Would the savings from a shrunken PCB outweight the cost of needing to engineer a new and smaller case? Perhaps its thermally constrained?
PS4 Pro: CUH 7100 compared to CUH 7000
- Thread starter Globalisateur
- Start date
-
- Tags
- cuh 7000 cuh 7100 motherboard pro ps4
Would the savings from a shrunken PCB outweight the cost of needing to engineer a new and smaller case? Perhaps its thermally constrained?
They need the width to fit all connectors, and the depth allows all front and back connectors on board without cables or risers. The width is constrained by the heatsink plus odd, and the depth is the heatsink+fan+PSU. The only cable is the flatflex for the ODD.
If they must fit a number of boards on a pcb panel, cutouts or small reductions might not save anything if it's not reducing it enough to fit at least an additional row/column. The L-shape could allow a flipped tiling if they could reduce the depth enough to have more than a 50% cutout for the HDD, but then they need a more expensive PSU.
If they must fit a number of boards on a pcb panel, cutouts or small reductions might not save anything if it's not reducing it enough to fit at least an additional row/column. The L-shape could allow a flipped tiling if they could reduce the depth enough to have more than a 50% cutout for the HDD, but then they need a more expensive PSU.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Unless you have exotic multilayered PCBs, costs per square inch isn't a that you'd notice, nor I suspect are the raw materials used in the case, assuming going small is like-for-like materials.
What going smaller does mean is taking an automated production line off line, retooling and testing it. That can be very expensive. Running a single production line at a Foxconn plant is probably 25-30% of the overall production cost, the rest being materials, packaging, storage and shipping. When the line isn't producing anything, you're still paying Foxconn but every second is a loss and your effective margins will take a hit for that financial quarter.
https://www.ncabgroup.com/wp-conten...minars_Cost_drivers_in_PCB_production_2_0.pdf
4 to 6, or 6 to 8, is about 35% more...
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
It can become quite complicated. The factors that impact cost are the number of layers, the complexity of each layer and the number of interconnects. These factors can impact what materials can be used for the PCB, which obviously can also impact cost and yields, which again, impact cost. PCBs are nowhere near as complex as ICs and many defects can be repaired but often it's not worth the time.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Not a good example. NCAB's business is build around selling their services for PCB production, consequently their costing reflects this. They have a large number of small(ish) customers who produce a, relatively, small number of boards for particular projects.
Sure but they give a nice explanation of relative cost of pcb production, they split the services from the production cost.
If sony were to shrink the ps4 board, they might need smaller vias, certainly more layers, and maybe even hidden vias which all drive the cost way up. The area cost is linear while all the other factors are exponential.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Each metal mold costs about 20k or less.
Even if they need tens of molds for each factory and/or need to remake some molds that had some problems initially, that's peanuts within the millions of manufactured units.
Even if they need tens of molds for each factory and/or need to remake some molds that had some problems initially, that's peanuts within the millions of manufactured units.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
In accountancy terms yes, but the actuals costs of production are offset/subsidised by their services. If you want them to fab only, I bet their costs will be structurally differently because this is just how the technical services industry operates. The profit margin is in providing expertise, even though it's debatable how much expertise is required in PCB design, most courses are a day long; experience is of greater value. The same is true in the building industry, builders don't charge by the brick but by complexity (hours).
Before I took up my current job, my predecessor used a lot of external design and production outlets so we've a lot of experience with this. If you're being charged for PCBs by the square inch, something is wrong unless there is some exotic requirement like space qualified materials. Or it's a bit of a scam, i.e. they get you to go smaller (cheaper) then stealth increase costs because of the increased complexity and you're now having issues from a bunch of noisy components which are much closer together. Don't worry, we can also supply some lower noise equivalents at preferable rates. NCAB don't do that but their niche is making PCBs for people who can't make their own. There's a reason they're not making high volume PCBs for Sony, Microsoft, Apple or anybody big in the consumer space, their economics are very different so you're can't really use it as a basis.
Their website does have some good visualisations of multilayered PCB production which illustrates the relative complexity. But in real cost terms, it's way more complicated, especially if space is at a premium - which arguably it is in a console.
Next up, on Pimp my Rig: Yo dawg, I heard you like overclocking, so I put a cooler in your cooler, so you can cool while you cool.
bitsandbytes
Newcomer
I see there is another (minor I guess) revision of Pro on the MIC site. CUH-7200
