Where in the world?

RAM

An individual RAM module is made up of many of different components, but is a fairly simple assembly process. The chips that contain the actual memory, however, are mostly manufactured by a couple of big players.

PCBs are created much as you might create them in an electronics class at school, by etching a design onto them. That design is used to create a stencil, and solder is stencilled onto the PCB in the correct area for the chip design.

There are essentially two sides of the world that RAM modules really come from. The individual chips are made, as with most things, in the east – with Chinese plants spitting out memory made by big names like Samsung, Hynix and Micron. These are made to various specifications, and are then shipped out to companies like Corsair, who are in the California Silicon Valley. Corsair then go through the manufacturing process to integrate the chips onto their PCBs. Different speeds of chips go to make different grades of memory, and proprietary technology – such as their Xpert LED readouts – are added on to the package.

Motherboards

Motherboards, whichever company they are made by, are almost entirely uniform in their manufacture. Chipsets are designed by a company like Intel, NVIDIA, VIA or ATI, and these chipsets are manufactured at a fab in Taiwan like TSMC. The chip vendor then sells the core chips on to someone like MSI, who integrates it with a motherboard design. Much of the manufacturing is done in China, whilst the head office of almost every motherboard manufacturer is in Taiwan.

Of course, the components for motherboards can be sourced from many different regions. Recently, you may have heard of the furore over capacitor problems. Capacitors, if they're not adequately manufactured of specified for the purpose, can easily blow up when electricity is pushed through them. Abit have recently come a cropper for supply cheap capacitors on their motherboards, and are now making a point of shipping only high-quality, Japanese-made capacitors on their boards. Japanese capacitors are generally far more reliable and, consequently, far less likely to blow up and lead to motherboard failure.