB itself is a bit complex but the technologies used to make them is also fairly inexpensive, and there’s a huge amount of competition.
Microprocessors and GPUs are large integrated circuits and can only be provided by a couple of companies, and both of these factors makes them expensive. In addition to being large chips, they tend to be manufactured using the most advanced technologies available, which of course is also very expensive. A waferfab can cost in excess of $10B to build these days, and that doesn’t count the millions of dollars needed to make masks and the high prices of materials, manpower and maintenance.
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